Seagate + Windows = Death?

(What to do if Windows XP Home/Professional(-suicide-bomber),Vista Home Shit/Business Killer/Ultimate Disaster/Stupidity has died the trillionth time? The Windows version of FreeBSD(Blue Screen of Death)? Are you using Seagate? (No, I’m not totally against Windows or Seagate! Its just fun to make fun like this! But yeah, having successfully tried Ubuntu/Linux-and I love it now- I can very well say I DON’T need Windows or any of its latches!)

Strange but true. Especially if you are an Indian, you might already know this(I said Indian because I’m not sure if the whole world gets the Seagate products from the same place or the third world countries are treated “specially” ).

Seagate is probably the most popular brand out there, possibly losing the top spot(or has it already?) to Western Digital. As Abhishek says, Seagate has a huge market now and thus they’re losing on quality, and quantity is the only focus now it seems. I personally have been traumatized enough in the last two months, hence this post from this lazy bum. I have a Seagate ST3500320AS, Barracuda 7200.11 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB  7200 RPM SATA drive. I think I bought it in June or July 2008. I installed Windows Vista Ultimate and it took me 30 seconds(time taken in booting) to admire how good it is. Yes, even now I think it’s pretty neat and cool. With all the effects and ultimate specials, it was like getting freedom from the chains of misery of XP. Also….blah blah(Shit. I get diverted easily.)

(Skip the story and read the problem and solution. However, I think the story might be interesting! )

Stage 1 of death(Lead role: Seagate): Anyway, so as I was saying, I use a Seagate HDD. I have always trusted Seagate. Then came the shock of my life(!). With about 450+GB’s filled with movies, games, critical data(<10GB ), dad’s documents and a lot of other stuff, the hdd one day died. Literally. The drive wouldn’t show up even in the boot menu. I tried many options but only to find that I was phurked. I tried connecting (as secondary) on a Windows 98 machine(LOL!), Windows XP, Vista’s billion variations. Also tried USB casing. Nope. The drive had met its ultimate destiny too early.

After a while, on a bright sunny day, I installed Ubuntu on another hdd(thanks to Abhishek and others at college). Skipping my first time experience on linux/ubuntu, just let me tell you this: THE HDD WAS THERE AGAIN!(I connected it via usb) However, I could see only 2 partitions of the 5 I had!

I used this tool called TestDisk suggested by Sudhang. AMAZING tool for recovery! It took exactly 1 second to recover and then another second to write the recovered partition table. Boom! I could see all 5 partitions again! ALL 5!

Stage 2 (Windows magic!):

while(!DEAD)

{

I set up the hdd as my first boot device and then Windows Vista was up and running! After about 2-3 minutes of working, Vista started being irresponsive. It didn’t “hang” or “freeze” but nothing was working or “Not responding”-ing either. I restarted and Vista greeted me with BSD. A series of restarts had no change… the same scary BSD!

I ran the recovery console of Windows XP to run chkdsk. It worked.

}

Yes. Windows successfully killed my HDD once again. Now all the partitions were visible(via USB) BUT every folder was now EMPTY! And the files wouldn’t open. Dead. As a stone………………..

Gist:

Problem:

1. Hard disk crash

2. Damaged boot table/lost partitions

Cause: Windows. Why I’m so sure is first, I was using Windows Vista while the HDD stopped functioning. Then, in the course of recovery, at many stages I tried connecting on Ubuntu and XP via USB and running Vista from the damaged HDD itself. In the latter two, the computer would stop working in a couple of minutes. Also, I lost partitions numerous time on Windows. It seems the way Windows accesses media is weird and it messes up the volumes if it is already messed up. On the other hand, Ubuntu(or Linux or Mac) don’t do this. These don’t unnecessarily access the volumes and hence don’t cause problems.

Solution(s):

1. Try to buy only Western Digital or Samsung hard disks. Seagate has been great, no doubt. But now they’ve many faulty hard drives. I am not the first one. Three of my friends have lost their HDDs(though they got replacements very soon. Still, they lost data and time!) My neighbor has a 500GB too, Seagate. It’s much newer and he too had Vista Ultimate. His HDD crashed much before mine and it’s completely bad now. It crashed a single time and no hint of data ever.

2. (Im saying this as I havent used Windows 7 yet) Use Linux or Apple OS. These have totally different ways of working and probably I wouldn’t have had to face any of this. Well, right now I’m fully able to access all my data, except that one of the partitions isnt perfect anymore. A lot of it has gone bad.(it was a 50GB partition and i can’t read and write some of the files now because it fails to start the action.) Other advantages: no viruses so no anti-viruses, better interface, easy to use OSs….

Comment about your experiences here(and this post!)!! Thanks!

mount_point cannot contain the following characters: newline,G_DIR_SEPARATOR(usually /)

You changed the mount options to “-rw”, “/Local Disk” or something illegal like this and you get the above error when you try to open the partition/drive… Simple solution.

WARNING: Follow the steps as a normal user in terminal. Using root access (sudo or su) might (will?) not work.

1. Open terminal (In Ubuntu, which I use…  Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. It’s a called Konsole in KDE)

2. Type:

$ gconf-editor

3. In the left list pane, go to / -> system -> storage -> volumes.

4. Most probably there’ll be only one entry. If more than one, then select each and right click the “mount_options” key that shows up in the right. Click on “Unset Key” or modify the key to a new value if you want.

I suggest you just unset the key and then first check if you can mount the volume before setting a mew value for the key,  by doing this:

$ mount /dev/sdXN

(Here X can be ‘a’, ‘b’ or ‘c’ and N can be a number between 1 and 9. Sample: sda3, sdb4 etc. To know exactly what it is, go to the partition editor of your OS (In ubuntu, type parted or gparted in terminal.). The device should be the one which has no mount point defined(blank). )

Now:

$ mount

This will show you a list of mounted devices. Now try accessing the device.

If it works then great! Now you can experiment with setting up new mountpoints!

Please comment if this does/doesn’t work. (I’m a noob!)

Get more seeds for your torrents

WHAT ARE SEEDS? – The number of people with a full copy of the file(s) in the torrent being downloaded. Higher the seeders, faster is your download. (A detailed post on torrents later on)

How to increase seeds:

A) (For experienced users… however if you were one, you wouldn’t be reading this!)You can directly go to the trackers list in your favorite torrent client and add new trackers. (Mine is uTorrent. Double clicking a torrent brings up the tracker list)

OR

B) Follow the steps:(Seems like a lot of steps but is really easy and more importantly, fast.)

1. Go to the BtReannouncer site
2. Click on the browse button and find the torrent on your computer you want to add seeds to.
3. Click upload. Wait for a few seconds.
4. On the page that comes up, put a check in front of every tracker (the names with check boxes in front of them). Click ReAnnounce
5. Find where it says “Download ReAnnounced torrent” and below it, the link which is the name of the torrent. Click on the link to download the reannounced torrent.
6. After downloading, just open it and if the torrent was already started, select the option to load the trackers from the new torrent file.

I have tried this and it has worked every single time. And it does help. Obviously, you should make sure this doesn’t violate the terms of the private tracker you might be using!

Send SMS through GMail!

Yeah, that’s true!Now you can send sms through gmail. Yep, right through the chat window. Click on the Labs link, Scroll down to ‘Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat’ and enable it. Click Save. Half job done! Now, just enter the mobile number of your friend to whom to want to message, a little context menu appears sayn “Send SMS”. Click it, a pop-up box appears. Enter the name of the person whose the mobile number is, click save. That’s it! A chat window opens, now type in whatever you want to. It won’t cost YOU anything, but it might cost the person you are messaging for each SMS they receive. Time to get your enemies’ mobile numbers!

But sadly, it’s available for US only. We Indians again have to wait till we can send sms through Gmail.

MTNL Broadband DNS servers

I was searching for alternate DNS servers for my mtnl connection. Here is a list of the servers that I found.

203.94.243.70
59.179.243.70
59.185.0.50
203.94.227.70
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.1
208.67.222.222
4.2.2.5
202.159.217.198
69.90.236.105
203.84.243.70

Before setting any of these as your dns server, ping them first to know if they are working or not and if the response time is good enough (the lesser the better).

How to set jumpers on a Hard disk

Setting the Jumpers on a seagate hard drive

Cable Select. The drive is configured at the factory for a cable select setting. This allows the drive to assume the proper role of master or slave based on the connector used on the cable (see the UltraATA cable figure below). For the cable select setting to work properly, the cables you are using must support the cable select feature. Current UltraATA cables with the 3 colored connectors do support this feature.

Master or single drive. If you are installing your Seagate hard drive as the only drive in the system or if it will be the primary boot drive for the system, the jumper should be set on pins 7 and 8.

Drive as slave. If you are installing the drive as an additional drive in your system, the drive should be set as slave by removing all jumpers. Remember to confirm that the original drive is set to a master position (If the limit capacity jumper is required for your installation it will need to remain in place).

Drive as master with a non-ATA-compatible slave (Seagate® drives only). Set a jumper on pins 5 and 6 and a jumper on pins 7 and 8. Use this jumper setting only if the drive does not work as a master.

Setting the Jumpers on a Western Digital hard drive

Cable Select Configuration Options for PC Systems:

If you have determined that your system and all other IDE devices support and are using Cable Select, please use the following information to connect your IDE drive. The jumper should always be on pins B-D for Cable Select installations.

Installing the new drive as the only drive in the system:
If you are connecting your drive as the only IDE drive on the cable, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5″ drive. Simply connect the drive to the end of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the primary (Master) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the primary (Master) drive on the cable with another IDE drive, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5″ drive. Please ensure that the second (Slave) IDE drive is jumpered as Cable Select as well. Connect the primary (Master) 2.5″ drive to the end of the cable and the second (Slave) drive to the middle connector of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the secondary (Slave) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the secondary (Slave) drive on the cable with another IDE drive, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins B-D on the 2.5″ drive. Connect the 2.5″ drive to the middle of the cable and other (Master) drive to the end of the cable.

Master/Slave Configuration Options for PC Systems:

Installing the new drive as the only drive in the system:
If you are connecting your drive as the only IDE device on the cable, no jumper is needed on the 2.5″ drive. Connect the 2.5″ drive to the end of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the primary (Master) drive:
If you are connecting your drive as the Master drive on the cable with another IDE device, no jumper is needed on the 2.5″ drive. Ensure to configure the jumper on the secondary (Slave) IDE device as Slave. Connect the primary (Master) 2.5″ drive to the end of the cable, and the secondary (Slave) device to the middle of the cable.

Installing the new drive as the secondary (Slave) drive:
If connecting your drive as the secondary drive on the cable with another IDE device, please ensure that a jumper is connected to pins A-B on the 2.5″ drive. Configure the jumper on the primary IDE device as Master. Connect the 2.5″ (Slave) drive to the middle of the cable, and the Master IDE device to the end of the cable.

multi-huh,what?

A few days back i had my Introduction to Computer Class (ITC), multiprocessing, multiprogramming. (Multi ki…). Yawn. The teacher seemed to teach us. We pretended to be understanding. Most of us nodding our head, rest of us, messaging. There’s nothing better that messaging you see. Of course, my case is different. Anyways, I thought I’d explain a bit of all those multi-beep-stuff here. Yeah, I’ll be putting stuff that is/was/are/were OHT(s) for many. Over Head Transmission.

Here’s a bit about multi…arh. You guys can read. By the way, am feeling lil lazy to get up and check my register which multi-things we were taught first. Ah!i wonder how many of us remember that.

Before I begin my Big Bang Theory lecture, I guess you guys should know what a task, process and thread is.

Task: Its a set of program instructions that are sent to the memory for execution.
Process: Its an instance of a program that is being executed by a processor. A program is basically a set of instructions. When these instructions are executed, it is called a process.
Thread: To make the Processing faster, each process is divided into two or more parts. These parts are called ‘threads’.

Hmm. Maybe now it’ll be more easier to understand multitasking, multiprocessing, multiprogramming and multithreading.

Multitasking

In multitasking, two or more TASKS share a SINGLE processing unit (CPU). At a particular instance of time, only ONE task is executed by CPU.

Multiprocessiing

In multiprocessing, there are two or more CPUs. This is the basic difference between multitasking and multiprocessing. In multitasking, there are more than two tasks that share the same processing unit, but in multiprocessing, tasks are sent to different CPUs depending upon which processor is done processing and is waiting for the next task. Its a software based support.

Multiprogramming

Its basically running more than one program on a single cpu. There’s nothing much to know about it really, at our level at least. It is like, we are listening to music on Windows Media Player and doing someother work on, say, MS Word. Now, you are running more than one program on your computer. This is known as multiprogramming.

Multithreading

Multithreading efficiently handles multiple threads. Now, you might think that multiprocessing and multithreading are same. But, there’s one key difference. Multithreading is hardware based support and multiprocessing is software based support.

Ah!its 2 A.M. in the morning and am typing this. Wah! Yeah, got nothing better to do. Anyway, if you like whats written here, please comment.

And yeah, was thinking to put generations of computers here. But instead, if i could find how the vaccume tubes and all used to work, will post the link here.

True FREE web hosting

The first thought that you might have had after reading the title might be,”true?eh?what?”. Good. Thats exactly what I want. Ever wanted to make a website and starting search for free web hosting services? Every place that you must’ve found, each one of them might have had some or the other drawback. Some put their own ads, or some have too limited space, some have other conditions. Damn! Even I was searching for a way to host my site, tried many “free” hosting services, but still wasn’t satisfied. So, the best way is, use googlepages AND yahoo geocities. Now, you must be thinking why not use googlepages OR geocities? Let me explain to you, in googlepages you cant make folders. Though googlepages allows uploading many formats (I don’t know exactly how many), but it doesn’t allow you to make folders. Lame. Though you CAN put everything in the root folder, but read on, this is the way where geocities comes in. Yes, geocities allows you to make folders. BUT, the webpages that you design there, they’ll put an annoying bar at the right of the page. Again, Lame. So, what you can do is, upload your webpages to googlepages, and the rest of folders like images, css, etc, upload it to yahoo geocities. And in your html, change the paths to the online geocities folder. For example, suppose you have a image in your webpage, and you’ve made a folder named images in your yahoo geocities folder, so simply change the path of the image in the img scr tag as http://www.geocities.com/<your page name>/<foldername>/<image name>. Thats it, you are done. Now, upload this html file to googlepages.com and click the link the name of the file. Sweet, eh?

Some of you might think why all this, well, yahoo geocities is one the sites that allow remote linking. Even the paid basic services of some web hosting providers won’t allow remote linking. That means, if you think of using some free file hosting service (like adrive.com ,zdrive.com) and upload your images and folders there, you will only see the images when you are logged in to your file hosting server. That means, other people on the internet won’t be able to see the images on your site or any other flash files, etc that you’ve put there.

And one last thing, since yahoo has a 15MB space limit, don’t hesitate to make multiple accounts! Its free pal.

Happy Hosting!

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

Familiar with these? Yeah, these are the images that appear on gmail when you enter your email id/password incorrect for more than 3 times. You see similar “images” while downloading stuff from rapidshare and posting links on orkut. These are called CAPTCHA images. Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. As the name goes, it aims at developing tests (in the form of images) so as to prevent bots from downloading files or making accounts. These images are developed by various algorithms which mainly distort the text that is input, and the output is an image. It is near impossible for any program to decode the captcha on its own. Though I guess that it can be broke if one has the algorithm by the image was distorted. Many attempts are made to decode these without human intereference, i mean without the need for humans to enter it. And some do succeed, but the success rate is quite low. Recently, it was reported that google’s captcha codes were cracked, but as i said, the success rates were too low. The guy analysed google’s data, traffic and many other things, found out the servers that were used for generating captchas (yeah, they use 2 different server connections to make a captcha), but yet, he got a low success rate.

And yes, programs are available on internet which allows making multiple accounts at the same time, without filling the details like name etc. These ids are then used to spam you. Even though captcha has been implimented, there hasn’t been much difference in spamming and all. And for automated account making, the programs now simply display the captcha image that it cannot recognize. So, ultimately you have to just sit down and write the text in the captcha image. A little slower than before, but yet fast to make enough fake-ids.

Here is a link for gimpy. Its an article on breaking a visual CAPTCHA. Hmm…did you notice? This time i wrote “visual” CAPTCHA. The one other that I know is audio captcha, i.e. you have to listen to an audio file and then enter the text you hear. I saw this one while registering for an paypal account. Check it out if you like.

Thats all folks. If there’s any correction/query, kindly comment.