Ranting Kenya » Of Interest

How to Clone onto a Larger Hard Drive

kevin — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 03:05:42 +0000

I recently upgraded my computer’s main hard drive. I didn’t want to just add more storage on a separate drive since much of my storage is taken up by Vista Media Center recordings. My music and videos are on a separate drive already. I just wanted a huge main drive.

So in the end, I’ve moved from a 250GB drive to a 1TB drive. Now cloning everything over wasn’t as easy as I had hoped, but it wasn’t too bad either. I thought I’d post a little bit about what I did and, which products I used to hopefully streamline someone else’s experience.

So let me list the stuff I used:

SATA Source Drive (250GB Seagate Barracuda)
SATA Destination Drive (1TB Western Digital Black)
Windows Disk Management
GParted
Easeus Disk Copy
InfraRecorder

Here’s the order of what I did:

Added new drive physically in computer, changed nothing on original. With SATA drive you don’t even have to configure a jumper or anything. Just find an empty bay and plug in the power and data cables.
Booted computer (Vista Home Premium in my case, though all of this would be the same on XP), and opened up the disk management tool.
Activated the new hard drive.
Downloaded both Easeus Disk Copy and GParted iso files, and burned them to CDs with InfraRecorder.
Booted from the Easeus Disk Copy disk I just created. Copied the whole drive sector by sector to the new disk, existing paritions and all.
Once Easeus is done copies, you have identical partitions on your new hard drive. There will also be the remainder of the free space on the new larger drive unallocated.
Rebooted the computer with the GParted disk is the drive. Once GParted is up and ready to go, I select the main parition on the new drive and choose the “grow” option. I drag that partition to fill the rest of that “unallocated space”.
Once that was done, I shut down the computer, disconnected the old drive, I swapped the data cables (not sure if this is necessary or not), and rebooted again.
When windows is starting back up, it’ll want to run some disk checks. I let them finish, and the computer rebooted normally.

And that’s it. Doesn’t sound like it takes very long, but the copying, formating, and growing of partitions each took over an hour on my machine, which is pretty powerful.

All in all, I’m pretty happy since I don’t have to hunt down all that software all over again and re-do all my personal settings.

Shaw Launches DOCSIS 3

kevin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:40:24 +0000

Finally. Coming to Calgary soon I believe!

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3406/280/

Meteorite in Alberta

kevin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:29:33 +0000

Just a couple youtube vids of that meteor.

Flying the English Channel… via Jetpack

kevin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:47:58 +0000

As mentioned in the video, his flight was a success.

Like Tiered Internet, Only it’s Tiered “Where you are now”

kevin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:57:46 +0000

When I here stuff like this, I can’t help but get angry. The fact that these large companies think they can control everything on the products they sell to you drives me nuts. What makes me even angier, is that Apple gets away with it all the time and barely anybody notices.

Anyway…

Wellington Financial Blog – News, Views & Purviews » Blog Archives » Bell to Blackberry users: “Pay us or get lost” Literally.

Hands on time with Android

kevin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:12:36 +0000

Interesting. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing if Android can take some wind out of the iPhone’s sails.

Android – Boing Boing.

Google Chrome, and the ACID 2 Test

kevin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:37:05 +0000

Well, what’s the first thing I tried after downloading Google chrome? The ACID 2 test of course. And how did the new browser fair? Interesting quesion.

This is the screenshot I took. The errors changed based on how large my browser window was. Also, if I waited long enough (like 60 seconds or something), it would create the proper image.

As per most Google products, it’s a beta so I’m sure this will all be fixed soon enough.

iPhone, Canada, July 11! Price?

kevin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:58:45 +0000

Well, Apple’s WWDC event for 2008 has had it’s keynote now. As expected, the 3G iPhone has been unveiled. I must say, this phone does actually make the previous iPhone look kinda light in the features department. The wireless speed alone is a big difference, the GPS tracking should be awesome (doesn’t cost extra money to have like on my Moto Q). So July 11 should be a big day in Canada and elsewhere.

But aside from a release date from Apple (a search on Rogers’ reveals no matches whatsoever for “iphone”), there is no price information on the Canadian page. Two screenshots below show the differences between the US and Canadian pages.

US Page:

Canadian Page:

Also, there’s no info on data plan rates either. I find this interesting since it was heavily speculated that Canada may have been left out of the last round of iPhones due to Rogers’ data plan greed. But $199 sounds good to me.

At any rate, at least now there’s a date.

D-Link Introduces Ethernet-to-Coax Kit for Extending the Home Network Using Existing TV Cabling in the Home

kevin — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:20:50 +0000

Seriously, this is a great idea, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. It seems like it would also be a good way to roll out your wireless access points across the house too, if you have signal connection issues.

The D-Link Coax Ethernet Adapter Kit (DXN-221) is ideally suited for adding bandwidth-demanding applications such as high-definition (HD) media streaming, music sharing and online multi-player gaming to the home network. The DXN-221 comes with two adapters, each of which includes an Ethernet port as well as a Coaxial F-type connector for bridging the two adapters together. The adapters may also be purchased individually (DXN-220).Users can easily connect the D-Link Coax Ethernet Adapter to their existing router and then to an available coaxial outlet in the home, enabling network and Internet access to multiple rooms. A second adapter is added in another room to connect Ethernet-enabled devices like PCs and media players. The DXN-221 may be used in rooms with multiple devices by connecting a switch to the adapter to connect additional devices.

D-Link Introduces Ethernet-to-Coax Kit for Extending the Home Network Using Existing TV Cabling in the Home

Tags: network, ethernet

Bell has a video store now? Really?

kevin — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:14:20 +0000

Here’s just a snippet of the intro from Ars Technica. It’s an interesting post to read.

It’s hard to imagine a time at which touting your own downloadable video store makes less sense than when you’re on the hot seat for throttling all P2P traffic, much of which competes with Bell to offer video (including entirely legal BitTorrent downloads from the CBC).

Bell Canada opens online video store as P2P debate rages on

Tags: media, video, net neutrality, bell, p2p, traffic shaping