Method one – sector by sector copy – this method would attempt of course to copy the bad sectors, however after a while, this seemed to hang, left for 12 hours to have it progress no further, owch, what to do, what to do….

Method 2 – XXCopy – rendered the system unbootable, attempted to work out how to make a Win7 install bootable after the fact, not much luck… this led me too RoboCopy

Ended up using robocopy (Robust Copy) utility which is available on the Windows 7 boot disk, steps performed:
1) Partition new disk
2) Set active partition
3) Format NTFS
4) Run robocopy with the command string
robocopy d:\*.* c:\ /TEE /S /E /COPY:DATSO /PURGE /MIR /ZB /NP /XJ /R:3 /W:2

The source was D drive (D for Dodgy!) destination being the newly formatted Hard Disk
/TEE – Output to console – this way you can see that it’s changing files
/S – Copy Subdirectories excluding empty ones
/E – Copy Subdirectories including empty ones
/COPY:DATSO – What to copy for the files – (D)ata, (A)ttributes, (T)ime, (S)ecurity, (O)wner
/PURGE – Deletes anything on the destination that does not exist on the source (added this due to having some files from other playing about)
/MIR – Mirrors the directory tree
/ZB – Use restartable mode
/XJ – Exclude Junctions on NTFS filesystems
/R:3 – Retry 3 times
/W:2 – Wait 2 seconds before retrying

This got me a bootable Win7 installation, and a dodgy disk has now been sent for RMA. It failed to copy 17 directories and 5MB of Data, no idea what’s missing, but I’ve experienced no problems thus far (touch wood).

The first thing I did after all this, was a backup, then a full chkdsk – everything has been great so far.

I’m glad I was doing my backups – if I wasn’t I might not have noticed until it was too late.

Some of the key features of the Kindle 3 that may interest you is the higher contrast screen for that even more paper like visuals, even lighter and smaller than before, a new colour (graphite) which I personally find significantly more appealing. The best feature of the WiFi only kindle is it’s price at $139USD even with currency conversion and shipping to Australia it’s price competitive with the Kobo which was the cheapest e-ink based eBook reader available down here.

Kindle WiFi direct link for Australians

A very interesting article dealing with a solution to the percieved slowness of lower RPM HDD’s and how to improve the partitioning scheme to have the OS run faster, and large non frequent seeking scenarios for the slower parts of the HDD.

Now I’m having storage issues, if this unit had a GigE NIC on the back of it, and sweet management interface, I’d be very happy man running around trying to get on. Solaris + ZFS that would allow for any number of discs being shoved into at any point would be pure gravy!

Woah! I wants a most impressive cooling system.

Apple have finally announced the MacBook Pro 17″ model – with Spec’s very similar to the 15″ and that lucious 17″ screen. $4600(AUD) is where it starts for this capable machine but I would make the following changes: Drop the ram to 1GB (2×512SIMMS) (subtract $155 – then purchase 2x Kingston 1GB modules for $440 (220 ea)) to upgrade this box, and I’d go with the 7200rpm HDD for the reduced latency and extra speed over the 120GB 5400rpm model.

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These look seriously tempting and will be most temping if they can play WoW reasonably well.

M

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Makes choosing a wireless device for use within linux easier. (Hint: Avoid Broadcom based chipsets)

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For as long as companies persist in shoving DRM down our throats a DRM system like the one described here, proposed by Sun is most certainly my preferred method.

M

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