gparted good stuff
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick2 Jul 12, 2006 7:20 AM EDT |
I started using GParted when development stalled on QTParted. Still don't know if QTParted is actively maintained, as the last changelog is 2004. What's amazing to me, for all the empty blather about "innovation", which of course we know is blather, but still, sheesh, is the windoze world still does not have bootable rescue/system management disks. Pay a buttload for Partition Magic, you have to install it on a PC. Same goes for anti-virus/malware apps. I just returned a failed hard drive, and got the giggles over Western Digital's drive tools- they claim you need Windows to use them, even though you can download bootable images for both floppy and CD. Apparently no one has told them that other operating systems can burn CDs, so even when they have cross-platform functionality they don't tell their customers. I could be missing out because I don't have to keep up with the winduhs world like I used to. But as far as I know, they're still stuck in the old lame expensive marginally-effective way of doing things. |
| grouch Jul 12, 2006 7:36 AM EDT |
tuxchick2: parted (no G) played a big part in me being able to rescue a drive mangled by Partition Magic (or the misuse thereof). The drive contained the thesis for a college student in California. I worked on the thing via ssh and my crappy dial-up connection from Kentucky. Took about a week, but all partitions were restored. (Jeez, that was 5 years ago. That "kid" became a Gentoo developer, last I heard). Years ago, IBM offered only .exe downloads of their bootable disks for drive analysis. I sent them an email pointing out all they needed to do is use dd to create an image of their bootable disk for GNU/Linux users. Shortly thereafter, a .img file was available alongside the .exe. Don't know if they still offer it since selling the drive business to Hitachi. Maybe it was coincidence and maybe some GNU/Linux person happened to see the email while in a good mood. I could never be happy in the crippled MS world again. |
| tuxchick2 Jul 12, 2006 7:50 AM EDT |
Great story, Grouch. I remember my early struggles with Partition Magic back in my dual-booting RH 5.2/Windoze 95 days. There were some other similar programs that I forget now- System Commander? Partition voodoo? something. Anyway I wasted a lot of money on those suckers. When I discovered Peter Anvin's System Rescue CD life was good again. Of course all geeks worth their ratty sandals had Tom's Root Boot. But the System Rescue CD was sooo cool- many megabytes of Linux goodness. That became my primary windoze rescue tool, and believe me I wore out several. Then came Knoppix, and now everyone has a bootable Linux CD/DVD/USB/Flash/mind meld, etc. |
| jdixon Jul 12, 2006 7:56 AM EDT |
> the windoze world still does not have bootable rescue/system management disks. The Windows 2K and XP CD's are bootable and allow you to enter what they call the "recovery console" from which you can run chkdsk and fdisk. No resize or move capability that I know of though. So they're not completely lost, only mostly. |
| grouch Jul 12, 2006 8:08 AM EDT |
tuxchick2: Tom's! I still have one of those floppies collecting mold and dust around here. It was so handy I even made a bootable CD from it and just gritted my teeth over wasting so much space. I never had the System Rescue CD but I did use the LinuxCare Bootable Toolkit, which morphed into http://lnx-bbc.org/ |
| tuxchick2 Jul 12, 2006 8:20 AM EDT |
jdixon, 'not completely lost, only mostly' sums it up perfectly. It is teh poo. You get a limited set of DOS commands and no networking, plus you need Administrator privileges. Well guess what happens if you're trying to copy files off a failing hard drive? If you can even log in, you might be able to copy them to a locally-attached drive. Maybe. For those who want the gory details: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/ |
| jimf Jul 12, 2006 8:24 AM EDT |
I still have one of those floppies collecting mold and dust around here I think the new gparted live is a superior replacement for that now grouch. You can even burn it to one of those cute mini CDs (28.4mb) and carry it in your shirt pocket to remind you of the good'ol days :). |
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