So a funny thing happened last Thursday: when I booted the computer I got a message about some inconsistencies being and found the Windows was doing something to fix them. Well the last time I saw that message I ended up running spin rite on the drive for like 800 hours (yes, eight-hundred).
So this time I thought I’d “learn from my mistake” and went straight to trying to clone this 500 gig drive over to a different 500 gig so I could spin rite the one that had some kind of “inconsistency” with it.
So I get into my little PE environment that contains Ghost32.exe and spend several minutes checking and re-checking to make sure I have the right drive set to source and destination. They’re both exactly the same capacity and possibly the same brand, ya see so it was a little confusing. And the Ghost GUI didn’t seem to indicate which one was the USB drive. That would have been kind of convenient. Right? In retrospect just now I think if I had copied Ghost32.exe to the drive I wanted to clone Ghost32.exe would not have let me over-write the very exe I was using thereby inadvertently protecting me. But I didn’t think of that. Anyway despite what I thought was several checks and re-checks to be sure I was going the right direction i ghosted a blank drive over the top of the drive I had intended on keeping.
It’s not really the end of the world the though. I mean all my documents were on drop box. That’s the most important stuff, really. Almost all my games had steam-based backups, although I didn’t realize that until later. So there were a few things would like to have NOT lost but nothing super-critical to whatever I don’t think.
When I rebooted after realizing I now had two blank drives rather than two partially filed 500 gig drives I found out Windows 7 wouldn’t boot up any more. So perhaps it was the C: drive that had the inconsistency. Perhaps the entire premise of my cloning over the 500 gig data drive was completely pointless. Maybe.
Since I didn’t want to deal with it any longer I just found a different IDE drive to use as a C: drive and rotated out the old one. I did actually figure out how to boot Windows 7 on the drive again though: I used my PE environment to bring up the CMD shell and then used the DISKPART utility to mark that partition as active. How the 100 meg “system reserved” partition disappeared I have no idea. I wasn’t even working with that drive.
So I made a fresh Windows 7 install. And since I had two probably perfectly good 500 gig drives laying around I set them up as a mirrored volume under Windows 7. So at least I’ll probably be partially protected if one of them dies. Although I have yet to actually test that theory.
I have also set up a series of robocopy batch files to back up some of the more important folders to separate SATA drives via USB adapter. Folders like my steam game backup folders, my install of Guild Wars and WoW and my Firefox Portable folder. Eventually I will add that XAMPP folder as well. I just power on the USB adapter and start running the shortcuts to the batch files. And it does work pretty well actually. Not convenient perhaps with the swapping drives back and forth and powering on the USB adapter. So I might try installing Windows server 2k8 on a spare box and put those two drives in it so I can just back up the folders over the network. Maybe I could make the batch files “log off” type scripts. Or I’ll just map a drive letter and mark it as “make available offline”. I’m pretty sure that will keep those certain folders synchronized. I would also have a convenient excuse to set up a domain server and try out some of that PXE stuff. One thing at a time though.
So now I am back up and running perfectly well. I have my steam games at least conveniently around so I don’t have to spend hours on end re-downloading them. I have a lot of things I no longer have to worry about re-doing. I mean it would be better if they were backed up some where off site but I guess there’s only so much I can do.
I mean sure I could set up a spare PC at my Mom’s house, my sister’s house, my Dad’s house and possibly my Aunt/Uncle’s house. There could be that. I don’t think I could talk them all into it actually. I don’t know if I could talk even one of them into it. So basically it would be kind of a mesh thing. Everybody’s data would be synchronized at all the other locations. But encrypted so any one person could only see THEIR data. Ya, that would be difficult both to convince anybody to do so as well as actually putting together. I would probably put two 500 gig drives or just a 1TB drive at each location connected to some lower energy use/silent PC.
Okay back up a minutes. I think I would sync all the drives at my house first with the data. So I would go to each location and sync all the user data to the initial 1TB drive. Then back at home I would sync that drive to the other 1TB drives. So depending on how well that went the data would only be between hours and days out of date at that point. Then I would have to figure out how to securely and preferably slowly over time synchronize the data sets between all the locations. Perhaps using some creative use of torrents or that MS Mesh thing, whatever it’s called. So they would just sit there in the background, a silent/lower power consuming machine and 1TB hard drive just syncing as required when required.
I guess it would be the user’s data would synchronize to the local 1TB drive over the local network and then that drive would sync to the rest of them in the little network over the “WAN”. I suppose I would need some kind of administrative interface to monitor it all as well. And I don’t know what I would do if that 1TB drive started to run out of space. I don’t think that’s really very likely. Not for a while anyway.
So there’s still the question of how it would be set up. Maybe I could synchronize across the internet to various FreeNAS machines. At least the admin interface would already be there. And sync via bit torrents I guess. Set the maximum bandwidth used to 5kpbs or something ridiculous like that. And of course the data is already encrypted before it even leaves.
I just thinking of the cost of this. It would be expensive no matter how I did it. Even at $50, five 1 TB drives would be a lot of money. As would even $200 PCs. Multiply it by five and that’s a bit of money. But at least if I went with netbooks they’d definitely be low power and include wifi. So I could put them machines in an attic, basement, drawer that some how has access to a power plug or what-have-you out of the way of prying eyes and curious toddlers.
Of course if I want it to be cheap and out of site I guess there’s plenty of already embedded devices that have custom Linux distros that would do this for me. My Asus O!Play for instance or the much superior other devices for another instance. In fact if it were for having to have to the drive out in the open it would probably be cheaper to buy all of use some fancy open firmware routers with USB ports that would simply host and share out the data that way. Assuming those devices could also cope with some form of encryption of course. These embedded solutions of which I speak are only between $80 and $100 so at least that would cut the total cost down a bit.
Well this was a fun brainstorming session. In some other minor bit of news that job I interviewed for several weeks ago has finally gotten back to me about it: I have a “tentative” start date. I would mention it but I don’t want to jinks it. As I’ve said a hundred times before I don’t really have it until I’ve been there one or two weeks at least. Even then, don’t assuming anything.
The staffing service lady sent me a bunch more paper work and made some plans with me to meet half way between where she works and where I live. Only out a two hour drive for me. So not that convenient but whatever. Right? After 15 or whatever months it’s been I think I could put up with an awful lot of abuse if I really had to.
So perhaps this time next week I will actually be actively employed. Perhaps I’ll order Star Craft II as a celebratory gesture for myself. Although I have no idea if or when I will actually get around to playing it. I think I should get some kind of symbol of congrats for making it through all this time of not being employed. I mean really.