jaclaz

Well, consider switching to blue-rays then Seriously , any real reason to use DVD's instead of USB stick or hard disk? jaclaz

I am not sure to understand. There is no need to run Victoria (though it won't do any harm, it simply will provide no additional info nor will help to solve the problem). The original post http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/129551-unlocking-terminal-of-seagate-es2-in-bsyled000000cc-state/ details a kind of "loop" that produces a 000000CC error message and *somehow* the OP found a way to "break" this loop by short ciruiting two pins. Other posters provided their reports of slightly different methods (like unscrewing the board near the head contacts, keep it pressed with a finger and then releasing it) and even the behaviour of the Ctrl+z is not the same in all reports. It is not already an "exact science" with "plain" 7200.11, let alone for ES2's with the additional shorting and or disconnecting. Now it is entirely possible that your disk is in the same (or similar) loop and that the "hack" above (lifting the PCB) will work, but it is well possible that it is in a different kind of loop (like the OP's one) and that only the "short circuit" will work. The only known fact is that the ones for which that worked did either the short circuit or raised/disconnected the head contacts and they managed to get the prompt and/or to stop the recurring 000000cc error message only after several (many) attempts. The only thing that you can try is to try (again and again) those approaches, if you prefer we know for sure that one or the other of those two procedures (in some cases and after several attempts) has worked while we are pretty sure that your chances of getting access to the terminal without those procedures are 0 (zero). jaclaz

That (devices been much smarter than what they appear from the outside) is a known (you decide) issue or feature, that has been noticed since the advent of IDE disks and exacerbated by the the "solid state devices", beginning with flash disks and CF cards, but easily extendable to SSD's. The "feature" side is that everything is managed by the hardware+firmware, and as such it is undoubtedly faster and more reliable (as long as the firmware is well programmed/stable). The "issue" side is that since a few years we are the proud owners of "black boxes" which have completely undocumented internal behaviours and that can go "beserk" (by pure chance) in which case your only chances to recover data is through the services of the manufacturer of the "black box" (when and if they provide such services) or through the use of specialized tools that are nothing but (well done and "high quality level") a form of reverse engineering or - in some cases - pure "hacks". A hard disk (or USB bridge, SSD, etc. ) controller is to all effects a rather powerful computer in itself, see this interesting hack: http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack that exposes in an unprecedented way the capabilities of a common (not particularly new) hard disk. Till now we had thus a "dumb" filesystem and a "smart" device. With SSD's we have even "smarter" devices. (at least in theory) If you apply to SSD's a "smart filesystem" there is the risk that the two intelligences will come into a conflict of some kind. From time to time I have nightmares about these families of disks malfunctioning (that hopefully have not been "common" and I believe are not even manufactured anymore): http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/p=6560563/ or however (hopefully) coinfined to niches like security/intelligence, wtc. http://www.pcworld.com/article/225202/Toshibas_New_Self_Erasing_Hard_Drives_The_Ultimate_in_Data_Security.html http://storage.toshiba.com/storagesolutions/trends-technology/security-hard-drives as well as those nightmares about BYOD and remote wiping of devices : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163387-byod-ideas-opinions-whatever/ http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=10567/ jaclaz

But that could be the consequence of two different (separate) causes: a wrong idea/concepta wrong implementation of a "righteous" conceptThe issue here is that, long before getting to the practice, the theory has more than one flaw. First thing the "intended target" and "expected usage" is not clear. The thingy has been initially (Home Server) targeted to "common" end users, which may make some sense, the average Joe gets a message that his storage space is next to full, and simply plugs in the first hard disk he finds around. No hassles, No need to understand the inner workings. <- (in theory, practice as we have seen has been different) In a normal house having a modular, theoretically infinitely expandable filesystem designed to resist accidents like blackouts and/or accidental hot-unplugging sounds almost too good to be true, and possibly when the past issue will be (or maybe already are) solved, practice may become similar to theory. And an average home user normally has not any *need* for quotas, nor actual need for "top speed", though I believe that choosing initially the mirroring vs. parity (I would instinctively exclude the "none redundancy" though possibly the average Joe would go for it because it allows to store "more" data on the same set of devices) and the actual "base" devices is not something that easy or at least not as easy as the good MS guys try to make it look. On the other hand, NTFS is more than adequate for the volumes of data that one could logically expect to have in a home and "home" (RAID) NAS devices usually work fine (though they are a PITA to setup and configure and are not as cheap as one might like them to be). Later it has been targeted towards "enterprise" (Server 2012) where it makes IMHO much less sense, as there are seemingly no particular advantages in such an environment (and using ReFS is a no/no because of the missing quotas) if not the alleged self-healing (limited to ReFS) and the saving of some bucks. Of course it greatly depends on the actual use of the storage, in many environments having quotas is not needed, and the (still theoretical) advantage of "no downtime" (because of self-healing ReFS) may be a distinct advantage, as well as the size limit. On the other hand, in an enterprise environment, cases of a storage device exceeding the NTFS limits are I believe rather rare, and the storage is "managed" by IT personnel anyway, and everything is (or should be) under UPS's, so the advantages seems thin. This other article: http://betanews.com/2014/01/15/windows-storage-spaces-and-refs-is-it-time-to-ditch-raid-for-good/ has a rather interesting set of considerations and actual (though preliminary/small scale) tests on the thing and has what I believe a "sane" view on the matter in it's conclusions: It is a good thing that someone has the possibility (and capability) to be a guinea pig for these technologies, personally, I will patiently wait for a wider adoption of the thing and for a drop in related "horror stories" before even thinking of getting anywhere near a "storage space", I simply do not have a valid reason/need to change my current storage. jaclaz

No, no, yes. http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html Actually, you want someone else to create that, and you hope to obtain this by nagging half the internet, taking bits a pieces that you don't fully understand out of context, resubmitting them together with fragments of often crazy ideas in the vain hope that someone will take the time to make a mix of all (often different/incompatible) booting methods/approaches known to mankind into your dream of a Ultimate-Super-Smart-Secret 'Removable' USB Drive with Mega-Booting: http://reboot.pro/topic/19868-ultimate-super-smart-secret-removable-usb-drive-with-mega-booting/ Yes. http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/questions-with-yes-or-no-answers.html Is it probable that it will happen (or that it will happen soon) if you insist enough? No. You are welcome. jaclaz

They are completely different beasts. The Windows Embedded Standard is a set of "components" which you can assemble in different ways, so the size of the build may vary from as little as a few Mbytes (a very basic build with Minlogon and CMD.EXE as shell) up to the "full" XP size. The POSReady2009 can be considered as a particular "build" made out of Windows Embedded that contains ALL the same components as "normal" XP. Just for the record (and not that it makes a lot of sense, mind you) the *theory* was (and is) the following: "One single OS should Rule 'em all" The "normal XP" and it's incredible amount of bloat (when compared to other slimmer previous OS's) should have been "good for anything". This plan did not work, and Windows XP Embedded was born. XP Embedded is the "right" thing, it is (again in theory) a "componentized" model that allows to build all kinds of very customized environment. Unfortunately making a build (a working one) is something that populates for weeks the nightmares of those attempting to build one, as the complication and the "interconnectedness of all things" makes creating a working build near to impossible, and as soon as you get one, once you test it you find that something is missing, and you need to start rebuilding it, adding more components, until, little by little you have once again a "full" XP. WinFLP had a different approach, it is pre-stripped of a number of components (besides having the at the time experimental "new" deploying approach), within it's limits, it does work, and the removal of components is aimed specifically to running XP on a low powered machine, but, still, it may have issues with third party components and what not. (we are talking 2005 here) This approach (.wim deploying, etc.) made it's way to WePOS, that AFAIK has never had that much success. In the meantime even the stupidest of PoS have become an extremely powerful hardware platform and this prompted for the making of POSReady 2009, the key here is the "Ready" in the name, there is no need to spend weeks or months to make an Embedded build, it is a "plain" XP with "standard" features and capabilities, with a rather restricted licence bolted on and an aggressive licence cost. To recap (IMHO): Windows XP Embedded (depending on the specific build) can be from (say) 22% to 98% similar to "full" XPWinFLP is (still say) 63% similar to "full" XPWePOS is (still say) 75% similar to "full" XPPOSReady2009 is 99.99% similar to "full" XP <- please read as EXACTLY "full" XP with some very minor changesjaclaz

Yes and no. Meaning that they can use both striping and mirroring (or none) see the linked to article: http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/ http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/10/15/refs-in-windows-server-2012.aspx but UNLIKE Raid they are easily "expandable" and, like Raid, the use of "same sized disks" is the only sensible way to use them. Since it is not automatically rebalancing, additionally there may be issues with "distributing" the files across them. So yes, they are a form of Raid, but have some advantages (but also some drawbacks). What is not clear is that they seem aimed to the "enterprise" (and much less to "home users"), but "enterprise level" customers will need (and use) higher level (please read as "better") solutions. jaclaz

8.1x64 should mean (mainly) UEFI but Windows 8/8.1 install DVD's have BOTH modes, point is that if you install from DVD after having booted from the "wrong" mode it won't work correctly: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh825112.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn293283.aspx and I believe that the same applies to "Recovery". In any case there are three possible choices, and limiting to one is not IMHO "smart". jaclaz

Is there a difficult part in what I posted above (EFI/UEFI booting is DIFFERENT from BIOS only booting)? Can you spot the difference between these three command lines?: oscdimg.exe -h -m -o -u2 -bx:\w81\boot\etfsboot.com -lWin81 c:\w81 c:\w81.isooscdimg.exe -h -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:1pEF,e,bc:\w81\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin -lWin81 c:\w81 c:\w81.isooscdimg.exe -h -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bc:\w81\boot\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bc:\w81\efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin -lWin81 c:\w81Can you see how two of them include a reference to a file \efi\microsoft\boot\efisys.bin ? Do you find probable that IMGBURN automagically decides to add the \efi\ file all by it's own? Or do you think more probable that it makes a BIOS booting DVD, using only etfsboot.com? Just like the first command line, that only mentions etfsboot.com? jaclaz

Perfect! Before anyone else posts some other suggestion for Commercial software, besides the US$ 29.95 reasons to try first what is freely available (yes, I am cheap ), may I point out that UEFI booting of CD/DVD works somewhat differently? (and that seemingly both PowerISO and UltraISO will produce only "plain" x86/BIOS booting .ISO's?) http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/anybody-gotten-the-dvd-to-boot-uefi/82677329-a861-4060-866b-3eacb60a8b38 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947024/en-us Like anything connected with EFI/UEFI everything (and the contrary of it ) is possible depending on the actual implementation of this non-standard by the various manufacturers, but I believe that you won't be able (if you boot a DVD in non UEFI mode) to install on GPT (and possibly not even "recover it"). AFAIK PowerISO is NOT compatible at all with this, while UltraISO is ONLY compatible when editing a "base" iso which is already dual mode BIOS/UEFI: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/40271-Can-t-boot-from-EFI-mode-after-do-some-change-in-original-MSDN-Win8-ISO-Help-please!/page2 jaclaz

There is actually NOTHING to "adapt". Just READ "Solution 2" on the given link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2579295/en-us At the most the good MS guys should be blamed for providing it. jaclaz

That directory structure is that of a "normal" PE and it contains "only" the boot.wim (which is where the PE actually is, you can open the boot.wim in 7-zip and see it's contents). Surely it doesn't contain any "recovery" (in the sense of an image of your install) files. Overall it seems like running the mentioned OSCDIMG commands would manage to make a bootable .iso of it fine, though I wonder if it is needed to copy the whole structure in a folder on hard disk (or SSD) and remove the hidden attribute to the boot.wim file. Use same 7-zip to open an actual DVD or ISO of the Windows 8/8.1 install, you will see a "same" directory structure and you will also be able to extract the no emulation bootsector (no need to have PowerISO for this) and though IMGBURN is an exceptionally good tool , please do use OSCDIMG (and NOTHING ELSE) for these kind of image creation, at least for the experiment. jaclaz

I guess you are in one of the cases where you *need* to uninstall Internet Explorer 9: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/09/18/how-to-uninstall-internet-explorer-9/ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2579295/en-us BUT, before doing this "radical" attempt, wait for MagicAndre1981 having a look at your crash dump. jaclaz

If you can do a DIR /S F: >C:\mystick.dir (provided that F: is your USB stick ), zip the mystick.dir and attach it,so that we can check WHAT are the contents of the "recovery drive", it would help, I am pretty sure that it would take less than a page. If - as I believe - the thingy is a "normal" PE, it is just a matter of getting the no emulation boot image from a Windows DVD/ISO and run OSCDIMG (which is part of WAIK/AIK), along the lines of: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/51982-How-To-Using-Oscdimg-exe-for-Building-W7-x-W8-x-WinPE-Bootable-DVD-ISO-Image jaclaz

No, you don't *need* an ISO image of the flash drive. You may want (if you want to complicate your life a bit) a NEW hard disk emulation ISO containing a "hard disk image" of the USB stick, or more simply, create a NEW bootable ISO of the contents of the USB stick. A ISO image of a hard disk like device does not really exist, though (if you want to complicate further matters) you could manage to make a Hybrid Boot ISO image. jaclaz

I am not sure to understand. I believe that the *whatever* you made is a PE of some kind, based on one or more .wim's. Wouldn't a rather plain OSCDIMG command do nicely a DVD out of it? jaclaz

I was around when we installed a Telex machine. Besides the cost of the machine (which I don't remember but that surely was astronomical) we had (in Italy) to file a request for Government Authorization , the actual cables had to go through special (reinforced/tamperproof tubing), the path of them had to be declared and detailed on a plan, as well as the physical location of the apparatus, that had to be a "dedicated" room, access to his room was reserved to the operators (that needed a special license/course), before connecting the machine a Government Inspector came to verify that everything was fine and in accordance with the licence, we had to keep a log not only of the transmitted (and received) messages, but also of the people that actually made access to the room, including the janitor. Some years later (but not that many) I also installed a few of the very first Fax machines. I remember buying one (very basic, thermal paper) fax for a mere ITL 5,000,000 (i.e. roughly 5 salaries of a middle career employee) in 1984 or 1985. The former was a (slow, complicated) alternative to other forms of communication (mainly telegrams), the latter was a revolution, easy, fast (relatively) and allowing to transmit and receive copies of actual documents. Some ten years later, 1994/1995 I had a Tablet with touchscreen : http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155290-windows-8-deeper-impressions/?p=1008812 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155290-windows-8-deeper-impressions/?p=1008822 http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/155290-windows-8-deeper-impressions/?p=1055477 and a modem that allowed me to transmit and receive data at "high speed" (around 1/4 hour for a floppy image 1.44 Mb), besides faxes. That was another revolution for my workflow, I had a (working) spreadsheet, a GANTT program, an (almost working) CAD program (besides a word processor) and we could cooperate remotely on the actual files. About the same time 1993/1994 we started having mobile phones, those changed some of the workflow, we could communicate everywhere and at anytime. In the years 1994-1996 (or so) CAD programs became usable (thanks also to Windows NT) on non-dedicated workstations and affordable, that changed again a part of the workflow, we moved from paper to files for *everything* (or almost everything), we had (relatively) fast (laser) printers and (not-so-fast) plotters. And every night we connected via modem to synchronize remotely, but we could communicate - still via modem - during the day also (if needed), and we started having access to the Internet (and FTP sites to exchange data). Soon after came more affordable internet and e-mails, that changed again a part of the workflow, we could communicate easily not only "within" the firm, but also with third parties, yet another revolution. Five years later, let's say 2001/2003, I had a later version of Windows (Windows 2000), a later version of Excel (which did the SAME things as the earlier versions), a later version (much better/much more usable) of AutoCAD (that did the SAME things as the early versions, only faster), a later version of MS Project (which did the SAME things as the earlier versions, but more easily), an almost unchanged (for all practical uses) version of Word. Each of these apps were faster (thanks also to hardware progress) more capable (but within limits) but did not change the way we worked. Now I am doing more or less the same things I did 10 years ago, I have obviously faster tools, some are actually "better", but nothing has changed substantially. If I really have to find something that partially changed my way of working in the last ten years, I would probably have to mention the increase of speed of printers (much, much faster), of scanners and of plotters (less increase of speed than printers, but still faster than before). jaclaz

It seems to me like there are two main issues (which DO NOT apply to this nice "experiment", as long as it is an "experiment"). The good MS guys that developed this filesystem seem to imply (like it is being written EVERYWHERE) how this filesystem is intended for "storage spaces" (whatever they are) ONLY and not for "single" disks/drives (being them internal or external) there is seemingly NO visible advantage to ReFS (not speed, not reliability, nothing really) when compared against NTFS, but of course you can access with it 262,144 Exabytes or maybe 1 Yottabyte (as opposed to the mere 16 Exabytes of NTFS)http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2013/01/02/windows-server-2012-does-refs-replace-ntfs-when-should-i-use-it.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2012/10/15/refs-in-windows-server-2012.aspx While the whole idea of "storage spaces" is in itself nice in theory, it seems like not particularly appealing practically: http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/ and, if I may, it is not really revolutionary, in the sense that good bad ol' Dynamic Disks were not that much different and they never went "mainstream", and as well the "previous attempt" with the drive pools or Drive Externder (or whatever) in Windows Home Server 2011: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/windows-home-server-is-dead-but-we-shouldnt-mourn-it/ was far from being as good as it seemed in theory. Of course ReFS has its fans, like: http://www.petri.com/4-reasons-refs-is-better-than-ntfs.htm the fact that at least two out of the four reasons provided make no sense whatever is not IMHO a good sign, however[1]. Very nice thing to play with , but at the moment very little beyond that . jaclaz [1] Guess which ones?

Sure it does, and the link (in your image): http://www.wdc.com/advformat now redirects to: http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1 (already posted) that CLEARS how that particular make/model of AF disk is FULLY compatible with XP (as long as you "align" it). To recap: 1) there are at least TWO different kinds of AF format disks: "512e" and "Native 4K" 2) Microsoft officially does NOT support either of them (and never supported them) for XP and 2003 3) one "kind" of AF disk is the so-called 512e type that exposes (one way or the other) 512 bytes sectors, these are compatible (as long as they are "aligned") BUT there may be issues (reference posted before), even on "normal" 512 bytes sectored disks with "aligned disks and Disk Manager on XP (in some rare cases where a logical volume inside extended is used AND Disk manager is used to change the Active partition). MS NEVER acknowledged/fixed the mentioned issue (which as said is related to alignment and not to "512e" disks. 4) Unless a specific firmware or driver translation is available (which would make them a kind of 512e), Native 4k won't work on XP NOR on ANY OTHER Windows NT OS before Windows 8: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh848035(v=vs.85).aspx jaclaz

So, a spec sheet is no good, but a picture of a disk is? Come on that is a WD3200BPVT: http://www.wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=802&language=1 a 320 Gb disk with 625,142,448 sectors has a 512 bytes/sector alright. Whether this is "true" or it is obtained through one of the mentioned "non-standard" or "manufacturer specific" own variation is another matter: http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=7&language=1 That drive (specifically) is fully compatible with XP, WHILE being "tagged" AF. jaclaz

Well, there are only three manufacturers, WD Toshiba and Seagate nowadays, see: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163189-hard-drive-controller-errors-abound-atapi-event-11/?p=1041845 The issue might be with local unavailability of "small sized" disks, but really I have never seen a 500 Gb or smaller disk that was not 512 bytes (even because it does not make much sense). jaclaz

Since when? I have NEVER seen drives smaller than 500 Gb which were not 512 bytes sectored. As an example the WD Blue specs: http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771436.pdf have AF starting at 750 Gb.... and the Seagate 7200.12 are all 512 bytes. http://www.seagate.com/files/docs/pdf/datasheet/disc/barracuda-7200-12-ds1668-6-1101us.pdf jaclaz

Since I am picky, these are three separate things. "Initializing" the disk <- this iswhat Windows calls it, what happens is that the MBR code and the Magic Bytes (and Disk Signature) are written to the MBR Creating a partition entry in the MBR Formatting the volume corresponding to that partition entry The first two ones (please read as connected with "Disk Manager" or diskpart which is not part originally of Windows XP) are the problem, as #2 will default to Cylinder aligned partitioning, but this is in itself is NOT an issue (on 512e drives, see below). The actual FORMAT.COM has no issues by itself, in theory, but any number of tools/programs might "choke" on these. You can manually make a partition entry in the MBR using *any* other suitable tool and later use format alright. If you are going to use Extended partition and Logical volumes inside it be VERY aware of a SERIOUS issue with Disk Management: http://reboot.pro/topic/9897-vistawin7-versus-xp-partitioning-issue/ This said, AF disks are somewhat non-standard and different make/models may behave differently, the exact make/model could make a difference between success and failure... In theory an AF disk http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171236-seagate-expansion-drive-2tb-is-not-detected/?p=1071081 may be compatible with XP SP3, if it is a "AF 512e" while a "native" 4Kb sectored disk is not (unless it is connected via USB) see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/03/why-new-hard-disks-might-not-be-much-fun-for-xp-users/ but the good MS guys exclude compatibility with them for XP: http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/4k_hdd and there are more than a few issues even with Vista and 7. So, though somewhat sad to admit it, as we are a normally into experimenting and finding workarounds, following dencorso's advice is your best option. jaclaz

Good news , though if you hadn't banned robots.txt from your site (WHY? ), by now it would have been indexed/backed up by the Wayback Machine. If the site is going to evaporate not-so-soon, there may still be time for it to be mirrored/saved. Regards to you (and to the cats of course). JFYI : jaclaz

If, by any chance, it is a 7200.11, it is possible that fixing it will be much cheaper than that. We have "saved" in the past a few hundreds (possibly more) of such disks: http://www.msfn.org/board/forum/169-hard-drive-and-removable-media-issues/ with just a few bucks/Euros needed for the TTL adapter. jaclaz