Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

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swithun
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Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Sat Nov 08, 2008 12:38 pm

I've been asked to track down some files that were last seen on Old Bluey. Does anyone know where they might be found now?

Thanking you.

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James
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by James » Sat Nov 08, 2008 4:50 pm

may be able to help ... when do you want to meet in the office at the forest to delve the HD?

swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Sun Nov 09, 2008 12:42 pm

Sometime on Tuesday maybe? I'm working from home that day.

Thanks.

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James
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by James » Sun Nov 09, 2008 6:03 pm

Lynne will be here.
ask her nicely
look in /home/oldcomp

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Gaz
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Gaz » Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:45 pm

there is also an old (dying) hard drive in a cardboard box in the filing cabinet - from the blue monster - just before it gave way.
maybe some things are salvageable
the more you think, the more you stink

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Duncan
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Duncan » Mon Dec 01, 2008 1:13 pm

Tim has been in touch with me about this again.

It's obviously quite important to him and Mikey so I'm willing to take a lead in tracking stuff down.

What happened to the blue computer ?
I gather it doesn't exist anymore. Was it retired because it was windows or did it actually die ?
Was there only one hard drive in it when it was dismantled ?

Do we know exactly where the stuff in the 'oldcomp' directory came from ?
I love the bomb.

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James
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by James » Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:08 pm

Swithun looked thru the oldcomp folder and couldn't find it - but I think that's from whitey.
He took a HD which we think was from Bluey but I don't think he had luck with that either ...

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Martin
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Martin » Tue Dec 02, 2008 2:19 am

The computer itself was set up as a recording/editing etc machine for the cave.

The original two hard drives, with whatever treasures still on them, were stashed away in the old office.

swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:11 pm

I have the disks, but I'm waiting for User2 to get an external SATA caddy, so I can read them. They hope to have one this week. If anyone can lend me one, it would speed things up. But I only have time to do this stuff at the weekends.

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:42 pm

I've got a SATA-USB cable (with power adaptor) which you can use.
Mike

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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Tue Dec 02, 2008 10:37 pm

Sweet. Are you around at all at the weekend? I'm doing stuff on Saturday afternoon, and I'll probably be at the Cameo Sunday afternoon. But apart from that. I could have a go at doing it there and then. I don't know what state the drives are in.

Thanks.

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Martin
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Martin » Wed Dec 03, 2008 1:33 am

If any of the drives is thought to be dying, then there may be a limited opportunity to get stuff off it before it goes completely. I would suggest that instead of just firing it up and searching around for the files you want, you prepare a second disk with enough space to copy everything, and then just take an image of the whole disk in one go. So it only has to spin up and seek slowly across the disk once.

I had planned to do this onto the disks for the new fileserver, until they got nicked...

I also have a caddy but I don't know if I'll be around at the weekend.

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Wed Dec 03, 2008 3:20 am

I should be here at the weekend. I'll try and be around on Sunday.
Mike

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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Wed Dec 03, 2008 1:33 pm

Thanks for the advice. Depending on how big the disks are, I may need to do the operation at home on a desktop machine. Looks like I'll have to read up on dd, and possibly loopback mounting. Cool.

Would lunchtime (12-1ish) on Sunday or tea time (5.30-6.30ish) be better, Mike?

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Martin
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Martin » Wed Dec 03, 2008 2:02 pm

Assuming the partition table is readable, it's easier to mount later by loopback if you do things per-partition.

So for each partition:

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/path/to/image-file-partition-1

Then, to mount read-only on loopback:

mkdir /mnt/partition-1
mount -o ro,loop /path/to/image-file-partition-1 /mnt/partition-1

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Gandhi
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Gandhi » Wed Dec 03, 2008 2:22 pm

this is just computer geek porn
It's like God's vagina!

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Duncan
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Duncan » Wed Dec 03, 2008 3:04 pm

I know one of the drives was dodgy (500GB Maxtor I think) but hopefully not both.

I have another older one that was dieing at home that I managed to get some stuff off. Must search that.

You got space to copy stuff onto Swithun ? I have an external that I got for the purpose ages ago.
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Wed Dec 03, 2008 3:19 pm

swithun wrote:Would lunchtime (12-1ish) on Sunday or tea time (5.30-6.30ish) be better, Mike?
5:30-6:30ish would be better for me, as I'm more likely to be awake (meds are playing havoc with my sleeping patterns atm) but I can make earlier if it's more convenient for you.
Mike

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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Wed Dec 03, 2008 5:41 pm

500 gigs. Fuck. I probably don't have that much space in one place. How old is that disk? A huge SATA disk that is a few years old must have cost a fortune. And it can't have been that old when it started playing up.

I should invest in a terabyte or two, but not right now.

Should I borrow your external drive, Duncan? Or would it make more sense to pass on the disks to you? Will you need to borrow Mike's cables? I suppose it depends who has more time? I'm happy either way.

I think the M in RTFM actually stands for Martin.

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Wed Dec 03, 2008 6:39 pm

Was the 500GB drive full? I can probably locate an old 320/350 drive if needed.
Mike

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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Wed Dec 03, 2008 11:28 pm

The Maxtor is 160G, and there is a 500G Western Digital. Was the smaller one strictly system stuff, Duncan? I can't imagine that there is half a TB of worthwhile stuff on the big disk.

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Duncan
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by Duncan » Thu Dec 04, 2008 1:26 pm

Must be the 500G WD that was the dodgy one. Almost definitely nowhere near full. Hadn't even partitioned the whole thing when it started misbehaving. Unless someone else did which was unlikely at the time.

And not so old, it was still quite new when all the office shifting happened.

I would take the disks and do it myself, but (don't shoot me) I don't have a Linux setup at the moment and Martin's dd image rip sounds like the best way to go.

Small team effort I reckon would be best. Is Sunday tea time still good ?
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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Thu Dec 04, 2008 2:28 pm

Cool. Sunday teatime is good. I'll be at the Cameo double bill before then, and come straight to the Forest. I'll bring a Linux laptop and the dodgy disks. With Mike's cable and Duncan's external disk and Martin's advice, what can go wrong?

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Thu Dec 04, 2008 6:48 pm

I'll be there all day Sunday, helping Nix with some Cave and sound related stuff.
Mike

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Mon Dec 08, 2008 3:42 am

Duncan wrote:Small team effort I reckon would be best.
This seemed to work pretty well (even though I can't claim any credit other than providing the adaptor, as I was pretty busy.

We managed to recover all the files desired, I think. The disks seem to be fine, weren't having any speed or indexing issues that I noticed. Don't know if Duncan/Swith can comment on this more.
Mike

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swithun
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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by swithun » Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:32 pm

Yes, annoyingly, it was Duncan's macbook that saved the day, managing to read a partition that my Linux netbook couldn't. So, Duncan should have a copy of everything from these 2 disks. I had to leave, but not before we'd found something called fisheywives.com, which may be what Mikey and Tim were after.

I shall get along to Maplin one day and get one of those cables.

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Re: Where is stuff from Old Bluey?

Post by ChaoticReality » Tue Dec 09, 2008 3:47 am

swithun wrote:I shall get along to Maplin one day and get one of those cables.
I'd suggest getting it off the net, will be much cheaper.
Mike

Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...

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