Can’t format Seagate GoFlex external hard disk GPT partition

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So you have a lovely new Seagate GoFlex drive, and you have XP, well this is going to be annoying as the drive will be gormatted as a GPT drive, and 32bit XP can’t use it!

Compared with MBR disk, A GPT disk can support larger than 2 TB volumes where MBR cannot. A GPT disk can be basic or dynamic, just like an MBR disk can be basic or dynamic. GPT disks also support up to 128 partitions rather than the 4 primary partitions limited to MBR. Also, GPT keeps a backup of the partition table at the end of the disk. Furthermore, GPT disk provides greater reliability due to replication and cyclical redundancy check (CRC) protection of the partition table. It can be used as a storage volume on all x64-based platforms, including platforms running Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. Windows Server 2003 SP1 also enables support for GPT in x86 versions of the Windows Server 2003 family.

However, with a bit of jiggery pokery you can reformat it to work!

In Windows XP Professional, you cannot access or modify GPT disk, but you can convert a GPT disk to MBR by using the clean command in DiskPart, which will delete GPT protective partition and remove all data and partition structures from the disk.

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Warning: The steps below will erase all data on the GPT disk, please backup your data first.

You might see HD Drive in GPT status on Disk Management.

Go to DOS command line (click on “Start Menu”, then “Run”, type in “run” in textbox, and hit “OK”)

  •         Type in “DiskPart” in command line
  •         Type in “list disk” in command line to show all disks in this machine.
  •         Use “select” to set the focus to the specified partition.
  •         For example “select disk 1″.
  •         Use “clean” command to remove GPT disk from the current in-focus disk by zeroing sectors.
  •     Go back to Disk Management, you can see GPT disk is “Not Initialized” now.
  •     Within Disk Management, right click on disk info, choose “Initialize Disk”, You can see GPT disk is “Unallocated” now.
  •     Right click on disk info, choose “New Partition…”, follow Partition Wizard and format it. Now you are able to use the disk in Windows XP.

Crashplan – My setup

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I have about 60GB of photos and videos of my life, and to make sure they’re safe I use CrashPlan, it costs me $5USD a month to keep my data backed up online, however you can use their software to backup to remote machines for free.

Basically if you install crashplan on 2 machines, say your home PC and work PC for example, your home PC can use your work PC as a backup destination and vice versa.

You could also add friends machines as destinations, external hard disks, and the CrashPlan cloud!

In the picture below, you will see that the PC I back up “Me” backs up to the following:

  1. “CrashPlan Central” – my paid for online backup to their cloud
  2. “BSG Lacie 500″ – a 500gb external drive behind the PC
  3. “HP Desktop” – a machine in another part of my house
  4. “HPXW4600 Workstation” – my PC at work

 

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Now the benefit I have is that I have my data in 5 locations, including the originals. I also have it at one easily accessible remote location, my work machine.

The initial seeding of data to both CrashPlans cloud and my work machine took a long time as I was uploading near on 60GB, for the cloud I ran my machine 24/7 until it stopped, and for my work machine I used the settings in the CrashPlan application to run between 5pm and 8am so it didn’t mess with the internet connection during business hours.

 

Facebook – Download Your Information

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Did you know you can get a downloadable file of everything facebook has stored from your profile?

I didn’t until today!

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if you go into “account settings” in facebook, at the  bottom, under the language option, you’ll notice the “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” option, click this and after about 30 minutes you will be emailed a link to download your data.

I just did this and to be honest it’s actually just a lame version of your current FB, all of your current messages, your pics, some of your wall

I expected it to be “EVERYTHING” I had ever done, I’m tempted to go all Data Protection Act, and see what they actually have

 

No TPM with Bitlocker in Windows 8

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BitLocker Drive Encryption by default requires a Trusted Platform Module (TPM Chip) version 1.2 or later installed in your computer. A lot of the computers and laptops on the market do not come with TPM chips installed since they are typically only found in premium modelbusiness computers.  If you have Windows Vista Business, Ultimate or Enterprise but do not have a TPM chip, you can still use BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Hidden away in local group policy is a setting that will allow you to turn on the ability to use a USB storage device instead of a TPM key to store the encryption key. This is a great feature for users that don’t have the latest high-end hardware because you can still use hard drive encryption.

However, every time you turn on your computer, the USB storage device that has the encryption key located on it must be plugged in. Without it, your computer will not boot up. One BitLocker Drive Encryption is setup with a USB storage device, that USB storage device basically becomes the key to your computer.

Follow these steps to turn on the ability to use a USB storage device with BitLocker Drive Encryption on hardware that does not have a TPM device:

  • 1. Click on the Start Button and key in gpedit.msc and hit Enter.
  • 2. Navigate through: Computer Policy, Administrative Templates, Windows Components and BitLocker Drive Encryption.
  • 3. Right click on Control Panel Setup: Enable advanced startup options and select Properties. Check Enabled and hit OK.

Disable windows 8 Metro UI

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Well, you can’t get rid of it 100% as far as I can work out, but you can get the good old start menu back to add a bit of normality to things :

The program does the following in the Registry:

It switches the RPEnabled string to either 0 (inactive) or 1 (active) under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

The value 0 enables the start menu, the value 1 disables it again.

Windows 8 Weather App – Why U Use All My CPU?!?!?!?

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Is anyone else having issues with the weather app? not the small business card sized view on the Metro screen, but when it goes full screen and renders some sort of jazzy real world image of where you’re at is supposed to look like?

I have a feeling it may be a graphics driver issue, however I’m using the 32Bit Intel 945GM driver for windows 7?!?!

Got Windows 8 Beef? head on over to http://www.eightforums.com

 

Dell Latitude D420 – Hard disk woes

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Okay so this is a sidepost to one I’ll be doing on my nightmare installing Windows 8 on this stupid laptop, I found a D420 in a cupboard and thought it was a nice little machine, it’s very light and feels quite well mate, but after a failed install of Windows 8, and a quick drive check via a Live USB version of GParted, I soon discovered that the hard disk had a lot of bad sectors.

Worse still, the drive is ZIF!!!! not SATA :( so I’m not likely to have many, if any drives laying about to swap over.

I’ve split the drive into a few chunks using GParted, in the hope that I can isolate the bad sectors! I’ll update this thread as I go, hopefully I can mark the sectors, a sensible person would buy a new HD, not me!

Should you need it, here‘s a link to the service manual to remove the HD from a D420