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#274407 - 15/01/2006 14:42 Making a drive image
CrackersMcCheese
pooh-bah

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2489
I'm worried I'll lose my entire collection. Although I have it all on a PC it would just be a hassle to get it all back on the player. Is it possible to just connect my empeg's drive to a PC and make an image which I can write to a spare drive?

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#274408 - 15/01/2006 15:07 Re: Making a drive image [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Yes. If you've got Linux that is. I've no idea how to do it using Windows. You might be able to do it with Ghost or something similar which can make an image of filesystems that aren't supported in Windows.

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#274409 - 15/01/2006 15:54 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tman]
CrackersMcCheese
pooh-bah

Registered: 14/01/2002
Posts: 2489
Yes sorry should have mentioned I only have Windows boxes.

And would this also save playlists? Is any data stored on the player and not the drive?

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#274410 - 15/01/2006 17:09 Re: Making a drive image [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
SuperQ
addict

Registered: 13/06/2000
Posts: 429
Loc: Berlin, DE
the problem is you need to copy the proprietary database partitions.. all the important information is on the drive, playlists etc.
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#274411 - 15/01/2006 17:11 Re: Making a drive image [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
SuperQ
addict

Registered: 13/06/2000
Posts: 429
Loc: Berlin, DE
ah ha! On linux I would use the dd utility:

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm

Found a windows version, although it's not exactly point and click.
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#274412 - 15/01/2006 17:29 Re: Making a drive image [Re: SuperQ]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14486
Loc: Canada
Quote:
ah ha! On linux I would use the dd utility:


cat works just as well, and can be less cryptic.
And I think we just discussed this EXACT same subject a day or two ago in a different thread. Backup to Windows *is* point and click (on ftp://your.empeg.ip.addr/dev/hda).

Cheers

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#274413 - 15/01/2006 19:08 Re: Making a drive image [Re: CrackersMcCheese]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31583
Loc: Seattle, WA
On Windows you can also just do this, which takes a bit longer but doesn't involve special cables.

It's on my to-do-list to update that FAQ entry with information about doing an entire drive image copy across the ethernet link. I might have that done later today, maybe not.
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Tony Fabris

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#274414 - 16/01/2006 02:20 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tfabris]
tanstaafl.
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
Quote:
On Windows you can also just do this, which takes a bit longer but doesn't involve special cables.




Type GET /dev/hda empeg_drive_0.bak (Enter).
Wait a very long time. The larger the hard disk, the longer the wait. Expect at least 10 hours for a 30-gigabyte hard disk.


That long? So it would take more than two days to back up my 160 GB player?

tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

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#274415 - 16/01/2006 03:08 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tanstaafl.]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31583
Loc: Seattle, WA
Without actually TRYING it, yeah, that's what my numbers are telling me.

Since you're the one screaming so hard for the backup feature, why don't you try it and let us know?
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Tony Fabris

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#274416 - 16/01/2006 05:22 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tanstaafl.]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Quote:

That long? So it would take more than two days to back up my 160 GB player?


Even at the theoretical line speed of 10mb Ethernet a 160GB disk would take 35 hours to transfer. The empeg can probably only make half of that speed, so I would expect more like 70 hours.

If you were to do this more that once you would want to use something like rsync so that your backups were incremental.
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#274417 - 16/01/2006 05:50 Re: Making a drive image [Re: andy]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31583
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
The empeg can probably only make half of that speed, so I would expect more like 70 hours.

That's about the speed you would expect using emplode to send songs to the player. But since we're talking about using Hijack to do a direct FTP transfer, I was hoping we'd get a bit more speed than that. I was calculating 7 megabits per second with a bit of overhead, and ballparking from there.

I'm actually curious how long it really would take, but not willing to go through it myself to find out.
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Tony Fabris

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#274418 - 16/01/2006 07:44 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tfabris]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
This is why yanking the drive and plugging it into a PC is still quite a good idea

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#274419 - 16/01/2006 07:52 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tman]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31583
Loc: Seattle, WA
Yeah, I was being slightly sarcastic when I said "a bit longer".
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Tony Fabris

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#274420 - 16/01/2006 15:18 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tfabris]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14486
Loc: Canada
I just did a quick test of grabbing /dev/hda3 (about 30MB or so), and the transfer rate to my PC was 4.4 mbits/sec.

Cheers

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#274421 - 16/01/2006 17:05 Re: Making a drive image [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31583
Loc: Seattle, WA
Well, darn.
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Tony Fabris

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#274422 - 16/01/2006 19:02 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tfabris]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5914
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Quote:
Well, darn.


Now you know why none of us have writen, tested and debugged a "one click" backup system...
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#274423 - 16/01/2006 20:44 Re: Making a drive image [Re: andy]
tman
carpal tunnel

Registered: 24/12/2001
Posts: 5528
Quote:
Quote:
Well, darn.


Now you know why none of us have writen, tested and debugged a "one click" backup system...

It would be a click and wait 4 days backup whilst praying that nothing crashes system

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#274424 - 16/01/2006 23:15 Re: Making a drive image [Re: tfabris]
tanstaafl.
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/07/1999
Posts: 5546
Loc: Ajijic, Mexico
Without actually TRYING it, yeah, that's what my numbers are telling me.


Yeah... thinking about it I don't know why it was such a surprise to me. I know from experience how long it takes to load, say, five or six GB into the player, or for that matter how long it takes to download from the player to the PC.

Last night I loaded about 9 GB into Jean's (formerly Loren's brother's) empeg, I let it run overnight so I don't know exactly how long it took, but it was probably in the vicinity of six hours or so.

Sigh...

tanstaafl.
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"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

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