This sentence shows considerable restraint, and has replaced 20 pages consisting entirely of obscenities.
I've already decided to limit my exposure to Vista/W7 as much as is possible, and am copying off all my data from the Vista system, so I can wipe it and put on a real operating system (it's a toss up between FreeBSD and a linux strain; ashame Haiku is still not an option).
Vista can barely copy. Removing a directory around 5gb with tens of thousands of files on XP takes nearly no time at all; on Vista, it's still calculating, ('discovering') 5 minutes later. That's pathetic.
Vista likes to add the current computer name to your credentials for CIFS shares. That's pretty aggravating; screwing with local security policies 'sort of fixes' it. Apparently, Microsoft's rightly decided people shackled with its crappy OS are too stupid to properly provide a domain name when required. Shrug, I got past it.
But, dear reader, this rant is on account of the fact that Vista CAN'T EVEN PROPERLY COPY TO A DEVICE!
Augh!
There's never a good time for your NAS to die, but when you've just filled up almost two terabyte worth of platterverse with valuable data, ... certainly leans towards 'a worse time than most'.
I'm pretty sure my playing with installing silly SCM addons like Git was to blame; no biggie, right?
(Update 2010-03-25: It was a biggie; I lost everything --- my ReadyNAS is one of the Sparc-based ones; I finally coaxed a Ubuntu livecd into compiling ext2fuse so I could deal with the file system that likes 16k page sizes, only to find lvm wouldn't give me any love by finding a valid volume.)
Well, except, my old ReadyNAS doesn't exactly recover gracefully from having its config files manually edited. No worries, I'll just use the TFPTD recovery method.
Or not. Well, no worries, then, I'll just yank the CF card out and dump the raw image to it.
Enter The Vista.
Vista CANNOT concurrently copy files! I'm typing this in 2010. 15 years ago, on a 386, I could copy files to a floppy drive AND a secondary hard drive. Really! And... and... just 5 years ago, I could copy files from two optical drives to multiple hard drives, all at the same time... EVEN on Windows XP!
But, here we are, and Vista shits itself ... oh, my, there's my profanity rearing its ugly head again.
I've been backing up what's left on the Vista system to a crappy Maxtor external drive (truly only slightly better than nothing, but since two of the four drives on the Vista system are also dying... gotta shove bits somewhere) and its been at it for some hours. Trying to copy the firmware for the NAS to its CF kept resulting in errors writing sectors. The card reader is hooked up to one of the motherboard's usb headers; the external drive is going direct to soldered usb connectors (and not the one in the card reader, nor any other expansion ports <-> headers).
After failing with Sector Edit (from the same guy who wrote Unstoppable Copier --- and which, oddly enough, doesn't keep copying when faced with an error) and even trying to use Hex Workshop's "Open Disk..." tool to try to copy, I gave in and snagged NTRawrite.
It failed.
D:\tmp>NTRawrite.exe
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell
Please type the image pathname: RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6
Please type the diskette drive: M:
Please insert a diskette and press any key.
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
........................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
Went through that hoop a few times, until I got a clue, and realized I could just put it on the command line:
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
*****...................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
If at first you don't succeed, keep trying... (snipped slightly)
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
****....................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
*******************.....................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
**......................................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
**************..........................]
NTRawrite: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.
Good clean fun, especially when one doesn't have any paint to be mesmerized by as it dries. At this point, logically, I figured it was time to order a new CF card; after all, this one must be corrupted, if nothing can write to it. But, then... my copy to the external drive finished. As a ditch effort, I started shutting down all my open windows, in preparation to try a boot disc (Hiren's or a linux livecd, whichever was handier), and figured I'd give it one more go:
D:\tmp>ntrawrite -f RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 -d M: -n
NTRawrite v1.0.1 by Blake Ramsdell
Copying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 to floppy drive M.
****************************************]
Verifying image file RAIDiator-3.01c1-p6 with floppy drive M.
****************************************]
Completed!
D:\tmp>
Yup.
Worked without a single hiccup.
System's a core2duo; I'm positive it can handle copying through two usb ports at once. The external drive, of course, is powered with a wall wart, and not via the usb cable. I have absolutely no explanation for this; while there must certainly be a rational reason involving gremlins and fairy lanes, I'm going with the obvious: Vista's device stack SUCKS. In the interest of my own piece of mind, I plan on obtaining another CF card, and dd'ing in 'nix while copying to the same external hdd. I'm betting it'll work without any issues whatsoever, on the exact same hardware.
Data's important.
Eyecandy isn't.
Microsoft's really taken to heart the success of the mediawhore darlings of Hollywood, and crafted their latest OSes to be pretty (debatable) and useless.
I say good riddance; even Apple's running a modified BSD core these days, and Macs have typically been the machines for the absolutely computer illiterate.
Life's too short to waste time with operating systems that can barely copy data.
[This sentence continued the thought about the shortness of life, but my lawyers informed me it entered the realm of 'real threat' and as such, I was forced to remove it.]
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