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How big is the current disk? How much space is used?

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Sunday, 1 May 2005 13:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I have an 80Gb drive, in my laptop.

I have, just recently, formatted and reinstalled windows--the only space used is by windows and a couple of applications and drivers--I have no files on it, now.

so, say, less than 3Gb used.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 1 May 2005 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

four weeks pass...

Earlier this morning, I scanned a document and converted it into a .doc file on a Mac, but now that I'm looking at it on my PC, there are these empty box characters peppered throughout the document now. In fact, every line after the first word, instead of a space separating the first two words, there's this box. And I've checked all the Word entities for special characters (like ^p and ^l), and this box is none of them. How can I get rid of these things automatically, without manually going through each one?

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:39 (twenty-one years ago)

And I can't copy/paste this box to do a replace all.

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

can you save it as plain text, then re-open it? bit drastic, but should work ...

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Ah yes, thanks. I actually saved it as html so that most of the formatting was retained. Ta for the idea!

― Leeeee (Leee), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 19:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I posted a problem I had on another thread but it's a bit different now. I'd installed the master drive from my old PC by mistake, NOW I have the correct drive added as a slave to the pre-installed master but a drive letter has not been assigned to this second HD in Windows. I am using GetDataBack to try and recover the data from the drive, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas why Windows couldn't assign a drive letter despite the Device Manager saying the drive was working fine.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 23:22 (twenty-one years ago)

is it partitioned and formatted?

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 00:42 (twenty-one years ago)

You're on XP, right? Try opening Disk Manager to see if that can recognise it at all; and, if it can, to assign a drive letter to it.

(go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management - Disk Manager is in the tree under the Storage node)

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 05:50 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not partitioned (afaik) or formatted. I'll try your suggestion tonight thanks Caitlin.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 08:44 (twenty-one years ago)

It must be both partitioned (even if it only has a single partition) and formatted if it already has data on it. Whatever you try, do *not* repartition or reformat, because this will delete all your data.

(unless you use a non-destructive partitioning program like Partition Magic, of course)

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I tried UI Tweak but it didn't pick up on the second drive either. As it stands, my DVD ROM is D and the external Maxtor HD I have is E. So I'm hoping I can assign G to the slave drive and then USB devices (Archos jukebox) after that.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Does it show up in disk management?

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management

If it does, you should be able to assign a drive letter to it here. I don't follow why you would need to use a special program to recover data from the disk... It should still be there.

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:41 (twenty-one years ago)

This is assuming some form of NT of course...

― KeefW (kmw), Wednesday, 1 June 2005 10:42 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm looking for a quick and easy way of doing the following in the terminal window:

I need to compare two folders and delete from the first folder everything that also exists in the second folder. I can't find a flag in rsync for doing this it's not really what it's for. Any ideas anyone?

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:13 (twenty-one years ago)

when you say 'also exists' do you mean 'is the same as' or 'has the same name as'?

cd to second folder
find . -printf "rm -i /firstfolder/%P\n"

pipe this to a file then run the file (can do this in one go but i always check the output just in case). will delete everything in first folder that has the same name as that in the second folder

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:33 (twenty-one years ago)

might wann stick a -type f in there as well or it'll try and delete directories too (and fail)

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:35 (twenty-one years ago)

ls folder1 > f1
ls folder2 > f2
comm -1 -2 f1 f2

will give you a list of common(ly named) files

― koogs (koogs), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 08:56 (twenty-one years ago)

perfect, thanks

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 09:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Steve, the only thought that comes to mind is that the second disk you've just added as a slave isn't in the right format. Could you confirm what operating system you had on it and what operating system you're currently using?

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 12:17 (twenty-one years ago)

another (slight) possibility is that the other ide locations (ie primary slave, secondary slave) aren't set to 'auto' in the bios but are disabled for some reason.

in any case, i would recommend getting into the bios settings at bootup and see if the computer sees the drive on that level, before even getting into windows

also are the jumpers on the drives set correctly for their positions on the ide channels? (is the slave drive set to slave or auto)

― ronny longjohns (ronny longjohns), Wednesday, 8 June 2005 14:40 (twenty-one years ago)

another quick question. Using rsync is it possible to have rsync synchronise files across a series of directories into one directory without recreating the directory structure in the recipient directory.

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I think you'd have to build a list of directories using find then call rsync once for each source directory.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:24 (twenty-one years ago)

OK. How do I turn a list of commands into a shell script? this is something I'm going to need to do regularly is there a good website on this sort of thing?

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, the straightforward way is to:

1) write the list of commands in a file
2) put this at the top:


#!/bin/bash

or, more generically, "#!" followed by the path to the shell you want to use.

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:30 (twenty-one years ago)

don't know anything about rsync that man rsync wouldn't tell you. but couldn't you run rsync for each of the source directories with the same destination directory? (do you really want to do this? you're effectively throwing location information away)

(-d stops rsync recursing)

xpost

> How do I turn a list of commands into a shell script?

you don't need to, really. just

sh file_full_of_commands

btw chmod +x file_full_of_commands makes it executable

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh, yes, I forgot you have to add executable permission to the file

― caitlin (caitlin), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:36 (twenty-one years ago)

find root_directory -type d -exec rsync_command_here \;

does the copying with no intermediate file.
the {} token in rsync command will expand to the found directory.

― koogs (koogs), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:38 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm consolidating a load of stuff by file name which is in a load of different directories and volumes into 4 new directories on a single volume. eg everything begining with 'a' in directories 'x,y,z' now need to be in directory 'A'

― Ed (dali), Thursday, 9 June 2005 10:39 (twenty-one years ago)

I don't follow why you would need to use a special program to recover data from the disk...

I lost the data by converting the disk from Dynamic to Basic - I had it all backed up though so no problem. Have assigned a letter to it and will be using it purely for sharing media. Thanks to Caitlin and Keef for the help here.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:24 (twenty-one years ago)

so, still no ideas on why I can't get "add remove programs" to populate? I'm wondering if it has something to do with the not quite legal version of f0t0sh0p i installed

― kyle (akmonday), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:28 (twenty-one years ago)

Does anyone know how to make a symlink invisible to the Finder is OS X.

― DAEREST V1CE MAGAZINE!!!!! (ex machina), Tuesday, 14 June 2005 21:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Does the Finder support the standard way of creating hidden files on Unix: start the filename with a dot?

― caitlin (caitlin), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 06:57 (twenty-one years ago)

symlinks are visible to the finder and yes, dot prefixes do hide files in OS X, my home dir would be a nightmare if it didn't.

― Ed (dali), Wednesday, 15 June 2005 07:02 (twenty-one years ago)

My generic optical mouse (or any othe mouse for that matter) ain't working. The cursor is 'frozen' in the centre of the screen, even when I restart it is frozen at the login screen. Using Win XP.

Any ideas?

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 08:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Keyboard is working ok, btw.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 08:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it USB?

Unplug the mouse, login and plug it in again.

― Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Monday, 20 June 2005 09:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Is it USB?

No PS/2, tried unplugging it but Cursor remains frozen in middle of screen.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 20 June 2005 11:18 (twenty-one years ago)

ok I got my new hard drive (160GB lacie porsche) (which, incidentally, snores like a tractor). I was just wondering - I copied the music from my itunes music library over to the first partition and made that directory my itunes music library but now when I open itunes all the songs have exclamations to the left of them, which means they're 'missing', but when I click on them it's fine, they're there and they play. thing is it's annoying because I can't skip between the tracks, using the arrow keys, like what I usually do.

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 20:51 (twenty-one years ago)

that hard drive was the bane of my existence. nice case design (visually), but I had so many problems with it; randomly unmounting, crappy suppport, their driver update software didn't work/was out of date. I got rid of it and got a maxtor instead.

I have also had to relearn the harsh lesson that the solution to almost all windows problems is to reinstall the OS.

― kyle (akmonday), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:05 (twenty-one years ago)

oh yeah now you tell me!

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm on a mac, maybe it'll be a bit more robust on here.

can I chain my ipod through the back of the lacie via the second firewire port?

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:07 (twenty-one years ago)

I re-installed XP today after my broadband died, and HEY PRESTO! it's all fine now. I'm sure that Gates in his infinite wisdom didn't intedn us to sit infront of a blue screen with a yellow bar on it for hours while the computer tries to do something it shouldn't need to do.

― Come Back Johnny B (Johnney B), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:08 (twenty-one years ago)

c/n, what I would have done if I were you would be to have changed the default folder where I stored music in iTunes to a new folder on my new H/D (under 'options' or something - I don't have iTunes in front of me now) and then choose 'consolidate library' and have iTunes transfer the files for me, hopefully avoiding exlamation marks.

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, that's what I did with my daughter's iTunes library when we got her the Mini.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:23 (twenty-one years ago)

: /

― c/n (Cozen), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:41 (twenty-one years ago)

You can't change the iPod on the LaCie: the firewire port is the wrong type, as I found out :(

As for the exclamation marks, what you need to do is "touch" all the songs in the library so that iTunes checks them out. There's an applescript to do it, but I can't find it from work. I'm sure I've got it at home, so give me a yell if you need it. What might also work is "consolidate library" from the Advanced menu, even though it has nothing to actually move.

If all that fails, select all the songs in the library (Apple-A) then get info (Apple-I). Put "Stet is topp" or something in the comment box, and click OK. Then wait. And wait. It'll go through each track in the lib, and should hopefully sort it out.

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:54 (twenty-one years ago)

s/change/chain

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 29 June 2005 21:55 (twenty-one years ago)

The past two days my laptop has been making the same clicking/munching noises that barry describes up above on dec. 4th. It isn't under warranty (it's a 5-year-old Dell), so far I've been able to reboot it and it will function for a short while before the clicking begins, but now it seems as though hard drive failure is imminent. I'm wondering what was the result of barry's reinstallation? THe fan on mine has also never seemed to work properly, and the computer developed so many problems within about 9 months of owning it that I have sort of been expecting it to fail for a long time, but wonder now if there's anything I can do to postpone the failure a little longer. I have a lot of work on it, and can't afford to get a new one (or to use Mark's like I'm doing today).

― sgs (sgs), Thursday, 30 June 2005 08:27 (twenty-one years ago)

It does sound rather like the hard disk is about to fail. Is there any way you can get your data off the laptop so that you have a second copy?

(do yours or Mark's computer have networking? If all else fails, you can connect two computers together using a "null modem" cable and make a copy of your files that way. A null modem cable plugs into the serial port of each computer and should only get a few quid; but check what connectors your computers have before you get one, because serial port connectors can be either 9-pin or 25-pin.)

― Tech Support Droid (ForestPines), Thursday, 30 June 2005 08:40 (twenty-one years ago)

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