h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A handful of years ago I had a couple of 1 terabyte external drives. They were getting full up and I needed more storage, but by this time 2TB drives had been around a while and were about the same price as the 1TB drives were when I bought those. Right, I thought, I'll have some of that. Except my PC at the time couldn't recognise a 2TB and I had to upgrade something. I think that was when I went from 32 bit to 64 bit.

Now I find that my two 2TB drives and my two 1TB drives are nearly full and I need more storage once more. Now though, 4TB drives are the same price, possibly less, than the 2TB drives were when I bought those, so I bought one. But when I formatted it it showed up as only 1.6TB.



After a little research online it seems there's something about a drive bigger than 2TB that your average Windows 7 operating system can't deal with or see, and although I consider myself moderately y, I'm not enough to make nor tail of what I have to do to make it work like it should, at least I don't think so.

But that's not the point, is it. Why are hard drive manufacturers making hard drives that current operating systems can't deal with without the need for adjustment beyond the scope of your average punter? Why are operating system manufacturers making operating systems that can't deal with drives that are on the market (up to 6TB now)? And why doesn't it say anything at the point of sale?

And don't even get me started on the 10TB RAID box, which cost me in the region of a grand and which has been little more than a doorstop these past couple of years because the PC won't recognise it since I upgraded my OS and nothing I've tried has fixed the problem

I can't even remember what's on there now... except for every episode of Duckman

I think my biggest disappointment in recent times, 'puterwise, was when my current laptop's Ubuntu Linux partition became untenable. It updated itself out of utility. I had two issues hit at the same time. The first was the OS sub-partition of the Linux side was running out of space for further updates. (I keep having this issue with so called "smart phones" as well. Why in the hell should any system have an OS partition small enough to ever run out of room? Especially when we now have 200GB micro SD cards?) So, after several failed updates for insufficient disc space, I got a notification that a new version of Ubuntu was available so I start that downloading hoping it will clear up this issue. Less than 5 minutes into the process it alerts me that my laptop isn't compatible with this version of Ubuntu Linux. WTF? This laptop isn't even THAT old. It came loaded with Win7, not XP or Vista. If it can run Win7 why is there any version of Linux that it can't run? Linux is famous for running on older machines. So, now I'm relegated back to using WinD'OHs.

Seriously folks, what are you storing on these things? Will you ever use it again?

Oh, not me. I don't have any issues with personal storage. My problems are with the stupidly small storage reserved for the operating systems and program files. It could also be an issue with these updates not deleting obsolete program data as well.

I'm going to hazard a guess and assume Gosho has vast collections of music and films on file. He's much more cultured than I am.

It's British television, mostly

OK - I'm with you there entirely, as I have a huge amount of BBC podcasts, downloaded over the past 8 or so years. However, I have a job keeping up with listening to them all just the once, so I sometimes wonder why I keep them after I've listened, as I'll never have the time to listen to them again.

Downloaded material is somehow more precious and I find I make a point of listening to each and every one, even if I find it's boring half way through (although I can't think of one that ever was boring). If I fall asleep or get distracted halfway through, I "wind back" to make sure I didn't miss anything important.

Having said that, so far a 1 TB external drive has been enough for all those years of audio files.

Oh - and as for things not reading storage media, this first happened to us when we were trying to look at photos on an 8 GB SD card from the camera, on our state-of-the-art new TV set. It only recognised media of up to 4 GB. I broke the SD card before I realised that, pushing it into the card reader a leeetle too forcefully to make sure it really was connecting.

(fortunately the pictures had already been uploaded to a PC)

That's why backup is so important. That's why I got the RAID box. And now I remember why I can't get into it any more. One of the drives failed so I replaced it, RAID and the management software (which is installed on the computer and can apparently see the data, even though the computer can't ) told me that the array had been successfully rebuilt and the data was all safe again, but after that rebuild the computer wouldn't recognise it as a single drive. I don't know why that should be.

I did a load of research and thought I'd found a reason (Windows Home can't see dynamic drives, Windows Pro can), so I bought Windows 7 Pro. Still no joy

Then someone suggested a hex editor (nothing to do with Harry Potter). That didn't work either. So I'm still lumbered with a thousand-dollar doorstop

No ideas here. That's above my pay grade.


Yesterday I got a notification alerting me that the MicroSD card on my current "phone" had failed. I don't know if it actually has or not, but either way, it's confirming my decision to purchase a new one.

Would a linux system see it, http://zorin-os.com/ is the one I am using on other computer, can be run on USB or CD, might be woth trying...It comes with built in wine

Possibly inspired by this thread, possibly because of a mysterious chain of thought which took me from Klezmer music, via The Rag Trade to other ancient sitcoms, I found myself watching an episode of "All Gas and Gaiters" this morning. I was surprised to note that, IIRC, I found it funnier than I did when it was on originally.

Derek Nimmo and Robertson (Oh calamity) Hare, if I remember. And Richard Caldicott? How on earth were you watching that?

Uchoob

Ah, of course

In a lot of instances you can find every single episode (in some cases every *remaining* episode - thanks for wiping the others, BBC ) of a programme, series, sitcom on YouTube.

Of course, now I can't remember which series I read about recently, something that sounded pretty special, possibly with Spike Milligan or someone almost as important in British comedy (because no-one's quite as important as Spike ), which has gone forever. No episodes remain

Oh, and to return to the original reason for this conversation (because I think every h2g2 conversation should try to do that at least once in its lifetime no matter how wide-ranging the topic drift ), I've read all kinds of things about GPT discs and GUID and UEFI booting...

If anyone thinks I'm going to mess around with my BIOS they can take a long walk off a short plank. I'm just going to partition the bloody thing into two 2TB partitions. Job's a good'un.

I remember Spike Milligan in Q5 and Beachcomber.

I've been watching some of the various Q series recently. It's a bit like Blazing Saddles - you'd never get away with that today.

Spike always cited Beachcomber as one of his main influences. The BBC made some very good Beachcomber radio programmes in the early 1980s with Richard Ingrams, John Wells, Patricia Routledge and John Sessions. They've been repeating some of them on Radio 4 Extra recently and you can listen to most of the first series here (only five days left for episode 3, at the time of writing), at least for a while http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f6jmk/episodes/player

Okay... late 1980s.

And after all that it turns out it's probably not the operating system or the PC at all, but the docking station the drive is plugged into, which is old and can't see a drive bigger than 2TB. Funny how I figured that out for myself while all the s in the forums were banging on about stuff that's not applicable.