SOLVED: How ot back up data of varying sizes to multipe non-linked DVDs with efficiency

Char Jackson wrote:

Pardon me for quoting 30+ lines of text to ask this question, but I need
it in order to make a point. You stated that one of your objectives was
KISS. When did that objective fly out the window?

You're just confused. Hence you're not thinking logically.

Whether or not I describe the steps in confusing detail or if I summarize
them succinctly, the solution is still KISS.

In fact, I'm confident it's a hellova-lot more KISS than /any/ of solution
you have ever seen or even thought of (that works).

Q: What's an easy way to create size-limited dynamic folders on Windows?
A: Symlink a mounted container file as a folder on your Windows HDD.

Now that's KISS!

On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 12:31:00 +0000 (UTC), ultred ragnusen
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

Pardon me for quoting 30+ lines of text to ask this question, but I need
it in order to make a point. You stated that one of your objectives was
KISS. When did that objective fly out the window?

You're just confused. Hence you're not thinking logically.

Whether or not I describe the steps in confusing detail or if I summarize
them succinctly, the solution is still KISS.

In fact, I'm confident it's a hellova-lot more KISS than /any/ of solution
you have ever seen or even thought of (that works).

Except for the obvious solution that 99.99% of the rest of the crowd
uses: hard drive(s). Now *that's* KISS.

Whether you get to it/them via USB2, USB3, Firewire, eSata, SATA, or
Ethernet, a hard drive still makes the most sense as the target device.
They come in sizes that don't require you to jump through 95% of the
hoops you're jumping through. Your Rube Goldberg solution probably isn't
a valuable solution to most people. It has way too many steps and way
too much complexity for what's already a well-defined task.

Q: What's an easy way to create size-limited dynamic folders on Windows?

I'm not sure why you decided to focus on this one specific aspect of
your much larger project.

A: Symlink a mounted container file as a folder on your Windows HDD.

Now that's KISS!

Hardly. I'm surprised you didn't arrive at something like creating 128
partitions (GPT limit under Windows, or arbitrary limit under MBR inside
an extended partition), then mounting them as folders under the root of
your choice. Since they're partitions, they're automatically
size-limited, since that seems to be important to you. Mounting as
folders means no drive-letter limitation, as well. That has fewer steps
than your solution, although it's still too complicated.

ultred ragnusen wrote:

I don't understand your
suggestion (yet) in that I don't know how to "mount" the encrypted
container to a folder.

Since encryption is not your aim, try ImDisk instead of vera/truecrypt

On Mon, 5 Mar 2018 12:14:54 +0000 (UTC), ultred ragnusen
wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:

I'm starting to get the feeling that limiting folder size on Windows is
a common question. At least that's what I'm hearing.

Yup. It's a common a question [snip]

I guess I forgot the wink. ;-)

BTW, I wouldn't call it a common question. It's not something that most
people want or need to do.

Char Jackson wrote:

BTW, I wouldn't call it a common question. It's not something that most
people want or need to do.

Well, in my defense, this offshoot is becuase someone complained that the
original post didn't answer a question directly, so the only reason for
bringing up that it's a common question is that it's a common question.

At least it's common enough of a question to have multiple answers, all of
which, IMHO, are pretty involved (if you clicked on any of the search
results).

https://google.com/search?q=how+to+l...ize+on+Windows

Let's not argue whether it's a common enough question to start with the
word "SOLVED" - and get back to solutions to the question - which -
generically - boils down to this desi

Q: What an easy way to dynamically create size-limited folders on Windows.
A: (I already gave a half dozen methods - one of which is the one I came up
with which uses copies of size-limited encrypted file containers).

Char Jackson wrote:

Except for the obvious solution that 99.99% of the rest of the crowd
uses: hard drive(s). Now *that's* KISS.

I realize that you feel this HDD hard disc is actually more KISS, but it
has its own inherent problems fitting on the backup DVD spindle and the
problem of writing to that smooth surface where the writing has to last for
archival time periods.

http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_1.jpg


Whether you get to it/them via USB2, USB3, Firewire, eSata, SATA, or
Ethernet, a hard drive still makes the most sense as the target device.

Nobody is going to disagree that there are different solutions for
different problem sets.

But, I just tried your method, where I found that a hard drive hard disc is
a terrible way to stack discs on a spindle for archival since you have to
disassemble the hard drive to take the discs out where, admittedly, they
are very shiny and make great non-breakable shaving mirrors if you don't
mind the hole in the center (ask me how I know this).

http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_2.jpg

They come in sizes that don't require you to jump through 95% of the
hoops you're jumping through.

Actually, as you can see from this picture, the size of the hard disk disc
is not right for the DVD spindle. I agree with you though that it's pretty
close to the DVD size, but the hole is bigger and the disc diameter is
smaller.

http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_3.jpg

Your Rube Goldberg solution probably isn't
a valuable solution to most people. It has way too many steps and way
too much complexity for what's already a well-defined task.

Well, again, in my defense, I'm not going to tell anyone why they might
want size-limited folders on Windows, but we know the question isn't a
unique question.

We only know that all the solutions basically suck.

But I at least gave a really good reason why the size I wanted to limit the
folders to was less than 4.7GB. Do you want me to post another picture of
my DVD backup spindles for you to figure out why?


Q: What's an easy way to create size-limited dynamic folders on Windows?

I'm not sure why you decided to focus on this one specific aspect of
your much larger project.

Ummmm... because I was responding to the questions of what problem the OP
was solving.


A: Symlink a mounted container file as a folder on your Windows HDD.

Now that's KISS!

Hardly. I'm surprised you didn't arrive at something like creating 128
partitions (GPT limit under Windows, or arbitrary limit under MBR inside
an extended partition), then mounting them as folders under the root of
your choice. Since they're partitions, they're automatically
size-limited, since that seems to be important to you. Mounting as
folders means no drive-letter limitation, as well. That has fewer steps
than your solution, although it's still too complicated.

I always said that partitions were an option. I like working with files
more so than with partitions. But I never said partitions were not an
option.

Dave wrote:

That sounds like a wonderful suggestion. So for all you people using
multiple DVD's to back up your data, you have something you can use.
Personally, I plug my not too expensive external usb drive into a usb
port, and run the backup without interruption.

I never once said that choices aren't a good thing, and I never once said I
don't also have hard disk drives, where, in fact, I just tried your
proposed solution which is similar to that of Char Jackson, and the hard
disk disc doens't fit on the DVD spindle as well as I would like it to.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_3.jpg

The fit is close, but the hard disk disc is sort of malformed, like an
avocado is malformed, with the pit too large for the fruit.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_2.jpg

In this case, as you can see, the hard disk disc method you propose fits on
the DVD spindle, but the hole in the middle it too big and the diameter too
small for my long-standing well-organized DVD archival method.
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_1.jpg

Can you suggest how I can make the hard disk disc fit the spindle better?

pjp wrote:

I simply have a folder and copy what I intend to burn into that folder.
When the folder reaches over 4Gb I burn the max amount I can fit onto a
dvd using Nero. I select the inidividual files to max out disk as best
as possible but what's left over just gets burned onto next dvd etc.
I'll often have 3-4 dvds of stuff I burn one after the other using this
method. DVD's then get stored in cases someplace safe.

Yes. I know. That's exactly what most people do who want to fit as many
files for backup purposes as they can on a DVD. I used your method perhaps
a billion times, so I'm well acquainted with that fill, check, fill some
more, check again, fill more, check, overfill, back it out, check, etc.
method.

We all are.

The little bit of wasted space doesn't amount to enough for me to bother
trying to use a disk to it's maximum.

The little bit of wasted space isn't at all the issue. In my proposed
method, there's still wasted space that is the same as your method.

The only difference between my method and yours is that I never need to
check the file size. So I skip a few iterations of "is it full yet", that
you have to do manually. To be clear, I've been there and done that a
billion times.

I just think this method is easier, that's all.

It's even easier on Windows 10 than I recall Windows XP (and maybe also
Windows 7 was). In Windows XP, as I recall, if you overfilled a
size-limited folder, it would screw up the last copy like you can't
believe.

As I recall, it would complain, and fail, but only partially fail, such
that you'd have to do a painstaking visual diff to see which files made it
and which ones didn't.

At least in Windows 10, the whole last copy fails, en masse, as it should,
if you can't fit whatever files you selected to fit in the size-limited
container.

I don't mind a couple 100 Mbs
unused with the cost of disks so cheap, e.g. $0.30.

Again, it's not an issue of the last 100MB of wasted space.
It's an issue of not having to check the folder each time you get close to
filling it up.

The folder will let you know when it's full.

I see it same as
burning a movie dvd. Most movies are approx 2hrs max yet disk holds 3
hrs so always wasted space on movie disks. I do try to put two 1 1/2 hr
movies onto one disk but even then there's always some wasted space.

I gave up doing that, but I have a billion DVDs of movies, where I used to
store them as MP3 files, and then as authored DVDs with multiple movies in
the menu, and then I simply put one DVD per disc, where I hit the button to
not compress the VIDEO_TS files so much such that they /filled/ the entire
DVD.

So, I'm with you on this experience of movies where I must have burned at
least two or three hundred movie DVDs in my lifetime. (If you want, I can
snap pictures, or you can just believe me.)

BTW, my authoring software of choice is DeVeDe (which works on Linux &
Windows), and DVDFlick (but it's very slow) if I need to do more with the
movie conversion and menu selections.

Yes - same as you. I dislike needing 3rd party software to break apart
larger then 4.5Gb files so you can burn them. I try and keep some dual-
layer disks just for these and have seldom had to resort to any file
splitting software.

I never could justify the cost of blue ray or double-layer discs, and, in
fact, my main "portable" DVD burner is /still/ a huge Sony burner I bought
when DVDs were brand new, where the thing is the size of a couple of
bricks.

The point is, DVD isn't dead (yet), and DVD makes great archival media if
you don't want to deal with the frailties of hard disc drives (there's a
reason my shaving mirror is a hard disk disc and it's the same reason why
my backpack contains the other hard disk disc for a signal mirror).
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/05/hdd_disc_1.jpg

In message , ultred ragnusen
writes:
[]
A. The question is extremely common of how to limit folder size on Windows
[]
I think I may have _occasionally_ wondered it - but I actually can't
_remember_ ever doing so. I certainly can't _remember_ ever seeing
anyone else ask it - so I don't think "extremely common" is valid.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Bother," said Pooh, as he tasted the bacon in his sandwich.

ultred ragnusen wrote:

Unfortunately, I don't know of Windows 10 or Windows 7 archives on Google
Groups for which to belatedly point to those references for you, where I
can easily find a related question on alt.backup-software
https://tinyurl.com/alt-backup-software

Thanks to Frank Slootweg for adding value, we all now have an answer to
that question posed in the quote above.

Q: What is a good searchable archive for these Windows newsgroups?
* alt.windows7.general
* alt.comp.os.windows-8
* alt.comp.os.windows-10

A: These are searchable archives for those Windows newsgroups:
* https://tinyurl.com/alt-windows7-general
* https://tinyurl.com/alt-comp-os-windows-8
* https://tinyurl.com/alt-comp-os-windows-10

Every question has an answer ... we just have to write it & then find it.

Andy Burns wrote:

I don't understand your
suggestion (yet) in that I don't know how to "mount" the encrypted
container to a folder.

Since encryption is not your aim, try ImDisk instead of vera/truecrypt

Thanks Andy Burns for adding value to the thread topic, and for not wasting
everyone's time with emotional pollution!

I presume this is the canonical location for ImDisk downloads?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/files/

The ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver method is very simple, and very useful!
C:\ imdisk -a -s 512M -m Z: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"
C:\ mklink /d folderA Z:

-a initializes the virtual disk
-s 512M is the size, 512 MegaBytes
(Other choices are b, k, m, g, t, K, M, G, or T)

These denote a number of 512-byte blocks, thousand bytes, million bytes,
billion bytes, trillion bytes, KB, MB, GB, and TB, respectively

-m Z: sets up the mount point a.k.a. the drive letter, Z:

-p "fs:ntfs /q /y" formats the drive
(-p's parameters are actually for Windows' format program)

So, if you want the RAM disk in a different filesystem, just change ntfs to
fat (FAT16) or fat32 (FAT32)

This answers the question of how to easily created size-limited folders in
Windows, using an ephemeral RAM disk which gains us speed and simplicity,
and with the added advantage that encryption need not be involved!

Thank you for adding value to every post!

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

I think I may have _occasionally_ wondered it - but I actually can't
_remember_ ever doing so. I certainly can't _remember_ ever seeing
anyone else ask it - so I don't think "extremely common" is valid.

Continuing to be responsive to your concerns, I agree that your point is
valid and fair enough that I have only the search record to indicate that
the question has been asked and answered numerous times, but I have not
gone to the trouble of counting the actual number of times someone has
asked how to limit folder size in Windows.

Given both the lack of value in answering numerous questions of whether
it's just common or actually very common, our lack of numerical precision
aside, let's just agree that the question has been asked before, so that we
can end this useless emotional pollution of the thread, and, let's agree
that different technical answers should suffice, where none of which, to
date anyway, are as simple as this:
C:\ limit-folder-size 100MB folderA folderB folderC

It seems the /simplest/ viable method was the one proposed by Andy Burns:
C:\ imdisk -a -s 100M -m Z: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"
C:\ mklink /d folderA Z:

The /simplest/ non-ephemeral solution that I can come up with so far is:
a. Create a 100MB encrypted file container & copy it to files A B & C
b. Mount each as a removable drive & link to folderA folderB & folderC

Other possible solutions are to use partitions, FSRM disk quotas, Windows
VHDs, symlinks & junctions, VirtualBox VHDs, VMToolKit, WinRAR, the Windows
Recycle Bin, Veritas Storage Exec, Truecrypt, or BitLocker.

Char Jackson wrote:

Since they're partitions, they're automatically size-limited,

So as to continue to be responsive to your concerns, and at the same time
to always add a workable solution to every thread for the tribal knowledge
archives, here is one way to implement Char Jackson's proposed solution
that I found in the web-searchable archives just now that Frank Slootweg
pointed us to.

Note: Since this paste if from the web archives, it doesn't contain Andy
Burns' excellent suggestion of using a RAM disk (ImDisk) as the solution!

[BEGIN WEB ARCHIVE PASTE]

There are multiple ways to create DVD-sized mount points:
- Partitions (not easily changed)
- Quotas (too difficult to manage)
- Virtual disks (too difficult to manage)
- 3rd-party software container files (easy to change & easy to manage
Here's the command-line sequence I tried after the graphical method failed.

Run the "diskpart" tool on the Windows 10 command line as Administrator.
C:\WINDOWS\system32 diskpart

Create a virtual disk:
DISKPART list vdisk (should report that there are none)
DISKPART create vdisk file=c:\Users\x\Documents\vdisk01.vhd maximum=4300
DISKPART list vdisk (should now report that vdisk01.vhd)
DISKPART detail vdisk (should report that it's not attached yet)
DISKPART attach vdisk
DISKPART detail vdisk (should report that it's now attached but not open)
DISKPART create partition primary
DISKPART format fs=ntfs label="vhd vdisk01" quick
DISKPART assign letter=z
DISKPART exit

According to Microsoft, you MUST detach all virtual disks BEFORE shutting
Windows down or the files will be corrupted:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...(v=ws.10).aspx

C:\WINDOWS\system32 diskpart
DISKPART select vdisk file="c:\Users\x\Documents\vdisk01.vhd"
DISKPART detach vdisk
DISKPART exit

Create a symlinked folder on the users' desktop.
C:\WINDOWS\system32 mklink /d C:\Users\x\Desktop\folder01 z:
C:\WINDOWS\system32 exit
While I had expected this to put a symlink on the users' desktop (as it did
in the case of the VeraCrypt mounted containers), this actually puts a
"shortcut" on the users' desktop named "folder01".

The result is three things (working backward):
1. A shortcut named "folder01" on the users' Desktop.
[Right clicking properties tells you nothing, inexplicably to me.]
2. A drive named "vhd vdisk01 (Z in "This PC" "Devices and drives".
[Right clicking properties show size = 4.19 GB (4,508,877,312 bytes)
and Size on disk = 4.19 GB (4,508,880,896 bytes)]
3. A virtual hard disk named "vdisk01.vhd" in the users' Documents folder.
[Right clicking properties show used space = 31,174,656 bytes (29.7MB)
and Free space = 4,475,600,896 bytes (4.16GB) and
Capacity = 4,506,775,552 bytes (4.19GB)]

This method has two nice advantages over the VeraCrypt method.
1. This method uses only Windows components (no extra software), and,
2. This method doesn't have the extra encryption overhead of VeraCrypt.

ultred ragnusen wrote:

SOLVED:
Back up data by efficiently filling multiple DVDs as individual disks
http://wetakepic.com/images/2018/03/...sized_dirs.jpg

In summary, for the tribal record, while more than a half dozen methods
were discussed in detail in this thread which will enable any user to
create a size-limited folder on their desktop, the /simplest/ two methods
proposed, IMHO, we

a. Andy Burns' proposal of linking a ram disk to a size-limited folder:
http://i.cubeupload.com/GZHdJy.jpg

b. My proposal of linking a file container to a size-limited folder.
http://i.cubeupload.com/MbI1Xh.jpg

If you know of a /simpler/ way to create a size-limited folder, please add
value; otherwise, we can consider this topic as having been solved.

ultred ragnusen wrote:

This answers the question of how to easily created size-limited folders in
Windows, using an ephemeral RAM disk which gains us speed and simplicity,
and with the added advantage that encryption need not be involved!

For the tribal record, here is my personal log file of my one and only test
of Andy Burns' helpful, non-emotional, and on-topic suggested method, which
has a huge advantage in simplicity & speed, at only the cost of
ephemerality. http://i.cubeupload.com/GZHdJy.jpg

As all my log files contain enough detail to be reproduced, this will be
archived in the tribal records for others to benefit from in the future.

Downloaded the tool from:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/imdisk-toolkit/files/
It tries to install by default to C:\Program Files\ImDisk
I put ImDisk in C:\app\archiver\imdisk
It works at the command line so it seems to have added a magical path
outside of the regular path (which it did not change) and which appears to
be outside of the App Paths key.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\App Paths

When you install, you are asked:
[x]ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver (required)
This includes a Control Panel applet, a command-line tool, the
imdisk.exe, and interfaces to manage volumes from File Explorer
context menus
[x]DiscUtils library (uses .NET Framework 4)
Required to mount advanced image file formats like VHD, VDI,
VMDK, and some others. Also adds a command-line tool to the
installation folder, DiscUtilsDevio.exe, and a dedicated dialog
box to use the librar yfrom the file context menu in File Explorer
[x]RamDisk Configuration Tool
Allows you to configure RAM Disks
Options:
[x]Enable entries in context menus
Adds entries to the drive context menu & file context menu to
manage ImDisk volumes and images files directly from File Explorer
[x]Request administrator rights in Explorer
Solves UAC issues with "Save disk contents as image file" and
"Unmount ImDisk Virtual Disk" in the drive context menu
[x]Create shortcuts on desktop
Creates three desktop shortcuts:
ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver (Control Panel applet)
Mount Image File (C:\app\archiver\imdisk\MountImg.exe)
RamDisk Configuration (C:\app\archiver\imdisk\RamDiskUI.exe)

This is the first test
C:\Users\ultred\Desktopimdisk -a -s 512M -m Z: -p "/fs:ntfs /q /y"
Creating device...
Created device 0: Z: - Image in memory
Formatting disk Z:...
Access Denied as you do not have sufficient privileges.
You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.
Cannot open volume for direct access.
Notifying applications...
Done.

Despite the error above, it still mounted the disk Z, which, when I clicked
on it in the File Explorer, asked to be formatted.

Once formatted, I ran the following, as admin this time:
c:\Users\ultred\Desktopmklink /d folderA Z:
symbolic link created for folderA === Z:

That created a size-limited ephemeral fast folder on the desktop.
http://i.cubeupload.com/GZHdJy.jpg