The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[binaryhermit]

And presumably IBM was able to (and AWS is able to) charge a premium based on that perception.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

And presumably IBM was able to (and AWS is able to) charge a premium based on that perception.

Of course. But let's be real about it--if you're me, and it's your entire business, in that backup, your life and livelihood and that of your employees/contractors, too, if and when the mascara hits the fan...that premium would be cheap in hindsight.

Spoiler:

There's a never-ceasing weight that bears down on you, when you leave off being a single consultant, or service provider, and add people whose livelihoods rely utterly on you. If I'd known then, what I know now, I might not have done it--but that weight is always, always there. You're not just taking care of yourself, or you and yours, any longer; you have people, their kids, the roofs over their heads...it's the single hardest thing, IME, about running a small business. It's onerous.

I've had businesses completely up and disappear on me, on the Net. It's not my first Ghosting rodeo. That premium, for me, would indeed be cheap peace of mind. Does it mean that Amazon S3 can't disppear? No, but at least I'd most likely have some notice and some ability to recover what's there, first.

Hitch

[badgoodDeb]

re Fire Safe -- have you got some small out building on your lot, which would be further from a main fire? Might be good to have the fire safe at a small remove from the main shop, so you have distance as well as its fire-proofness.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

re Fire Safe -- have you got some small out building on your lot, which would be further from a main fire? Might be good to have the fire safe at a small remove from the main shop, so you have distance as well as its fire-proofness.

I do not, as it happens, but I'm working on something that would address that, I HOPE. Man, this is a hassle!

Hitch

[jago25_98]

Koofr has Dropbox import

Sent from my HLTE203T using Tapatalk

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jago25_98

Koofr has Dropbox import

Sent from my HLTE203T using Tapatalk

Hi, Jago:

Yes, but...I don't see anything at all about physical media? Did I overlook it?
My issue isn't xferring the data, cloud-to-cloud; I can do that easily to GDrive or Amazon S3 or a host of other storage/cloud companies. My issue is finding one where I can use something like MultCloud, to xfer cloud-to-cloud, without passing through my excruciatingly slow bandwidth, AND then achieve disaster recovery in a few days, tops, using physical media (a drive, in other words).

I just spent now 14 days (still synching and downloading!), my 1.5TB of data, on my Dropbox. That doesn't even take into account my C drive or any others, my programs, etc.

If I have to recover the computer, after a disaster, I'd lose the SSHD C Drive *and* the Dropbox and at a minimum, I now know it would take not less than 2 weeks, with the computer dl'ing fulltime, 24/7, to restore the Dropbox alone, from cloud storage.

What I'm looking for is something far, far, FAR faster than that. A company like BackBlaze that will send me physical recovery media.

But thanks! I appreciate your thoughts.

Hitch

[PeterT]

Hitch; take a look at http://rsync.net

They do talk about the ability to have physical media sent to them and from them, as well as the ability to load data from S3.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Hitch; take a look at http://rsync.net

They do talk about the ability to have physical media sent to them and from them, as well as the ability to load data from S3.

OMG, Peter, I may love you.

Hitch

[Uncle Robin]

A mini rant here, after someone at MR asked me to help them by providing screenshots of KOReader for information purposes. Compiling all the screenshots took over 2 hours and twelve hours after sending them by PM, (they have been seen) not a single word of thanks or even acknowledgement of receipt. Disappointing.

[DMcCunney]

And yet another WTF? moment.

My SO decided she needed a new laptop. Easily done. My preferred retailer is the Brooklyn outlet of Cleveland retailer Micro Center. They had a refurbished ex-corporate HP Probook 650 on sale for a decent price. It has a quad core Intel i5 CPU, Intel 4600HD graphics, 8GB RAM, a 56GB SSD as boot drive, and came with Win10 Pro. I spent New Years doing initial setup and recreating her environment. Her needs are modest - email via Gmail, web browsing, craft stuff and DLing and reading eBooks from the NYPL. It's up and running and doing what she needs, so she's happy.

The problem child is the one it replaced. Her older laptop is a Lenovo IP130 model. It was an emergency replacement for an earlier machine. It was also a Micro Center refurb. It came with an AMD A6 CPU at 2.6ghz. (It's a 5 core machine - 2CPU and 3 GPU cores.) It also had onboard Radeon graphics, 4GB RAM, and a 450GB Toshiba SATA HD, with Win10 Home installed. It was adequate, if under powered, for what my SO did, but needed upgrading for me.

An 8GB Crucial RAM module to replace the original 4GB unit came home from MC with the HP machine. I also had a Crucial 24oGB SSD originally procured for the desktop my current one replaced, and I could repurpose it by migrating the OS installation on the IP130 to it.

Lenovos aren't designed for end-user service, so doing the hardware changes required removing the entire bottom panel, secures by a dozen tiny Philips head screws. Okay, where is my jeweler's screwdriver...

My original plan for OS migration was a non-starter. I have a pair of Sabrent USB3 drive enclosures. I wanted to put the Toshiba SATA drive into one, the Crucial SSD into the second, and do the OS migration with both plugged into my desktop. Not possible. The utility I used to do the migration would let me select the drive I wanted to migrate the OS to, but not the drive I was migrating from. Fine. Leave the Toshiba in the IP130, hook up the drive enclosure qith the Crucial SSD to a USB port, and go from there. Once the migration was successful, I could replace the Toshiba drive in the IP100 with the Crucial and boot from it. Took a bit, but done.

With 8GB RAM and booting off an SSD, performance is more or less acceptable. It's still not a really fast machine, but my needs are modest. This will be a travel machine for email and the like once travel is again possible. When traveling, actually using the PC is "if and when", and most of what I do can wait till I am back home at the desktop for completion. Other times, it will be Yet Another Screen when I am helping run virtual events on the tech side. (There is no such thing as enough screen real estate when doing virtual event wrangling.)

Migration and conversion are basically completed, with the programs I'll use installed.

The WTF moment is copying stuff to the laptop from a USB thumb drive. I can run an installer on the thumbdrive from it and install to the laptop. I can open a data file on the thumbdrive with the appropriate program, like graphics viewer, and save a copy from the program to the laptop. I cannot simply copy files across. (A console window appears with a message and goes away, the screen refreshes, but no copy occurs. Event Viewer has listing indicating something lacks needed permissions, but isn't clear what lacks them and what they are.)

My concern was some smaller stand alone utilities that don't come with installers. Just copy the program to where you want it to live and create a shortcut to it. I was able to copy several such things to my GDrive from th desktop, then access GDrive in Firefox, download them, and save them where I wanted them from Firefox. I just couldn't copy them directly, regardless of what they were.

Color me boggled. I haven't seen this behavior before. Everything else here is Win10 Pro or Linux. I don't know if this as a Win10 Home limit that doesn't bite on Pro, or a "security policy" applied by the former owner to keep who knows what from being installed on a company machine. My guess is the latter, but this far I haven't found out what it might be or how to remove it.

At this point it's an annoying itch I can't scratch. The machine is basically reconfigured and usable, and I can use the GDrive work around for other small stand alone programs I might add, but shouldn't have to do that.

If anyone here has seen this before and can tell me how to change that behavior, pointers gratefully accepted and karma donated.
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Dennis

[cc_in_oh]

Is this relevant to your problem?

LINK

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

Is this relevant to your problem?

LINK

Good question. Looking at the thread now.

The original poster in the thread runs Win10 Pro. So do I, on the desktop, and haven't seen the issue. Unlike the OP there, I'm not blocked from accessing the drive. I can plug it in. I can access the contents. I can run installers from it. I can read data on it with the appropriate program on the laptop and save copies from that software to the local drive. I simply can't copy files across.

I'll see whether the Take Ownership script posted in the thread will work on the Lenovo and solve the problem, and many thanks in advance if it does. (I looked at half a dozen or so threads elsewhere on the topic, but so far, no solution.)
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Dennis

[cc_in_oh]

I've never used Pro, but apparently you're not the only one seeing some hinky behavior with USB drives so thought it might be related.

Do you have the full Pro license? (I think those mini-PC's come with a cheap version limited to small boot drives?)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

I've never used Pro, but apparently you're not the only one seeing some hinky behavior with USB drives so thought it might be related.

Do you have the full Pro license? (I think those mini-PC's come with a cheap version limited to small boot drives?)

The Lenovo is not a mini-PC. It's a full laptop with 15.6" screen.

And as mentioned, the Lenovo came with Win10 Home, not Pro.

I have the Win10 Pro upgrade media, which I got back when Win10 was a free MS Upgrade. I do not have a valid Win7 or Win8.1 license key to upgrade []from[/i]. Getting Win10 Proon the box would mean spending a hundred bucks for a license upgrade from Home. Er, no. It isn't worth that level of expense.

And I just found a solution, which is a WTF of its own.

Open This PC on the laptop, with a thumb drive plugged in. Right click the thumb drive. Select a right-click menu choice "Open as Portable Device".

That opens a new window with the drive in it, and I can drill down into drive contents and copy things to the laptop from it.

That menu choice exists in Win10 Pro but I have not had cause to use it. On Pro, I can simply open removable drives as drives and copy to and from them.

(I use admin accounts on both Home and Pro.)

Thanks!
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Dennis

[cc_in_oh]

AI is taking over the world, I'm told. So why does every day seem to kick me in the crotch with another example of artificial stupidity? Today it's a Dell notification that "supportassist" has created my first backup. Great, except that I receive this notification at least once a week. I didn't set up this backup, I don't know what it's backing up, or where, or how to retrieve it, or how to stop it. Welcome to the future...