Proof that software as service/cloud based, will never work for long term ...

[Nominal Animal]

Mine is about matter (as in mass) emanating space, which space is seen as a fluid (a "compressible" one).

I started developing a model of a hypertoroidal universe, where time is parallel to the axis of the toroid, but soon veered into metaphysics when I realized that fundamentally, humans too can be modelled as very similar multidimensional hypertoroids; leading into musings of how we just might be the universe reflecting on itself.

Stuff goes in, shit comes out, you see.

Just be glad I didn't include the bit about how old-timey Finns knew all that, as they used to tell each other "Torilla tavataan": "We shall meet at the tori again".

[peter-h]

Trueimage works fine if you configure the HD controller as "IDE".

With a SATA drive it is not actually IDE nowadays but the block mapping is, and it works perfectly on any PC, and always restores.

I use TI v10 which is about 12 years old.

Once you go to HCPI or whatever it is called you often cannot restore a backup. Later versions of TI supported that but often badly. So my win10 laptop is not image backed-up anymore.

Cloud software is a stupid idea. But ultimately all this comes down to where you want to keep your backups. Cloud backups can be lost, but so can the ones you make to say a network drive.

[PlainName]

Can't TrueImage mount an image backup as a virtual drive, so you can access the files on there without restoring the entire thing to a real disk?

[peter-h]

Yes it can but that is ok for restoring data, not for restoring a whole disk image.

The latter is not possible (with any OS) unless you boot the machine from a bootable CD or similar which contains enough of TI to read the image backup file (on e.g. a network drive) and restore it all to the HD (original HD or a new HD). This is because every OS has various open files which you can't write while running live. Last time that was possible was with DOS 6.22

But if you want to backup/restore non-OS data, you can just drag/drop/sync whatever to a network drive... I backup a current project to a network drive at each relevant juncture, and have a 3am sync to dropbox in case I made a mess of something.

The challenge is backup/restore of a drive on which the OS lives. This is hard because while a backup can be made using the OS's logical sector API (no need for bootable media for that*) a restore needs bootable media which must support whatever physical HD controller you have, and the various modern variants like UEFI etc are horrible. See people tearing their hair out on the TI forum...

[Nominal Animal]

Yes it can but that is ok for restoring data, not for restoring a whole disk image.

The latter is not possible (with any OS)

Oh, it is quite possible, if you have the image's worth of unused storage space, and are using logical volume management.  (Not just on Linux, but on many other OSes as well.)

You create a writable snapshot/fork of the current ("bad") filesystem, and restore the image over that snapshot, instead of the running system.

You can keep using your current system while the restore is in progress, too; the two are now separate.  Many logical volume managers use copy-on-write, so stuff that does not diverge between the two does not need to be duplicated.  (It might need a bit of help from the image tools; if they don't write the same data over the same block, COW is much easier to manage correctly.)

Before you reboot, or on your next reboot, you tell your volume manager which snapshot will be the active one.  After you've booted to the new system, you can still examine the other one, and when you're done, delete it.

But before you ask, no, I don't know of any easy to use GUIs that can do this for you.  I am comfy with the command interfaces, and have no idea what kind of GUI tools are available or not.

[peter-h]

OK; sure. You deal with this in the partition manager or whatever. But this is not a trivial thing to do for someone who wants to just back up their PC or laptop.

[SiliconWizard]

Not sure what version of True Image you're on. I've been able to save and restore partitions even between different drives with no problem for a rather long time.

[Nominal Animal]

OK; sure. You deal with this in the partition manager or whatever. But this is not a trivial thing to do for someone who wants to just back up their PC or laptop.

Logical volume management.  It's an abstraction layer on top of the hardware storage devices, decades old, already used in old Unix machines.  Partition manager is a completely different thing.

But I do agree it isn't trivial at all to do, and requires sysadmin-type knowledge to do.  I just needed to point out it is possible, and only requires detailed knowledge, not say expensive enterprise solutions or custom hardware.

[vad]

Cars are getting incredibly expensive, far beyond what the median income can afford.

Baloney!
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/cheap-and-generally-cheerful-three-decades-of-australias-cheapest-carCheap cars have more capability/safety/features/functions than ever and still remain cheap.

You can argue with me, but you can't argue with the facts!


According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median individual income in 1976 was $6,617 which is $32,572 in 2023 dollars, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

Consumers paid an average price of $5,450 ($29,586 in 2023 dollars) for a new car in 1976, according to National Automobile Dealers Association numbers.

So, in 1976 Joe Average could buy  $32,572 / $29,586  =   1.1 average new cars per year for his Joe Average wage.

In the year 2022, the median individual income was $46,001 and the average price of a new car at the end of 2022 was $49,388!   

So in 2022, Joe Average can now only afford 0.93 new average cars per year on his Joe Average salary.

That's almost a 20% increase in price, on average, compared to median salary.   The only reason Joe Average can afford these increases is...   increased debt, paid off over longer time.   Cars as a service, essentially!

Lol. What it tells is that in 2022, the average Joe had better access to credit than in 1976.

The most popular car in 2022 was the Ford F-150. Compare that to the Oldsmobile Cutlass, which was popular in 1976.

[MrMobodies]

So far I've stuck with rsync and partclone. rsync for file-level backups, partclone for full-partition backups.

On Windows, I used Acronis True Image, for partition-level, incremental backups, which worked reasonably well. Didn't like the latest versions too much though, which tended to be slower while adding a lot of "phoning home" crap.

Was that the one with the tiles?

I use to use Ghost but no support for EFIl
In 2018 I was mis sold Acronis True Image and lied to.
I emailed them telling them what I wanted to do and what package that will do it.
Simply put:
Connect hard drive to sata, copy drive to disc image file.
Low level format hard drive, extract image file to disk.

When I clicked the tiles I was presented with purchasing it. So I purchahed it for £30 I think.
I found couldn't extract an image direct to disk and kept on directing me to create a recovery usb pendrive and do a lot whole of stuff.
I think found out why:
https://www.acronis.com/en-gb/blog/posts/how-to-restore-individual-files/#:~:text=Although we generally think of,been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Although we generally think of full-image backup software (also known as disk-image backup software) in terms of restoring an entire partition or disk, many restoration jobs don't involve entire disks or partitions. Instead, users need to recover a single file or folder that has been accidentally deleted or corrupted. 

Acronis True Image has several additional features not usually found in other disk-imaging backup software.

More like removing features.

Emailing them back with the issue, I was told it wouldn't do it. I then had an argument with that sales person about lying to me and wasting my time.

He told me to request for a refund which I did and that was that and that was when I found Macrium Reflect with a 60 day free trial that did exactly what I wanted very easily with no aggravation or tiles and bloat.

[peter-h]

Acronis lost the plot about 10 years ago, but to be fair they could not have kept up with all the weird HD controller interfaces which have arrived post-IDE.

As I posted above, if you set your controller to "IDE" (whether actually SATA or not makes less than 10% speed difference, I found) the Acronis Trueimage 2010 works fine, including win7-64 which is as far as I have run it. And it has no licensing check.

[coppice]

Acronis lost the plot about 10 years ago, but to be fair they could not have kept up with all the weird HD controller interfaces which have arrived post-IDE.

As I posted above, if you set your controller to "IDE" (whether actually SATA or not makes less than 10% speed difference, I found) the Acronis Trueimage 2010 works fine, including win7-64 which is as far as I have run it. And it has no licensing check.

I recently had to migrate a Windows machine's system disk to something bigger. Western Digital and most other disk makers offer a free copy of Acronis tied to their hardware being present. Its massively overpriced. Absolutely useless. I asked a couple of people who had migrated disks, and they had all failed with Acronis and used Macrium. Macrium, is a paid for program, but you can get a 30 day free trial, and it only takes a day to migrate a disk. Macrium is easy to set up, and gives a very clear picture of the things its about to do, minimising the risk of doing something stupid and destructive. Once you set it going it copies as fast as the media will allow. The only issue I had is Macrium didn't set up an MBR on the new disk. I had to use a Windows 10 recovery USB stick to put one on the new disk. Highly recommended.

[PlainName]

As I posted above, if you set your controller to "IDE" (whether actually SATA or not makes less than 10% speed difference, I found) the Acronis Trueimage 2010 works fine, including win7-64 which is as far as I have run it.

Reason it doesn't like SATA is because Windows 7 didn't ship with an SATA driver (technology too new). Although the existing driver would work the problem is that the PCI subclass ID for SATA is one out from the subclass ID for ATA (aka IDE): 06 vs 05. Thus the when the PCI gubbins looks for a suitable handler there is nowt volunteering. If you change the BIOS to IDE then it merely changes the subclass to 05 and everything works.

The proper fix is to just slipstream the SATA driver. Best to do that when the OS is running so it makes it into the backup. Makes restoring onto modern hardware must simpler!

[coppice]

As I posted above, if you set your controller to "IDE" (whether actually SATA or not makes less than 10% speed difference, I found) the Acronis Trueimage 2010 works fine, including win7-64 which is as far as I have run it.

Reason it doesn't like SATA is because Windows 7 didn't ship with an SATA driver (technology too new). Although the existing driver would work the problem is that the PCI subclass ID for SATA is one out from the subclass ID for ATA (aka IDE): 06 vs 05. Thus the when the PCI gubbins looks for a suitable handler there is nowt volunteering. If you change the BIOS to IDE then it merely changes the subclass to 05 and everything works.

The proper fix is to just slipstream the SATA driver. Best to do that when the OS is running so it makes it into the backup. Makes restoring onto modern hardware must simpler!

SATA was mature when Windows 7 launched, and it fully supported native (AHCI) SATA operation. I think you might be referring to an issue where a Windows 7 system installed with the drives in IDE emulation mode will not boot if you set the SATA controller to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Windows 7 installed in ACHI mode is fine.

[PlainName]

As I posted above, if you set your controller to "IDE" (whether actually SATA or not makes less than 10% speed difference, I found) the Acronis Trueimage 2010 works fine, including win7-64 which is as far as I have run it.

Reason it doesn't like SATA is because Windows 7 didn't ship with an SATA driver (technology too new). Although the existing driver would work the problem is that the PCI subclass ID for SATA is one out from the subclass ID for ATA (aka IDE): 06 vs 05. Thus the when the PCI gubbins looks for a suitable handler there is nowt volunteering. If you change the BIOS to IDE then it merely changes the subclass to 05 and everything works.

The proper fix is to just slipstream the SATA driver. Best to do that when the OS is running so it makes it into the backup. Makes restoring onto modern hardware must simpler!

SATA was mature when Windows 7 launched, and it fully supported native (AHCI) SATA operation. I think you might be referring to an issue where a Windows 7 system installed with the drives in IDE emulation mode will not boot if you set the SATA controller to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Windows 7 installed in ACHI mode is fine.

Quite a while since I had to sort this out, but my recollection is that on the PC affected W7 would start the install and then fail when it came to copying the ISO contents during install. So not previously installed using IDE emulation. As it happens, I'm sure I've still got that hardware so if I get bored I might dig it out and try it again...

[PlainName]

SATA was mature when Windows 7 launched, and it fully supported native (AHCI) SATA operation. I think you might be referring to an issue where a Windows 7 system installed with the drives in IDE emulation mode will not boot if you set the SATA controller to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Windows 7 installed in ACHI mode is fine.

Quite a while since I had to sort this out, but my recollection is that on the PC affected W7 would start the install and then fail when it came to copying the ISO contents during install. So not previously installed using IDE emulation. As it happens, I'm sure I've still got that hardware so if I get bored I might dig it out and try it again...

I was wrong. Now there's a surprise!

Dug the PC out and it is XP. Seems I got my Windows version confused. 

[peter-h]

Of course win7 supports SATA. As does winXP.

The proper fix is to just slipstream the SATA driver.

Yeah - 97.5% of posts on the Acronis forum tell you to do that Bloody complicated, only for totally whizzo experts, useless for everybody else who will end up doing backups which cannot be restored.

Later versions of TI support SATA but it is the newer UEFI etc stuff which forces you to buy an ever newer version of TI, and that is a PITA because you have to do it for every new laptop.

The fact is that most normal computer users cannot do this, so it is a useless solution.

And "cloud" backup is also because it won't restore the whole media. You get user data backed up, sure. But not the boot stuff and the OS; those can be restored only with bootable media (unless again you are a total expert, and have a 2x bigger HD). "Cloud" is also very expensive.

[madires]

Another total cloud screw-up by Microsoft:
Unauthorized Access to Cross-Tenant Applications in a Microsoft Azure Service (https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2023-25)

No details yet, but the timeline is very interesting.

Update:
Microsoft comes under blistering criticism for “grossly irresponsible” security (https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/microsoft-cloud-security-blasted-for-its-culture-of-toxic-obfuscation/)

[SilverSolder]

Another total cloud screw-up by Microsoft:
Unauthorized Access to Cross-Tenant Applications in a Microsoft Azure Service (https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2023-25)

No details yet, but the timeline is very interesting.

Update:
Microsoft comes under blistering criticism for “grossly irresponsible” security (https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/08/microsoft-cloud-security-blasted-for-its-culture-of-toxic-obfuscation/)

Many firms in the financial industry (e.g. big banks etc.) have a total cloud ban when it comes to storing transactions.  -  Looks like they were prescient!

[madires]

Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board to Conduct Review on Cloud Security: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2023/08/11/department-homeland-securitys-cyber-safety-review-board-conduct-review-cloud

... triggered by Microsoft's cloud screw-ups.

[Karel]

Google Assistant support on older watches ‘ending soon,’

https://9to5google.com/2023/08/15/google-assistant-wear-os/

[madires]

Fun things can happen when your 3D printer is  cloudified:
3D printer nightmare fuel: Bambu X1C and P1P started printing while owners were asleep (https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23064592/bambu-print-asleep-cloud-outage)

[SiliconWizard]

Fun things can happen when your 3D printer is  cloudified:
3D printer nightmare fuel: Bambu X1C and P1P started printing while owners were asleep (https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/16/23064592/bambu-print-asleep-cloud-outage)

That sounds so much like good engineering!

[madires]

Criminals go full Viking on CloudNordic, wipe all servers and customer data: https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/23/ransomware_wipes_cloudnordic/

[PlainName]

Interesting seeing them also being trashed  by the armchair warriors who, of course, are themselves completely faultless. Even when away from a keyboard.