A simple way to transfer photos from your phone to Windows without installing anything on either

Paul wrote:

We're always here to help you with your data corruption problems.

Just be patient when it happens, OK ?

Now that the Win10 is set back up with MS Office 2007, I'm gonna tackle
getting the DATA back off the old hard drive.

Do you think Microsoft Support phone numbers will handle a call on Win 10
corruption due to the Microsoft Update?

ultred ragnusen wrote:
Paul wrote:

We're always here to help you with your data corruption problems.

Just be patient when it happens, OK ?

Now that the Win10 is set back up with MS Office 2007, I'm gonna tackle
getting the DATA back off the old hard drive.

Do you think Microsoft Support phone numbers will handle a call on Win 10
corruption due to the Microsoft Update?

They might.

Are you willing to let them remote in ?

Some people value their privacy more than they value a "repair".

Can you explain, succinctly, to the person on the phone,
what you did to the disk right after the incident ?

In other words, things that might have complicated the situation.

You may have tried that DISM command to back out
a half-finished update. That might have been one of them.
Maybe it was "revert" something-or-other. The first command is
to back out a patch that didn't actually install. The second
one would be backing out a patch that did install.

DISM /image:c:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions

DISM /image:c:\ /remove-package /_packagename_

I think the image parameter implies the operation is an
offline one, and typically it might be /image:d:\ because
of the weird way drive letters are determine in WinPE
(what you're booted from, when trying to recover).

On a damaged disk, "CHKDSK" is a "repair-in-place" utility.
You *must* make a backup before using it, or possibly
forever lose access to the data. CHKDSK is *not* a utility
for casual usage. It's perfectly safe when the disk is
healthy... and quite deadly when the disk is sick. It's
a paradox to be resolved by creating a backup before you
use it. Even the twit on the phone should know that.

Before you allow a twit to work on that disk, you
back it up. In case my little description didn't paint
a vivid enough picture for you.

Even when you take a computer to the computer store or
to Geek Squad for repair, you back it up first!!!
No exceptions. You can use ddrescue for this, if you cannot
find anything else to use.

HTH,
Paul

Paul wrote:

Do you think Microsoft Support phone numbers will handle a call on Win 10
corruption due to the Microsoft Update?

They might.

Today the Microsoft Support Tier 2 technician tried to "repair" the Windows
10 Pro HDD that Microsoft Windows Update bricked about a month ago.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/4xt104h.jpg

They failed. It took /hours/, where the 2nd tier Microsoft Technical
Support (+1-800-642-7676) stuck with me the entire time.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/4xt104i.jpg

Since the OS wouldn't boot, screenshots were out of the question.

So I snapped scores of new photos with the spare Moto G Android phone of
exactly the procedure Microsoft followed during the hours it took to fail,
and I transferred those photos to this computer using the "it just works"
method described in this thread.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/4xt104g.jpg

Are you willing to let them remote in ?

Yes. I already physically replaced the HDD that Microsoft Update bricked,
which needed Office 2007 Pro, where Microsoft Technical Support
(+1-800-360-7561) remotely installed and activated MS Office for me earlier
today.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/...ice2007_16.jpg

They remoted into my machine in order for them to manually install
Microsoft Office 2007 Pro for me earlier today, all the steps of which are
fully documented in screenshots for group tribal knowledge here.

SOLVED: How to download an ISO image for Office 2007 Pro in the year 2018
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/7ru4_AyhPCY

Some people value their privacy more than they value a "repair".

All I care about is my data, where they would be bored to tears if they
looked at it - but my data is important to me (pictures of the grandkids,
financial records, thousands of DIY photos, etc.).

I let Microsoft remote in a second time today because they needed to create
a bootable media for me on a known-good computer, we created 1709 bootable
DVD media to attempt to repair the bricked Microsoft Windows 10 Pro.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/6xt104j.jpg

Can you explain, succinctly, to the person on the phone,
what you did to the disk right after the incident ?

Hmmm... I'm not known to be laconic.
I explained that I hit /every/ button that the recovery console provided
/except/ the one that wipes out everything and reinstalls Windows 10 Pro.

In other words, things that might have complicated the situation.

The only thing I did that might complicate things is the DISM command you
suggested, where the 2nd tier support at Microsoft told me that they never
use DISM on a system that doesn't already boot.

I don't remember what the DISM command was that I used, but we documented
it in a prior psot so I can dig it up (they didn't seem to care since that
X:\ command prompt is the one step they never use, they told me.

You may have tried that DISM command to back out
a half-finished update. That might have been one of them.
Maybe it was "revert" something-or-other. The first command is
to back out a patch that didn't actually install. The second
one would be backing out a patch that did install.

DISM /image:c:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions
DISM /image:c:\ /remove-package /_packagename_

Yup. I ran whatever DISM you had suggested at the time, but they told me
that DISM won't do anything on a system that won't boot except to the
recovery console.

On a damaged disk, "CHKDSK" is a "repair-in-place" utility.
You *must* make a backup before using it, or possibly
forever lose access to the data. CHKDSK is *not* a utility
for casual usage.

You can't run CHKDSK if the disk won't mount.

It's perfectly safe when the disk is
healthy... and quite deadly when the disk is sick.

There's nothing wrong with the disk (AFAIK).

It's the Microsoft Update that bricked it. I suspect it's because I
customized the hell out of that system, to the point that Microsoft Updates
didn't work at all until recently. Then wham! Windows Update bricked the
system.

The tech support said it's because the HP machine I'm using doesn't have
drivers from HP for Win10 but I suspect it's just poor coding that can't
handle customizations.

Lesson learned - don't customize Windows 10 Pro too much.

It's a paradox to be resolved by creating a backup before you
use it. Even the twit on the phone should know that.

There's no way to make a backup if you can't "mount" the data.
(I see your suggestion for ddrescue below... see below for details.)

We ended up making a support appointment at the nearest Microsoft Support
Center, which, in the Silicon Valley, is open the strangest hours!
Monday = Midnight to Midnight
Tuesday = Noon to 9:30PM
Wednesday = 10am to Midnight
Thursday = 10 am to 9:30 PM
Friday = 10 am to 9:30 PM
Saturday = 10 am to 9:30 PM
Sunday = Closed

Before you allow a twit to work on that disk, you
back it up. In case my little description didn't paint
a vivid enough picture for you.

I can't imagine how to back up a disk that can't be mounted.
(I see your suggestion for ddrescue below... see below for details.)

As you know, I plugged it into an SATA/IDE/PATA adapter but a known good
Windows 10 computer wouldn't mount it.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/...sb_adapter.jpg

Even when you take a computer to the computer store or
to Geek Squad for repair, you back it up first!!!

How do you back up a terabyte HDD that won't mount?
(I see your suggestion for ddrescue below... see below for details.)

No exceptions. You can use ddrescue for this, if you cannot
find anything else to use.

Googling for "ddrescue" canonical site, it looks like it's dead:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ddrescueview/

Maybe the GNU link is the canonical site?
http://www.gnu.org/software/ddrescue/

It's a gunzipped tarball, so I'll deal with that.

Seems to have some associated utilities but they don't work on Windows.
DDRescue-GUI - A simple GUI (Graphical User Interface) for ddrescue.
http://www.hamishmb.altervista.org/h...e=ddrescue-gui

And they're dead links anyway:
Ddrescueview - A graphical viewer for GNU ddrescue log files.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddrescueview/

Ddrutility - A set of tools designed to work with ddrescue to aid with data
recovery.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ddrutility/

I'll read up s'more on ddrescue. Thanks. We should probably take this out
of the r.p.d ng because it's off topic so I'll post a separate thread.

ultred ragnusen wrote:


I'll read up s'more on ddrescue. Thanks. We should probably take this out
of the r.p.d ng because it's off topic so I'll post a separate thread.

If you have something like Ubuntu, try "gddrescue".

The package name and the executable name, don't have
to be the same. That's what adds to the joy of figuring it out.

ddrescue is a utility that tolerates "CRC error" when reading
a disk. You can make one run after another, and the "log" file
keeps track of what sectors have not been recovered yet. Looking
at the log, you get some idea how much damage remains (in terms
of CRC errors).

The items are

source disk
destination disk
log file

You present the same log file to the tool, every time you
run the same source and dest. The log file gets updated when
hard-to-read sectors are finally captured. Eventually, after
enough passes, there will be some sectors that will never be
read. And you hope that those are replaced by zeros. Then,
if you run CHKDSK on that destination drive, it might be
able to restore enough of the disk, to get (most) of the
data off it.

ddrescue is mechanical and captures sectors. It doesn't know
or care whether the partition is NTFS or EXT4. Doesn't matter.

It relies on other tools, to make sense of what it captured.

The "logical" state of the file system is another matter
entirely. For example, my Windows 10 Insider partition that
had volume bitmap corruption and some damage to Extended Attributes,
I could use ddrescue on that hard drive, and it would complete
the transfer in only one pass (the log file would be clean).
No second pass would be needed. But in order to correct the
damage on the disk, it takes a couple CHKDSK commands to finish
the job.

I don't really care all that much, what happens to my
Windows 10 Insider installs, as Windows 10 is the "software
as a service" OS, and it should "run like a King". It's
simply not possible for a product like that, to be bricked...
Right ? :-/

This would be an example of backing up a hard drive, to an
"image file". The "image file" could be restored to a new hard
drive later, say. The "S" argument in this example is sparse.
For experiments of this kind, I can prepare /dev/sdb in advance
to contain mostly zeroed data files. When the backup is
written out, it need not take much space on the storage
device. This allows backup experiments with only a small amount
of real space on the destination. I think the -b parameter
sets the max transfer size. The command is adaptive and
adjusts the block transfer according to how "bad" the disk
is. The block size is increased, as long as it improves the
overall transfer rate. If the fastest transfer is happening with
4KB blocks, then it'll use 4KB transfers instead.

ddrescue -S -b8M /dev/sdb /mount/external/backup/sdb.raw /mount/external/backup/sdb.log

Because there was nothing wrong with the disk, I had no real
opportunity to craft a "second pass" command for it. So that
command is for the first pass. You can open the log in a
text editor, and see what remains to be transferred and whether
another pass is required.

Paul

Paul wrote:

I'll read up s'more on ddrescue. Thanks. We should probably take this out
of the r.p.d ng because it's off topic so I'll post a separate thread.

If you have something like Ubuntu, try "gddrescue".

The fan died on my Ubuntu 16.04 laptop, but I can torrent the Ubuntu ISO
and boot off of it or even re-install VirtualBox (although it took a long
time before I had VirtualBox working on the original HDD).

I did torrent Knoppix though and burned it to a bootable DVD image,
although even with almost 2,500 peers, it still took a long while to
torrent.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/knoppix1.jpg

The package name and the executable name, don't have
to be the same. That's what adds to the joy of figuring it out.

I think I'll try Knoppix first, and then, perhaps Recuva, where your advice
to back up the data /before/ handing the desktop tower to Microsoft is good
advice.

ddrescue is a utility that tolerates "CRC error" when reading
a disk. You can make one run after another, and the "log" file
keeps track of what sectors have not been recovered yet. Looking
at the log, you get some idea how much damage remains (in terms
of CRC errors).

Personally, I don't think there is any /damage/ to the HDD; I think it's as
simple as Microsoft Windows Update screwed up, perhaps because I had
customized the heck out of the system (Winaero, Classic Shell, etc.).

ddrescue is mechanical and captures sectors. It doesn't know
or care whether the partition is NTFS or EXT4. Doesn't matter.

Thanks for the ddrescue advice. I'm not sure yet if it's a standalone
bootable tool or something that runs inside of Windows or Linux but I'll
work it out after trying out Knoppix with the bad HDD connected via the
SATA adapter to the USB port on the desktop booted to Knoppix.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/knoppix2.jpg

ultred ragnusen wrote:
Paul wrote:

I'll read up s'more on ddrescue. Thanks. We should probably take this out
of the r.p.d ng because it's off topic so I'll post a separate thread.
If you have something like Ubuntu, try "gddrescue".

The fan died on my Ubuntu 16.04 laptop, but I can torrent the Ubuntu ISO
and boot off of it or even re-install VirtualBox (although it took a long
time before I had VirtualBox working on the original HDD).

I did torrent Knoppix though and burned it to a bootable DVD image,
although even with almost 2,500 peers, it still took a long while to
torrent.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/knoppix1.jpg

The package name and the executable name, don't have
to be the same. That's what adds to the joy of figuring it out.

I think I'll try Knoppix first, and then, perhaps Recuva, where your advice
to back up the data /before/ handing the desktop tower to Microsoft is good
advice.

ddrescue is a utility that tolerates "CRC error" when reading
a disk. You can make one run after another, and the "log" file
keeps track of what sectors have not been recovered yet. Looking
at the log, you get some idea how much damage remains (in terms
of CRC errors).

Personally, I don't think there is any /damage/ to the HDD; I think it's as
simple as Microsoft Windows Update screwed up, perhaps because I had
customized the heck out of the system (Winaero, Classic Shell, etc.).

ddrescue is mechanical and captures sectors. It doesn't know
or care whether the partition is NTFS or EXT4. Doesn't matter.

Thanks for the ddrescue advice. I'm not sure yet if it's a standalone
bootable tool or something that runs inside of Windows or Linux but I'll
work it out after trying out Knoppix with the bad HDD connected via the
SATA adapter to the USB port on the desktop booted to Knoppix.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/02/24/knoppix2.jpg

Since the disk is "suspected good" at the hardware level,
you can use "dd" on it. Knoppix will have a copy. Every Linux
distro has "dd" on it. The "dd" utility does not tolerate CRC
errors like gddrescue does. Which is fine with your hard drive.

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/sparedrive/bigdisk.bin bs=512 count=...

That's the general format for storing every sector on a hard
drive, as a "very large file" stored on a second disk.

If you have two 1TB drives, then obviously when you make the
/media/sparedrive partition, it will be slightly smaller than
the thing you are copying.

However, sometimes partitions support compression. You can
also chain commands together in the command line.

Adjust the arithmetic product of blocksize and count parameters,
so the entire disk is copied. Unlike gddrescue with its adaptive
transfer scheme, "dd" expects you to do the math and copy
as much or as little of the drive as you'd like. For example,
the second command here would transfer around 1.2GB or so.

sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=12345678 | gzip -3 /media/sparedrive/bigdisk.bin.gz

sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=1048576 count=1234 | gzip -3 /media/sparedrive/bigdisk.bin.gz

Since you're in Linux, you can try...

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

and get size info for the disk. Then, use the factor program,
to see what number makes a good fit for blocksize "bs" parameter.
(bs * count) must equal the total size info you got.

factor 123456789

*******

Let's try an example. This is a disk sitting on my Test Machine.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.27.1).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 477 GiB, 512110190592 bytes, 1000215216 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x72ca3ed1

Now I type "q" to quit, and move on to the next command.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ factor 512110190592
512110190592: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 7 11 13 257
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

2^13 = 8192, which is a pretty small block size. Some newer
drives will run at the sustained transfer rate, even with that
small of a block size parameter. What I can do, is throw in
3^3 to make it a bit larger. 2^13 * 3^3 = 221184 bytes.

Dividing 512110190592 by 221184, completes the job (2315313)

To copy my 500GB specimen, I'd use

sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/media/sparedrive/bigdisk.bin bs=221184 count=2315313

knowing that I'm getting every sector of the source. If the
destination drive is slightly too small, I have the option
of piping the output into a compression command of some sort.
There's possibly a p7zip-full package and a command line 7zip invocation
to achieve a higher compression ratio. But it would be
significantly slower.

There is also the pigz package, which is like gzip only it allows
more than one CPU core to be used. The ZIP that 7ZIP does, uses
a single core by comparison, when compressing. Some other 7ZIP
formats, use multiple cores.

sudo dd if=/dev/sda bs=221184 count=2315313 | pigz -3 -p 4 out.bin.gz

Anyway, I'm sure you'll figure out something.

To restore the disk later, it would be something like

unpigz -c out.bin.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sda bs=221184 count=2315313

On some platforms, you can use if=- to stand for "stdin" and
of=- for "stdout". But it's also possible the command understands
the piping situation and the "missing" portion of the command,
to mean the same thing. That's why my last command doesn't have
an input file specification.

To do something like this (i.e. not specify if= and of=),
it's going to copy stdin to stdout.

cat sample.bin | dd destination.bin

If I wanted to be more explicit I could do this

cat sample.bin | dd if=- of=- destination.bin

or even

cat sample.bin | dd if=- of=destination.bin

would copy the file in chunks of 512 bytes. The pipe symbol has
a buffer which is larger than that, so the chunks are probably
of no consequence. Running dd with default bs=512 is usually
pretty slow and only does around 13MB/sec.

*******

There's also things like clonezilla. For example, making an exact
copy of one terabyte disk to a second terabyte disk. Sometimes you
get lucky, and they're the same size. Since you have the
sudo fdisk command to check the exact size of each drive, you
can check the drives before deciding what to do. I've not used
clonezilla, so cannot give a rundown on any "tricks".

https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu...ll-clonezilla/

Paul