jaclaz

Didn't say they were not German, only that the actual adapter was manufactured in Taiwan. I posted (in reply to D.Draker reporting his good experience with German DeLock products) a link to one of them on the brand site (DeLock) with photos where there is written on the board "Made in Taiwan": https://www.delock.de/produkt/62510/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en https://bilder.tragant.de/produkte/orig/645b9a89639201.53221600.jpg The datasheet: https://www.delock.de/produkt/62510/pdf.html?sprache=en reports: Computer universe is only a reseller, on that thread there are more info about them and the (BTW usual) way most European (and German) brands normally operate, products are largely manufactured in Asia: https://msfn.org/board/topic/184668-refreshing-data-on-the-disk/page/4/#comment-1244101 jaclaz

@Cocodile There are no such things as jaclaz's certifications, let alone blessings. @j7n In theory yes, in practice, unfortunately, in the best case you will collect a number of vague, inaccurate reports creating the typical GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) situation. jaclaz

I have no idea of any correlation (or lack of it) between e-cores and Vista issues. A statement was made to the effect that all Alder Lake processors had e-cores. Another statement was made to the effect that only F and KF had them. Both are seemingly not fully accurate. I only provided a source[1] from which it comes out that up to i3 none have them, in i5 only K and KF have them, i7 and i9 have them regardless the model. jaclaz [1] Wikipedia, not necessarily to be taken as the ultimate truth

The Paragon GPT loader does not work on external (USB) drives, only internal ones. Usually (but not always) external hard disks larger than 2.2 TB expose 4KB sectors (and in this case there is no need to have GPT style partitioning). A "generic" external enclosure may well expose the "normal" 512 bytes sector or be incompatible with 2.2+ TB sized hard disks. As seen in this thread, using some files from Server 2003 may work, but there is a risk of data corruption/instability. See also here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/177379-3tb-drive-and-winxp/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/ jaclaz

German brand actually made in Taiwan: https://msfn.org/board/topic/184668-refreshing-data-on-the-disk/?do=findComment&comment=1244101 @legacyfan A number of the no-name or generic adapters may have some limitations related to size of the hard disk, please note that oldish 2.5" hard disks, while they may be of smaller (and compatible) size often require more current that what a normal USB can provide, you should check the Amperes needed by the disk, a "standard" USB up to 2.0 gives 0.5A@5V, there are so-called Y-cables to connect to two USB ports (thus providing 1A@5V) that are (were) often needed: Bent pins can usually be straightened, but if you can actually insert the connector they shouldn't be bent/crooked much. The possibility of a malfunctioning (though not DOA as it initially they worked) adapters of course exists, as well it is possible that the issue is with the hard disks themselves. jaclaz

I didn't compare anything. I plainly stated that I doubt that Dixel had enough data points, unless he actually deals (and has dealt for years) with many, many (hundreds, thousands) hard disks, while actually keeping a log of periodical reads, failure modes, etc. and that as such the conclusions he draws are - no matter if right or wrong - anecdotal data based on a relatively small experience, and anyway very likely spread over a too small sample for each make/model of hard disks. Then - separately - I briefly summed up the results of the Backblaze report. jaclaz

With all due respect to your personal experience, unless you are (and have been for a long time) an IT technician working on a very large organization (that actually monitors S.M.A.R.T. parameters on a large number of disks), I doubt that you can have enough data points to "cover" 17 different parameters and highlight as more common 8 of them (if you prefer your "many disks" may be too few to draw conclusions). Backblaze, monitoring some 70,000 disk drives found only 5 (maybe 6) parameters correlated with impending drive failure: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-smart-stats-indicate-hard-drive-failures/ and possibly: not fully overlapping with your list and with some caveats about the need of additionally interpreting the actual values depending on the timeframe they occurred/increased count. A known (cited in the article) BIG unknown is whether power up cycles (S.M.A.R.T. 12) has any correlation as the drives they monitored belong to server farms so they have very, very few power cycles, unlike the disk drives in use by many organizations and most final users that are usually powered on/off on a daily basis, it is reasonable to add it to the list, making it a total of 7 parameters to look for. jaclaz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alder_Lake#List_of_12th_generation_Alder_Lake_processors The i5 seemingly miss them, even the F models, only K and KF have them. jaclaz

You are very welcome to disagree, no need to be sorry. The point I am trying to make is that even if it (the S.M.A.R.T.) was a reliable predictor (and it isn't, at least in large numbers) it is a "vague" one, just like "Seagate", each model/series of a given brand like Seagate may present different failure modes, and while some of them may actually cause a change in S.M.A.R.T. parameters that can lead to a valid warning by the monitoring software many others won't. This and the lack of proper data (about the way some of the S.M.A.R.T. parameters are implemented by the manufacturer) lead to a situation that can be described as "when it works it works, when it doesn't, it doesn't" so that the reference I often make to flippism being equivalent (intentionally provocative) is not at all unjustified. The issue I have with your statement revolves about the "any" in "ahead of any failure", as what happens in practice is ahead of some failures where - additionally - the ahead could mean hours, days, weeks or even months ahead. Better than nothing, but still nothing to be trusted upon. jaclaz

No, the actual "testing programs" can tell if a disk drive has already become bad, and since they need to write on all surface they do stress the disk (particularly in a laptop/where you cannot provide good/additional cooling), you should NOT use them routinely.. The programs that can read S.M.A.R.T. values usually offer a (highly unreliable/unproved) "grading" of these values, providing warnings if certain thresholds are reached, but it is the underlying technology which is not capable of providing (meaningful) predictions: https://msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/?do=findComment&comment=1073898 https://msfn.org/board/topic/153191-does-copying-several-giga-bytes-on-a-daily-base-screw-the-hard-drive/?do=findComment&comment=975216 Keeping an eye on the handful of actually (but partially) useful S.M.A.R.T: parameters as found by Backblaze in their reports (namely 5, 187,188,197,198 and - possibly - 189.) won't make any harm, see also: https://msfn.org/board/topic/177196-is-my-drive-still-healthy-seagate-sshd-1tb/?do=findComment&comment=1146918 but it won't anyway predict reliably a possible failure. jaclaz

For what it matters, still in India, the equivalent of the DMV site (government site where you can obtain or renew your driving license) has been found to be vulnerable to several possible exploits, including Sysadmin credentials, potentially exposing 185 million people personal data: https://blog.robinjust.in/gov-in/2023/02/Exposing-Indian-Citizens-Sensitive-PII-and-more/ Essentially if you give personal data to anyone, assume that there will be a leak before or later. jaclaz

Interestingly, in the US and in the UK, it won't be a thing in EU countries any soon, there are serious doubts about its compliance with GDPR and other EU privacy related Laws: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/no-instagram-threads-app-in-the-eu-irish-dpc-says-metas-new-twitter-rival-wont-be-launched-here/a1927220337.html It is not at all clear if there will be "blocks" of some sort on the app for EU citizens (or EU countries) or something similar. jaclaz

I treat official warnings from any of the government agencies depending on their contents, and BTW this is not a warning, but a recommendation, and (as said) its content is (vague) wishful thinking or generic advice. The note is BTW not particularly tailored to Kaspersky or to any other particular software, it talks of "information technologies supplied by firms connected to the Russian Federation". Without an official list of "firms connected to the Russian Federation" it is meaningless, yes, we know (from other sources) that Kaspersky may be one of these firms, but for all we know, any number of other software or hardware related firms could have similar connections. And the actual recommendation is about conducting an analysis of the risk (Risk Assessment), which is essentially a simple (or complex) document (not entirely unlike some of the ISO9001[1] ones), where someone uses senseless formulas or reasonings on partial, incorrect, non-existing or invented data to derive a (wrong or right, usually pre-determined) conclusion (subject to revision/reviews/changes) , it is only (bad, useless) bureaucracy, the pool where consultants with dubious qualifications and (officially qualified but often clueless) auditors like to swim. Unlike Laws or technical norms (where formulas are given and data needed is specified, and processes are detailed) a generic risk analysis document: https://drata.com/glossary/risk-assessment can be made according to no less than 6 different principles: https://drata.com/blog/risk-assessment-methodologies and then the actual data and algorithms you can use in the document can be almost anything. jaclaz [1] the actual norm for IT security is ISO 27001 (and 27005) that not unlike many other ISO ones is pretty much "vague" and open to different methodologies/approaches: https://advisera.com/27001academy/what-is-iso-27001/

You evidently misunderstood me, I wasn't talking of your post, which is just pointing to some info, it is that recommendation from that Italian agency that could have well been written by Chat GPT, this way the good guys that protect our infrastructure could have had more free time to do the whatever they are doing. jaclaz

JFYI (I can read that Italian article without translation) it is only a generic, empty/obvious and meaningless "wishful thinking" kind of post, it recommends to proceed to a new risk analysis and to consider evaluating different strategies, while stating how it is fundamental, in order to not weaken the protection of the organizations, that during this process the continuity of security service must not be interrupted. Writing this kind of meaningless crap could be a good use for Chat-GPT, BTW. jaclaz

Good (which means bad) your test seems to lead to an actual file error. I was wondering if you could (via a command line tool) test all files for integrity, 7-zip is not suitable because it is very verbose with the "t" (test) switch. There is a tool (cabextract) that would do nicely, as it just prints the MD5 of the (valid) file but it seems like not supporting wildcards in the names of files, so you would need to make a batch to scan each file one by one. I tested the (yes I know) standalone DOS version that seems to run just fine on XP: https://www.bttr-software.de/ports/ The Windows version on the Author's site: https://www.cabextract.org.uk/ is Cygwin, so right now I cannot test it. jaclaz

Personally I wouldn't use Winiso (or any other of the "advanced/automagic" tools to recreate the .iso, let alone a "writing to .iso tool". "Iso writing" may or may not work, of the two I would prefer rebuilding the whole .iso from "source". But if you are using <some way> to mount the .iso stored on a USB thumb drive, and not actually burning it to a CD/DVD and booting from it, it is possible that the little quirks/artifacts that a writing to .iso tool may create would be irrelevant, i.e. it is possible that you can recreate a .iso which is good enough for your use but that may fail if used to burn a CD. I would be curious to know what happens with yours (corrupted) compressed files when you expand them manually. A "normal" XP should have the command line EXTRACT[1] (in Vista and later should have become EXPAND) program, but also 7-zip should be able to expand the compressed files . While expanding you might have some errors, or it may succeed to create the expanded file, in this latter case (since you have another copy of the original expanded file) it would be interesting if there are differences. It is possible (improbable but possible) that your .iso image corruption is not at file level, but somewhere else, and while you can get the file from the mounted .iso, the setup when it is running somehow fails in retrieving it. jaclaz [1] Sometimes as EXTRAC32.EXE, or you may need to find the "support tools" if you want the MS original: https://msfn.org/board/topic/24670-windows-xp-service-pack-2-support-tools/

Why (the heck)? Did you believe to be helpful, useful, cool, what? If you think it is a "right thing" to do it would be IMHO only decent to state that you were pasting verbatim a ChatGPT answer and - additionally - quote the exact prompt you gave to ChatGPT. jaclaz

Yes, most files in a XP .iso are compressed. The program(s) used to compress them are COMPRESS and MAKECAB (and possibly also CABARC). I would try to use first compress (the version that is in the Windows 2003 Resource Kit which can be found on archive.org): https://ss64.com/nt/compress.html You need of course exactly the same version of the files (both the compressor and the actual file to be compressed) so that the compressed file is exactly the same size of the original. Then it is relatively easy to replace the files (actually the bytes representing the files to be replaced) on the .iso image, it is not straightforward, but on a .iso all files should be contiguous so it should be just a matter of locating the position of the file inside the ,iso image and then overwrite with dd or similar the appropriate extent. It has to be checked but either DMDE or ISOBUSTER should be capable of doing this. Otherwise (if you actually need the .iso file) you will need to rebuild the .iso (using either CDIMAGE or MKISOFS) and this may be more difficult (both utilities have lots of settings that need to be used correctly), but it is of course doable. I don't want to put you down in any way, but if you have some corruption in the files, there may be other corruption in other files that you simply couldn't notice because (due to the errors you had) you did not go far enough in the install, so it might take more time and effort than what you may expect. jaclaz

Neither. It doesn't exist an "alignment sector size". The device will expose either a 512 Byte sector size or (maybe, actually I have not yet seen a SSD that has the larger size ) a 4096 byte sector size. You cannot change how the device is seen. Internally the SSD will have a "page size" that is usually a multiple of 4096 bytes. Normally the "right" alignment for a partition would be 1 Mbyte. (1024*1024)=1,048,576 bytes) In the case of NTFS, the default cluster size is 4096 bytes and in NTFS "everything is a file", so a NTFS filesystem is inherently aligned to the partition start, for FAT (16 or 32) there are special considerations to make the filesystem aligned to a multiple of the device page size (though on a fast device like a SSD normally is, it won't make a noticeable difference). The "normal" (even if "wrong") partition alignment on XP is 63 sectors, no matter if HDD or SSD because that is what the XP disk management expects (and will normally create). You can align the partition to 1 Mbyte (as it happens normally on Vista or later), you won't be able to do that with XP disk manager. you will need a third party tool BUT the first time you will use Disk Management even if for changing another thing (such as the active status of a partition) you will likely lose ALL volumes in Extended partition. See: http://reboot.pro/index.php?&showtopic=9897 So, if you plan to align the partition to 1 Mbyte you'd better have ONLY primary partitions OR never use the XP disk manager. jaclaz

The video at least confirmed that the P7 (or P10) connector is with all 3.3V. As said I personally never heard of a PFC (Power Factor Correction) PSU giving issues, but that doesn't mean much, the catching fire could be true or only a metropolitan legend for all I know. From what I know the PFC is essentially circuitry on the "high voltage" side of the PSU (AC mains) and whether a PSU has (or has it not) is (should be) irrelevant on the low (DC) voltage side, the whole idea is to transform an reactive load on the grid into a (almost) resistive one, thus old dansdata article explains it: http://www.dansdata.com/gz028.htm jaclaz

Never heard of non-original PSU's catching fire or exploding though (surely the old AT ones but I seem to remember also early ATX ones) some old ones didn't "like" to be powered on without a load (in the good ol' times we used a tail light bulb 21/5 W connected to the 12V and to the 5V rails to give it a minimal load when testing). In those cases the PSU would "whine" loudly and if you didn't power it off/disconnect from mains quickly it would let out the magic smoke. Again, with Dell everything is possible, but if there are (besides the el-cheapo ones) specific adapters by reputable suppliers for the specific Dimension models, such as the one I posted a link earlier: https://www.atxpowersupplies.com/Dell-P10-connector-adapter.php it should mean that the reports you found were for other models. jaclaz

The limit is in the partitioning not in the NTFS. The field (in MBR style partitioning LBA addressing) is 32 bits, so you cannot have more than 2^32 sectors (-1) i.e. 4,294,967,296-1=4,294,967,295 The "usual" or "traditional" size of hard disk sectors being 512 bytes, you can access at most 4,294,967,295x512=2,199,023,255,040 which is the 2 (or 2.2) TB limit . BUT some new hard disks are "native 4K" (i.e. they have sectors sized 8x512=4096 bytes) or some external disks are mapped (in the USB bridge) to look as if they had 4 KB sectors. Suddenly you can address with MBR 4,294,967,295x4096=17,592,186,040,320 bytes. jaclaz

Interesting vulnerability. (CVE-2019-8286). No idea if it injects "malicious java code", but the specific vulnerability is essentially: "IF the user accesses (possibly through a phishing link) a specially crafted website, it is possible to retrieve the Kaspersky Product ID" CVSS v3.0 score of 4.3 is actually a medium value (on the low side): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Vulnerability_Scoring_System really nothing to worry about, I would expect the reasons why the product was banned by US, Germany and more[1] to be much more serious than hypothetically revealing a product ID (and thus - still in theory - allowing some sort of de-anonimization). jaclaz [1] BTW there are different levels of these, some countries have "only" banned its use on government computers, some have also issued warnings about it to private companies and citizens.

Well, you provided a link to a page on which there is a "fact-checked" stamp, an "official fact checked" certification doesn't exist (AFAIK) anywhere, very likely the good people @ cybernews.com are honest and accurate, but it is not like that green checkmark has any actual meaning, the Authors and the Fact Checkers on that site are interchangeable[1], even if there is no such a stamp on zdnet or (say) BBC that doesn't mean that the info in them is automatically worse or less accurate. Only for the record, cybernews.com is actually a rather mysterious site, it came out of nowhere only a few years ago, it is based in Lithuania, they have rapidly gained international popularity (and increased income): https://rekvizitai.vz.lt/en/company/adtech_lt/ but besides the generic/boilerplate "How good we are" it seems like a normal (BTW successful) news site, ads and/or links sponsored. The same company has also https://healthnews.com/ and https://cooltechzone.com/ this latter seemingly dedicated to VPN's.(which are also often the theme of articles on cybernews.com). jaclaz [1] i.e. the same person once is the Author and on another article he/she is stated a the fact-checker and viceversa