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geekmaster · 05-27-2016, 08:18 AM

@eschwarts: interesting link.

In windowsland, I use this to unmount "locked" volumes such as NTFS drives and such:
http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

It basically does the same as marking a drive "offline" in windows disk manager, but without writing that "offline" status onto the physical drive (like a dirty bit).

I also right-click eject sometimes too, but hotswap in my tooltray is easier.

I have an extra problem -- my linux is a VM, and I am passing my USB devices (including the hard drives in question) into VirtualBox. The problem is that windows grabs it momentarily after ejecting it from linux, and every time windows thinks it sees a USB drive show up it WRITES a "readyboost" temp file to it (then deletes it) to see if it is fast enough to support readyboost. This REALLY SUCKS when you want to do data recovery on that device. I have it turned off in windows and it still does it too often. Another piece of suckage is I find windows update temp files and folder show up on drives without permission -- even on "data recovery" targets.

And worse, I have an EXT IFS driver on my windows so it can read (an write) EXT2/3/4 drives as though they were NTFS (except it chokes on symlinks, and filenames that LOOK the same when you ignore case). And now it WRITES windows update temp files on my EXT4 USB drives too. So with the time delay between VirtualBox grabbing and releasing a USB drive for the VM, windows mucks with it.

But like I said, linux bit me all to often too, and google will show you plenty of complaints about how disk tools in linux have missing or incomplete (or just plain bad) GPT support. It certainly bit me...

But really, a 2TB drive had no reason being GPT in the first place -- though pretty much a requirement on larger drives.

In any case, some of the more important stuff on the scrambled GPT EXT4 drive was copied to an NTFS drive (scrambling file permissions and symlinks and such) before it got corrupted. I still have stuff on it I want (mainly dir trees and filenames) -- I already got a bunch of numbered files with a file carving up -- but that is a time killer browsing through those (and the drive was pretty badly fragmented, so a lot of carved files are bad)...

EDIT: But the DEEPER cause of the problem is that my USB jacks are getting worn out on my ultrabook laptop. Even slight movements makes some USB devices drop out momentarily (noticeable only from the windows "DAH-doink / dah-DOINK" sounds when USB devices come and go). And of course Windows does its dirty work on them when that happens (even if they are passed through to VirtualBox). The more I use USB storage, the more I hate windows... And standard USB jacks were originally designed for only 1500 insertions and removals, but on thin devices like laptops they are subject to a lot more stress and I have had some get flakey in just hundreds of insertions and removals. They did not expect you to crawl down behind your huge tower PC and swap USB cables more than a few times per year, not dozens of times per hour when testing kindle updates. And on a K1, you DO need to physically remove the cable (not just eject it) to get out of USB MS mode, so (sometimes) I use an extender cable to wear that out instead of the non-replaceable jacks. The REAL problems seem to be in my USB 3.0 (superspeed) cables and jacks, which have extra pins and wires tucked inside them, so more stuff to go wonky sooner, and more likely to have periodic physical connection dropouts (especially on laptops). And that plays havoc with a linux VM using those drives on a windows host.

05-27-2016, 08:18 AM	#308
geekmaster Carpe diem, c'est la vie. Posts: 6,433 Karma: 10773670 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Multiverse 6627A Device: K1 to PW3	@eschwarts: interesting link. In windowsland, I use this to unmount "locked" volumes such as NTFS drives and such: http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm It basically does the same as marking a drive "offline" in windows disk manager, but without writing that "offline" status onto the physical drive (like a dirty bit). I also right-click eject sometimes too, but hotswap in my tooltray is easier. I have an extra problem -- my linux is a VM, and I am passing my USB devices (including the hard drives in question) into VirtualBox. The problem is that windows grabs it momentarily after ejecting it from linux, and every time windows thinks it sees a USB drive show up it WRITES a "readyboost" temp file to it (then deletes it) to see if it is fast enough to support readyboost. This REALLY SUCKS when you want to do data recovery on that device. I have it turned off in windows and it still does it too often. Another piece of suckage is I find windows update temp files and folder show up on drives without permission -- even on "data recovery" targets. And worse, I have an EXT IFS driver on my windows so it can read (an write) EXT2/3/4 drives as though they were NTFS (except it chokes on symlinks, and filenames that LOOK the same when you ignore case). And now it WRITES windows update temp files on my EXT4 USB drives too. So with the time delay between VirtualBox grabbing and releasing a USB drive for the VM, windows mucks with it. But like I said, linux bit me all to often too, and google will show you plenty of complaints about how disk tools in linux have missing or incomplete (or just plain bad) GPT support. It certainly bit me... But really, a 2TB drive had no reason being GPT in the first place -- though pretty much a requirement on larger drives. In any case, some of the more important stuff on the scrambled GPT EXT4 drive was copied to an NTFS drive (scrambling file permissions and symlinks and such) before it got corrupted. I still have stuff on it I want (mainly dir trees and filenames) -- I already got a bunch of numbered files with a file carving up -- but that is a time killer browsing through those (and the drive was pretty badly fragmented, so a lot of carved files are bad)... EDIT: But the DEEPER cause of the problem is that my USB jacks are getting worn out on my ultrabook laptop. Even slight movements makes some USB devices drop out momentarily (noticeable only from the windows "DAH-doink / dah-DOINK" sounds when USB devices come and go). And of course Windows does its dirty work on them when that happens (even if they are passed through to VirtualBox). The more I use USB storage, the more I hate windows... And standard USB jacks were originally designed for only 1500 insertions and removals, but on thin devices like laptops they are subject to a lot more stress and I have had some get flakey in just hundreds of insertions and removals. They did not expect you to crawl down behind your huge tower PC and swap USB cables more than a few times per year, not dozens of times per hour when testing kindle updates. And on a K1, you DO need to physically remove the cable (not just eject it) to get out of USB MS mode, so (sometimes) I use an extender cable to wear that out instead of the non-replaceable jacks. The REAL problems seem to be in my USB 3.0 (superspeed) cables and jacks, which have extra pins and wires tucked inside them, so more stuff to go wonky sooner, and more likely to have periodic physical connection dropouts (especially on laptops). And that plays havoc with a linux VM using those drives on a windows host. Last edited by geekmaster; 05-27-2016 at 09:01 AM.