Search Results

Search found 870 results on 35 pages for 'sector'.

Page 33/35 | < Previous Page | 29 30 31 32 33 34 35  | Next Page >

  • IRP_MJ_WRITE latency up to 15 seconds

    - by racitup
    We have written an application that performs small (22kB) writes to multiple files at once (one thread performing asynchronous queued writes to multiple locations on behalf of other threads) on the same local volume (RAID1). 99.9% of the writes are low-latency but occasionally (maybe every minute or two) we get one or two huge latency writes (I have seen 10 seconds and above) without any real explanation. Platform: Win2003 Server with NTFS. Monitoring: Sysinternals Process Monitor (see link below) and our own application logging. We have tried multiple things to try and solve this that have been gleaned from a few websites, e.g.: Making the first part of file names unique to aid 8.3 name generation Writing files to multiple directories Changing Intel Disk Write Caching Windows File/Printer Sharing Minimize memory used Balance Maximize data throughput for file sharing Maximize data throughput for network applications System-Advanced-Performance-Advanced NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate - use fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1 disable 8.3 name generation - use "fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1" + restart Enable a large size file system cache Disable paging of the kernel code IO Page Lock Limit Turn Off (or On) the Indexing Service But nothing seems to make much difference. There's a whole host of things we haven't tried yet but we wondered if anyone had come across the same problem, a reason and a solution (programmatic or not)? We can reproduce the problem using IOMeter and a simple setup: Start IOMeter and remove all but the first worker thread in 'Topology' using the disconnect button. Select the Worker thread and put a cross in the box next to the disk you want to use in the Disk Targets tab and put '2000000' in Maximum Disk Size (NOTE: must have at least 1GB free space; sector size is 512 bytes) Next create a new access specification and add it to the worker thread: Transfer Request Size = 22kB 100% Sequential Percent of Access Spec = 100% Percent Read/Write = 100% Write Change Results Display Update Frequency to 5 seconds, Test Setup Run Time to 20 seconds and both 'Number of Workers to Spawn Automatically' settings to zero. Select the Worker Thread in the Topology panel and hit the Duplicate Worker button 59 times to create 60 threads with identical settings. Hit the 'Go' button (green flag) and monitor the Results tab. The 'Maximum I/O Response Time (ms)' always hits at least 3500 on our machine. Our machine isn't exactly slow (Xeon 8 core rack server with 4GB and onboard RAID). I'd be interested to see what other people get. We have a feeling it might be something to do with the NTFS filesystem (ours is currently 75% full of fragmented files) and we are going to try a few things around this principle. But it is also related to disk performance since we don't see it on a RAMDisk and it's not as severe on a RAID10 array. Any help is much appreciated. Richard Right-click and select 'Open Link in New Tab': ProcMon Result

    Read the article

  • Linux Software RAID recovery

    - by Zoredache
    I am seeing a discrepancy between the output of mdadm --detail and mdadm --examine, and I don't understand why. This output mdadm --detail /dev/md2 /dev/md2: Version : 0.90 Creation Time : Wed Mar 14 18:20:52 2012 Raid Level : raid10 Array Size : 3662760640 (3493.08 GiB 3750.67 GB) Used Dev Size : 1465104256 (1397.23 GiB 1500.27 GB) Raid Devices : 5 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 2 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Seems to contradict this. (the same for every disk in the array) mdadm --examine /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc2: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 1f54d708:60227dd6:163c2a05:89fa2e07 (local to host) Creation Time : Wed Mar 14 18:20:52 2012 Raid Level : raid10 Used Dev Size : 1465104320 (1397.23 GiB 1500.27 GB) Array Size : 2930208640 (2794.46 GiB 3000.53 GB) Raid Devices : 5 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 2 The array was created like this. mdadm -v --create /dev/md2 \ --level=raid10 --layout=o2 --raid-devices=5 \ --chunk=64 --metadata=0.90 \ /dev/sdg2 /dev/sdf2 /dev/sde2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sdc2 Each of the 5 individual drives have partitions like this. Disk /dev/sdc: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders, total 2930277168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00057754 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 2048 34815 16384 83 Linux /dev/sdc2 34816 2930243583 1465104384 fd Linux raid autodetect Backstory So the SATA controller failed in a box I provide some support for. The failure was a ugly and so individual drives fell out of the array a little at a time. While there are backups, we the are not really done as frequently as we really need. There is some data that I am trying to recover if I can. I got additional hardware and I was able to access the drives again. The drives appear to be fine, and I can get the array and filesystem active and mounted (using read-only mode). I am able to access some data on the filesystem and have been copying that off, but I am seeing lots of errors when I try to copy the most recent data. When I am trying to access that most recent data I am getting errors like below which makes me think that the array size discrepancy may be the problem. Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.196299] dm-7: rw=0, want=6619839616, limit=6442450944 Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.196309] attempt to access beyond end of device Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.196313] dm-7: rw=0, want=6619839616, limit=6442450944 Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.199260] attempt to access beyond end of device Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.199264] dm-7: rw=0, want=20647626304, limit=6442450944 Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.202446] attempt to access beyond end of device Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.202450] dm-7: rw=0, want=19973212288, limit=6442450944 Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.205516] attempt to access beyond end of device Mar 14 18:26:04 server kernel: [351588.205520] dm-7: rw=0, want=8009695096, limit=6442450944

    Read the article

  • How to reinstall Mac OS X on OS X/Linux dual-boot system?

    - by strangeronyourtrain
    My setup: I have a MacBook Pro 5,5 with a Mac OS X Snow Leopard partition and a Linux partition. I use rEFIt to boot into Linux. I didn't use Boot Camp when I originally installed Linux; instead, I manually created the partition (with either Disk Utility in OS X or Gparted on a Linux live CD--I don't recall which one) and then installed Linux on it from a live CD. The problem: My OS X partition is corrupt, and I need to reinstall Snow Leopard. Since I installed rEFIt from within OS X, I'm concerned that wiping the OS X partition will prevent me from booting into my Linux partition. How can I do this without losing access to my Linux partition? Is it possible to install Snow Leopard on the partition I reserved for it, or will it automatically overwrite the entire drive? And if I do the fresh OS X install and then install rEFIt again, will it automatically recognize my Linux partition? Thanks for any tips! Specs: MacBook Pro 5,5 (Mid-2009); Snow Leopard 10.6.7/64-bit Sabayon Linux, 2.6.36 kernel EDIT/UPDATE: Thanks, but the situation has taken a more complicated turn: I tried to reinstall Snow Leopard from the DVD, but it refused to install onto my Mac partition, claiming: "The disk cannot be used to start up your computer." Disk Utility wouldn't let me resize the partition or create a new one, and it doesn't see my Linux partition. It only displays the two partitions "Macintosh HD" and Linux Swap. I can, however, see all the partitions from Linux. This is the partition table as shown in Gparted: And the output of "fdisk -l" is: WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted. Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 409639 204819+ ee GPT /dev/sda2 409640 349590464 174590412+ af HFS / HFS+ /dev/sda3 483122745 488392064 2634660 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda4 * 349590465 483122744 66766140 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order I wonder if this is because I originally partitioned my disk with Gparted instead of OS X's Disk Utility (at this point, I don't recall whether I used Gparted or Disk Utility). In any case, it doesn't seem safe to do any reformatting with Disk Utility now, as I'm afraid it will wipe sda2 ("Macintosh HD") as well as sda4 (my Linux partition). So... I'm hoping to find a solution that doesn't involve wiping my entire hard disk. Would it be safe/possible to use Gparted to erase sda2 ("Macintosh HD") and then use the Snow Leopard DVD to install OS X onto [I]just[/I] sda2 without touching the other partitions? Thanks for any insight!

    Read the article

  • How to create a Windows 7 installation usb media from linux ? (to install Windows 7) - Help need to know better method

    - by Abel Coto
    I have been reading some web pages and posts here and in other forums about how to create a Windows 7 installation Usb media (to install windows 7 using a usb) from linux. I asked in technet about this , and they give me general ideas about how to do it I personally am not very familiar with linux, but basicaly all that you need to do... in whatever way you do it is the following: Format a usb flash drive, either fat32 or ntfs create a partition that is large enough to host the windows installation (give or take 3GB for 64bit, aroudn 2.5gb for 32bit) and mark that partition as active/bootable. Since this can be done with windows, but just as well with a tool like gparted, you should be able to do the same in debian. Once you have created that partition, mount the iso that you download, and copy all files starting from the root, into the root of the usb flash drive. That's all there's to it. There is a method that i found in various places,that is almost the same that the man of technet has said. But,there is a step,that in that method is done,that i don't know if it is really necessary,or not. Not allways dd works.Basically, the missing step was to write a proper boot sector to the usb stick, which can be done from linux with ms-sys. This works with the Win7 retail version. Here is the complete rundown again: Install ms-sys Check what device your usb media is asigned - here we will assume it is /dev/sdb. Delete all partitions, create a new one taking up all the space, set type to NTFS, and set it bootable: *# cfdisk /dev/sdb* Create NTFS filesystem: *# mkfs.ntfs -f /dev/sdb1* Mount iso and usb media: *# mount -o loop win7.iso /mnt/iso # mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb* Copy over all files: *# cp -r /mnt/iso/* /mnt/usb/* Write Windows 7 MBR on usb stick: *# ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb* ...and you're done. Shouldn't the usb work without doing the last step "# ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb" or to make the usb bootable , is a must , not only to mark the partition as bootable ? Would be better use rsync instead of cp -r ? All this steps should be done as root, i suppose , or if not , chmod to 664 and chown the directories where are mounted the usb and the iso, no ? But i suppose that the easier thing is to copy the data as root , and that this will not affect to the data. Has anyone tried this method or some similar like copying the iso with dd ?

    Read the article

  • How to correctly partition usb flash drive and which filesystem to choose considering wear leveling?

    - by random1
    Two problems. First one: how to partition the flash drive? I shouldn't need to do this, but I'm no longer sure if my partition is properly aligned since I was forced to delete and create a new partition table after gparted complained when I tried to format the drive from FAT to ext4. The naive answer would be to say "just use default and everything is going to be alright". However if you read the following links you'll know things are not that simple: https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/ and http://linux-howto-guide.blogspot.com/2009/10/increase-usb-flash-drive-write-speed.html Then there is also the issue of cylinders, heads and sectors. Currently I get this: $sfdisk -l -uM /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 30147 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sectors/track Warning: The partition table looks like it was made for C/H/S=*/255/63 (instead of 30147/64/32). For this listing I'll assume that geometry. Units = mebibytes of 1048576 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0 Device Boot Start End MiB #blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 30146 30146 30869504 83 Linux $fdisk -l /dev/sdd Disk /dev/sdd: 31.6 GB, 31611420672 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3843 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00010c28 So from my current understanding I should align partitions at 4 MiB (currently it's at 1 MiB). But I still don't know how to set the heads and sectors properly for my device. Second problem: file system. From the benchmarks I saw ext4 provides the best performance, however there is the issue of wear leveling. How can I know that my Transcend JetFlash 700's microcontroller provides for wear leveling? Or will I just be killing my drive faster? I've seen a lot of posts on the web saying don't worry the newer drives already take care of that. But I've never seen a single piece of backed evidence of that and at some point people start mixing SSD with USB flash drives technology. The safe option would be to go for ext2, however a serious of tests that I performed showed horrible performance!!! These values are from a real scenario and not some synthetic test: 42 files: 3,429,415,284 bytes copied to flash drive original fat32: 15.1 MiB/s ext4 after new partition table: 10.2 MiB/s ext2 after new partition table: 1.9 MiB/s Please read the links that I posted above before answering. I would also be interested in answers backed up with some references because a lot is said and re-said but then it lacks facts. Thank you for the help.

    Read the article

  • How to remove iso 9660 from USB?

    - by a_m0d
    I have somehow managed to write an iso 9660 image onto my USB drive, which makes all my computer think that the device is actually a CD. I have tried various methods of removing this partition, but nothing seems to work. I have tried fdisk, which says $ fdisk -l /dev/sdb Cannot open /dev/sdb parted crashes when I try to use it on this device. I have even tried $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb but it just hangs with no output (either on screen or on disk). However, when I plug the USB in, it does mount, and I can view (but not edit) the files on it. edit: now the result is $ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb dd: opening `/dev/sdb': Read-only file system I have also tried re-formatting it on Windows, but it gets to the end of the format process and then says "Couldn't format the drive". How can I remove this partition and get my whole USB drive back to normal again? EDIT 1: Trying a simple mkfs doesn't work: $ sudo mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb mkfs.vfat 3.0.0 (28 Sep 2008) mkfs.vfat: Will not try to make filesystem on full-disk device '/dev/sdb' (use -I if wanted) I can't do mkfs on /dev/sdb1 because there is no such partition, as shown:$ ls /dev | grep sdb sdb EDIT 2: This is the information posted by dmesg when I plug the device in:$ dmesg . . (snip) . usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=6387 usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 usb 2-1: Product: Mass Storage usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Generic usb 2-1: SerialNumber: G0905000000000010885 usb-storage: device found at 4 usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning usb-storage: device scan complete scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access FLASH Drive AU_USB20 8.07 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB) sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00 sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 4069376 512-byte hardware sectors (2084 MB) sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00 sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through sdb: unknown partition table sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3 ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A SELinux: initialized (dev sdb, type iso9660), uses genfs_contexts CE: hpet increasing min_delta_ns to 15000 nsec This shows that the device is formatted as ISO 9660 and that it is /dev/sdb. EDIT 3: This is the message that I find at the bottom of dmesg after running cfdisk and writing a new partition table to the disk:SELinux: initialized (dev sdb, type iso9660), uses genfs_contexts sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready: Sense Key : Not Ready [current] sd 17:0:0:0: [sdb] Device not ready: < ASC=0xff ASCQ=0xffASC=0xff < ASCQ=0xff end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0 lost page write due to I/O error on sdb

    Read the article

  • Can someone explain RAID-0 in plain English?

    - by Edward Tanguay
    I've heard about and read about RAID throughout the years and understand it theoretically as a way to help e.g. server PCs reduce the chance of data loss, but now I am buying a new PC which I want to be as fast as possible and have learned that having two drives can considerably increase the perceived performance of your machine. In the question Recommendations for hard drive performance boost, the author says he is going to RAID-0 two 7200 RPM drives together. What does this mean in practical terms for me with Windows 7 installed, e.g. can I buy two drives, go into the device manager and "raid-0 them together"? I am not a network administrator or a hardware guy, I'm just a developer who is going to have a computer store build me a super fast machine next week. I can read the wikipedia page on RAID but it is just way too many trees and not enough forest to help me build a faster PC: RAID-0: "Striped set without parity" or "Striping". Provides improved performance and additional storage but no redundancy or fault tolerance. Because there is no redundancy, this level is not actually a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, i.e. not true RAID. However, because of the similarities to RAID (especially the need for a controller to distribute data across multiple disks), simple strip sets are normally referred to as RAID 0. Any disk failure destroys the array, which has greater consequences with more disks in the array (at a minimum, catastrophic data loss is twice as severe compared to single drives without RAID). A single disk failure destroys the entire array because when data is written to a RAID 0 drive, the data is broken into fragments. The number of fragments is dictated by the number of disks in the array. The fragments are written to their respective disks simultaneously on the same sector. This allows smaller sections of the entire chunk of data to be read off the drive in parallel, increasing bandwidth. RAID 0 does not implement error checking so any error is unrecoverable. More disks in the array means higher bandwidth, but greater risk of data loss. So in plain English, how can "RAID-0" help me build a faster Windows-7 PC that I am going to order next week?

    Read the article

  • How can I repair my USB drive?

    - by yurko
    USB drive is in read only state and I can't repair it. First of all I tried erase it using dd: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# ls -l /dev/disk/by-id | grep usb lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 ??? 18 23:45 usb-Generic_Flash_Disk_C173828A-0:0 -> ../../sdb lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 ??? 18 23:45 usb-Generic_Flash_Disk_C173828A-0:0-part1 -> ../../sdb1 root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb dd: ?????? ? «/dev/sdb»: ?? ?????????? ????????? ????? 8257537+0 ??????? ??????? 8257536+0 ??????? ???????? ??????????? 4227858432 ????? (4,2 GB), 942,633 c, 4,5 MB/c After that I wanted to create new filesystem using fdisk: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# fdisk /dev/sdb You will not be able to write the partition table. WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to sectors (command 'u'). Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sdb: 4227 MB, 4227858432 bytes 4 heads, 63 sectors/track, 32768 cylinders Units = cylinders of 252 * 512 = 129024 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 18 32768 4126596 b W95 FAT32 Command (m for help): fdisk showed that the partition still exists and I can't write the partition table. I tried to delete the existing partition: Command (m for help): d Selected partition 1 Command (m for help): w Unable to write /dev/sdb root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# Why am I not be able to write the partition table? Does it mean that some hardware failure occurred? And is it possible to repair the current USB drive? I've tried to use hdparm and it showed that the readonly flag is on: root@yurko-laptop:/home/yurko-laptop# hdparm /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: f0 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 26 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 multcount = 0 (off) readonly = 1 (on) readahead = 256 (on) geometry = 1016/131/62, sectors = 8257536, start = 0

    Read the article

  • Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer's hardware

    - by Hello71
    The whole installation goes smoothly up to the point of "Completing installation ...". The monitor changes resolution, after which a standard dialog box pops up saying Windows Setup could not configure Windows to run on this computer's hardware Then, in a few seconds, the whole machine powers down. Trying to restart produces the message: STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error} 0x00000000 (0xc0000001 0x00100448) OR it boots into Setup and comes up with the message: Windows Setup encountered an unexpected error... (This is not the actual error, just paraphrasing) I tried using the OEM restore instead of a regular install, but it fails with the same error. (Even though it worked before...) General specs: HP Pavilion Elite e9262f Intel Core i5-750 Processor ATI Radeon HD 4650 Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 ATA Device 6GB DDR3 RAM SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Some built-in Wi-Fi module http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01916917 I've tried disconnecting the wireless card and disabling the built-in Ethernet and Firewire via the BIOS, and replacing the wireless keyboard and mouse with wired USB ones. Didn't work. I've also tried changing the SATA controller settings in the BIOS to RAID, AHCI, and IDE, reinstalling each time I changed. Still not working. I think the reason why it is showing the Fatal System Error is because it didn't finish installing before it errored out and shut down, so the system is left in an inconsistent state. I've tried 3 different copies (including the OEM restore) of Windows 7 now, and they're all failing at the same point, with the same error message. I've tried to install Windows 7 maybe 10 times already, with the exact same error message at the exact same location. Hm... Interestingly, the 32-bit version of Windows 7 works, but the 64-bit version doesn't. Perhaps it was a badly burned disk? Reburning the 64-bit version still comes up with the same error. Here's a picture of the side of the case that clearly says it came with Windows 7 64-bit, along with the model number and CPU. sudo fdisk -l: Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009896f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 13 104391 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda2 14 94119 755906445 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 119922 121602 13492224 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 94120 119922 207257740+ 5 Extended /dev/sda5 119527 119922 3170769 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda6 107174 119526 99225441 83 Linux /dev/sda7 94120 107173 104856192 7 HPFS/NTFS Partition table entries are not in disk order

    Read the article

  • Windows XP installation problems

    - by Samurai Waffle
    I recently asked a question on here, and thought I had it working... Here is a link to it. Windows XP Installation problems So basically I'm having trouble getting XP installed. To sum it up, a computer I have had a boot sector virus, and I used Darik's Nuke and Boot to wipe the hard drive clean. So the hard drive has nothing on it. I had to try and install Windows through a DOS prompt, because for some reason it won't read it off the DVD. The UBCD is able to look at the files located on the DVD I have in, but I can't boot from it for some reason. So I extracted it to a USB drive, booted to DOS and started the setup process. Here's the weird thing with DOS... It can only find the C: drive. The C: drive in DOS is the flash drive that I have in, running DOS. I can't find the hard drive anywhere! So anyways, after starting the setup process, it copied the files over to the "hard drive" (which took 16 hours because the version of DOS I ran couldn't run smartdrv.exe), and it said the computer had to reboot. So I let it reboot, and it stopped and said there is no boot device. So I popped in UBCD that I have installed on a flash drive, and I discovered that it had copied the Windows files over to the flash drive and not the hard drive. It never asked where it should extract the files... So I toyed around with UBCD, ran a memory test on the hard drive to make sure it was fine, and it came out clean. So I'm stuck now. How can I get this installed? Writing this, I came up with an idea. If I copy the DOS startup files over to the hard drive, would I be able to start DOS from it? If so, I believe that could fix my problems. Any help is greatly appreciated, because I am running out of ideas and am at my wits end with this computer.

    Read the article

  • Volume group disappeared, LVs still available

    - by Ben
    I've run into an issue with my KVM host which runs VMs on a LVM volume. As of last night the logical volumes are no longer seen as such (I can't create snapshots of them even though I have been for months now). Running any scans all result in nothing being found: [root@apollo ~]# pvscan No matching physical volumes found [root@apollo ~]# vgscan Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while... No volume groups found root@apollo ~]# lvscan No volume groups found If I try restoring the VG conf backup from /etc/lvm/backups/vg0 I get the following error: [root@apollo ~]# vgcfgrestore -f /etc/lvm/backup/vg0 vg0 Couldn't find device with uuid 20zG25-H8MU-UQPf-u0hD-NftW-ngsC-mG63dt. Cannot restore Volume Group vg0 with 1 PVs marked as missing. Restore failed. /etc/lvm/backups/vg0 has the following for the physical volume: physical_volumes { pv0 { id = "20zG25-H8MU-UQPf-u0hD-NftW-ngsC-mG63dt" device = "/dev/sda5" # Hint only status = ["ALLOCATABLE"] flags = [] dev_size = 4292870143 # 1.99902 Terabytes pe_start = 384 pe_count = 524031 # 1.99902 Terabytes } } fdisk -l /dev/sda shows the following: [root@apollo ~]# fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 6000.1 GB, 6000069312512 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 5722112 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000188b7 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 2 32768 33553408 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 32769 33280 524288 83 Linux /dev/sda3 33281 1081856 1073741824 83 Linux /dev/sda4 1081857 3177984 2146435072 85 Linux extended /dev/sda5 1081857 3177984 2146435071+ 8e Linux LVM The server is running a 4 disk HW RAID10 which seems perfectly healthy according to megacli and smartd. The only odd message in /var/log/messages is the following which shows up every couple of hours: Jun 10 09:41:57 apollo udevd[527]: failed to create queue file: No space left on device Output of df -h [root@apollo ~]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 1016G 119G 847G 13% / /dev/sda2 508M 67M 416M 14% /boot Does anyone have any ideas what to do next? The VMs are all running fine at the moment apart from not being able to snapshot them. Updated with extra info It's not a lack of inodes: [root@apollo ~]# df -i Filesystem Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on /dev/sda3 67108864 48066 67060798 1% / /dev/sda2 32768 47 32721 1% /boot pvs, vgs & lvs either output nothing or "No volume groups found".

    Read the article

  • Recover harddrive data

    - by gameshints
    I have a dell laptop that recently "died" (It would get the blue screen of death upon starting) and the hard drive would make a weird cyclic clicking noises. I wanted to see if I could use some tools on my linux machine to recover the data, so I plugged it into there. If I run "fdisk" I get: Disk /dev/sdb: 20.0 GB, 20003880960 bytes 64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 19077 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes Disk identifier: 0x64651a0a Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table Fine, the partition table is messed up. However if I run "testdisk" in attempt to fix the table, it freezes at this point, making the same cyclical clicking noises: Disk /dev/sdb - 20 GB / 18 GiB - CHS 19078 64 32 Analyse cylinder 158/19077: 00% I don't really care about the hard drive working again, and just the data, so I ran "gpart" to figure out where the partitions used to be. I got this: dev(/dev/sdb) mss(512) chs(19077/64/32)(LBA) #s(39069696) size(19077mb) * Warning: strange partition table magic 0x2A55. Primary partition(1) type: 222(0xDE)(UNKNOWN) size: 15mb #s(31429) s(63-31491) chs: (0/1/1)-(3/126/63)d (0/1/32)-(15/24/4)r hex: 00 01 01 00 DE 7E 3F 03 3F 00 00 00 C5 7A 00 00 Primary partition(2) type: 007(0x07)(OS/2 HPFS, NTFS, QNX or Advanced UNIX) (BOOT) size: 19021mb #s(38956987) s(31492-38988478) chs: (4/0/1)-(895/126/63)d (15/24/5)-(19037/21/31)r hex: 80 00 01 04 07 7E FF 7F 04 7B 00 00 BB 6F 52 02 So I tried to mount just to the old NTFS partition, but got an error: sudo mount -o loop,ro,offset=16123904 -t ntfs /dev/sdb /mnt/usb NTFS signature is missing. Ugh. Okay. But then I tried to get a raw data dump by running dd if=/dev/sdb of=/home/erik/brokenhd skip=31492 count=38956987 But the file got up to 59885568 bytes, and made the same cyclical clicking noises. Obviously there is a bad sector, but I don't know what to do about it! The data is still there... if I view that 57MB file in textpad... I can see raw data from files. How can I get my data back? Thanks for any suggestions, Solution: I was able to recover about 90% of my data: Froze harddrive in freezer Used Ddrescue to make a copy of the drive Since Ddrescue wasn't able to get enough of my drive to use testdisk to recover my partitions/file system, I ended up using photorec to recover most of my files

    Read the article

  • Seeking (somewhat) better explanations about supporting > 2.1 TB hard drives.

    - by irrational John
    Today while Googling about I stumbled across posts claiming that Seagate plans to ship a 3TB drive sometime later in 2010. Unfortunately, the stuff I looked at all seemed to contain tidbits of info which I didn't think fit together properly. (I would link to some examples, but I'm only allowed 1 link per post at the moment). Now I really don't have any "need" to better understand the underlying tedious details of this. I am just curious. And confused. So ... some questions I'm hoping someone better informed than I might answer. The talk about a potential addressing problem in both the hardware and the software confused me. The assertion is that something called something called Long LBA addressing (LLBA) is needed in the Command Descriptor Block as a way to get around the current limits to access a hard drive bigger than ~2.1 (or ~2.2?) TB. OK, fine. But I thought the last time this problem came up it was solved by extending the length of the LBA field from 28 to 48 bits. (Remember this website? www.48bitlba.com) A 6 byte LBA is clearly large enough, so what's up with this LLBA talk. I thought this was all fixed back by Win XP SP2, if not sooner? And certainly all the hardware should be up to the task, shouldn't it? The real problem as I understand it with drives much bigger than 2 TB are the 4 byte LBA fields in the Master Boot Record (MBR) used to partition just about all hard drives at the moment. The most likely solution is to migrate to Intel's GUID Partition Table (GPT). A GPT uses 8 byte fields for the LBA. What I don't understand in this context is what is the problem with booting say Windows from a 3TB drive that uses a GPT. Granted, the current PC BIOS wouldn't know how to recognize or work with a GPT. But every GPT comes with a so-called "Safety" or "Guarding" MBR in sector 0.Apple already uses a hybrid version of the MBR to allow them to boot Windows on their Intel Macs (aka Boot Camp). Couldn't something similar be done to allow the PC BIOS to recognize and boot from a partition in, say, the first 1 GB of a 3GB or larger drive? I've got more questions such as where do 4K sectors fit into all of this. But it's probably time I just shut up and posted this. ;-) -irrational john

    Read the article

  • Unable to delete all partitions on flash drive using Windows 7 OS??

    - by irrational John
    Recently I purchased an ADATA C802 8GB flash drive. Since the drive was new I decided to run some of the HD Tune Pro (v4.50) performance tests on it, mostly just for the heck of it. To avoid accidently destroying data HD Tune refuses to write to a drive unless there are no partitions on the drive. If you do attempt to write to a drive with partitions, it posts the message "Writing is disabled. To enable writing please remove all partitions." As you would expect, the ADATA came formatted with a single primary FAT32 partition in the Master Boot Record. But a number of unexpected things happened when I attempted to delete that partition. The first thing I tried was to use the Windows 7 (64-bit) Disk Management tool (diskmgmt.msc) to delete the partition. It would not let me. The context menu choice to delete that volume was not available. Next I opened up a command prompt window with Admin authority and ran diskpart. Diskpart deleted the volume for me. However, when I attempted to run an HD Tune write test on the drive I still got the "Writing is disabled" message. Huh??? So I fired up a utility I have which allows viewing drives at the sector level and verified that the partition table in the Master Boot Record was empty. No partitions. Yet HD Tune still thought there were partitions on the drive? So why was I still getting the "Writing is disabled" message from HD Tune Pro? And why wouldn't the Windows 7 Disk Management tool let me change the partitions on this drive. After doing the above, I plugged the ADATA into my MacBook. I was then able to format it as either a GPT or MBR partitioned drive with no problems. I am not looking for suggestions on how to format this drive. I can do that. What I do not understand and was hoping I might get insight into is why this drive behaves so strangely under Windows 7? And BTW, what's up with HD Tune Pro? BTW, if I plug the drive I formatted on my MacBook back into my Windows 7 64-bit system I still run into road blocks with the Disk Management tool. For example, I cannot delete all the GPT partitions on the ADATA so I can convert it into an MBR drive. I following Microsoft's instructions, the instructions just do not work with this ADATA flash drive. Anyone know what's up with this? It makes no sense to me. Has something changed in Windows 7 (Vista)??

    Read the article

  • Radeon HD4850 serious issues when using DirectX 10

    - by ricsmania
    Hello, I have a problem with my video card. Whenever I run a DirectX 10 game, it works for a few seconds (10 or so) and then starts displaying nothing but big polygons. I have tested this with Crysis and Resident Evil 5, both have the same problems. The same games running under DirectX 9 work fine, except for some small black squares once in a while. I have the following specs: Asus P7P55D LE Intel Core i5 750 Sapphire Radeon HD4850 1GB 2x2GB Patriot Viper II Sector 5, DDR3 1600 MHz OCZ Stealth X Stream 500SXS 500W At first I thought it could be the video card overheating (it has stock cooling), but the game crashes even when it's running at 50 degrees C, and it's never been higher than 70. I also thought it could be the PSU, but as far as I know 500W is enough for this computer, especially because I haven't overclocked anything. My OS is Windows 7 X64 and I am using Catalyst 10.10, but I have also tried many older versions with no success. I don't think there is a problem with the card itself, or else it wouldn't run DirectX 9 games I believe. I have spent many hours searching for a solution but I couldn't, so any help is appreciated. Thank you. EDIT: I did some further investigation about the problem, and it seems taspeotis was right, it might be related to memory. I slightly underclocked the memory from 993 to 965 MHz and the problem went away completely. Both the black squares using DirectX 9 and the weird polygons using DirectX 10. I was using RE DirectX 10 Benchmark, as it consistently crashed around the same point, and now I can play the full benchmark with no artifacts at all. Unfortunately, the underclock has an obvious hit in performance. Although it's not critical, it's definitely noticeable. So, if the video memory test software showed no erros, but the card needs an underclock to work, what might be the problem? Temperature? Voltage? By the way, I couldn't find what the default voltage for this card is. And what is a good software to try and increase it? I tried Ati Tray Tools but it has a bug that increases the clock speed dramatically whenever I change something in the Overclock tab, so I'm afraid it might fry my card. Worst case scenario, if I don't find I solution I will try to slightly increase the GPU clock to compensate for the memory clock. Thank you again.

    Read the article

  • Linux software Raid 10 no superblock

    - by Shoshomiga
    I have a software raid 10 with 6 x 2tb hard drives (raid 1 for /boot), ubuntu 10.04 is the os. I had a raid controller failure that put 2 drives out of sync, crashed the system and initially the os didnt boot up and went into initramfs instead, saying that drives were busy but I eventually managed to bring the raid up by stopping and assembling the drives. The os booted up and said that there were filesystem errors, I chose to ignore because it would remount the fs in read-only mode if there was a problem. Everything seemed to be working fine and the 2 drives started to rebuild, I was sure that it was a sata controller failure because I had dma errors in my log files. The os crashed soon after that with ext errors. Now its not bringing up the raid, it says that there is no superblock on /dev/sda2. I tried to reassemble manually with all the device names but it still would not bring up the raid 10 complaining about the missing superblock on sda2, and sda1 was also dropped from the raid 1. When I did examine on the raid10 it says that 1 of the initially failed drives is a spare, the other is spare rebuilding and sda2 is removed. It seems that sda decided to fail right when the system was vulnerable to it because when I boot up a live cd it spews out sda unrecoverable read failures. I have been trying to fix this all week but I'm not sure where to go with this now, I ordered more hard drives because I didn't have a complete backup, but its too late for that now and the only thing I could do is mirror all the hard drives onto the new ones (I'm not sure whether sda was mirrored without errors). On the internet I read that you can recover from this by recreating the array with the same options as when it was made, however because sda is failing I cant use it and I don't want to risk using its mirror instead, so I'm waiting to get another hard drive. I'm also not sure whether to include the out of sync drives or if I can actually use those instead to recover the array. Sorry if this is a mess to read but I've been trying to fix this all day and its late at night now, any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I also did a memtest and changed the motherboard in addition to everything else. EDIT: This is my partition layout Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0009c34a Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 511999 254976 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 512000 3904980991 1952234496 83 Linux /dev/sdb3 3904980992 3907028991 1024000 82 Linux swap / Solaris

    Read the article

  • Fix single entry from mbr

    - by Sander
    I use EasyBCD to manage my tripleboot of (1) Windows Server 2008 R2, (2) Windows 7 Professional and (3) Ubuntu Linux. While trying to change the order of my boot menu I ended up losing the Windows Server entry. Luckily I had a boot menu backup (.bcd file) that allowed me to restore my boot menu using EasyBCD. However, when I now select the Windows Server option in my boot menu the Windows Server Recovery Environment starts up. So I have to select language/keyboard layout/etc. and then I have 3 options as shown in the image below. . My goal is to fix the one corrupted Windows Server entry from my boot menu without messing up or losing the two other ones. I'm guessing the Recovery Console (Command Prompt) is the next step and that I will be needing bootrec.exe. But when consulting this page: Use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows (about half way down there's a link that shows the bootrec.exe options) I'm getting uncertain. The page lists 4 options for bootrec.exe : /FixMbr /FixBoot /ScanOs /RebuildBcd What option do I need to fix just the server entry of my boot menu? Thanks in advance, Sander P.S. All three OS's are on the same physical disk (3 different partitions). Disk layout: System reserved (primary partition, 100 MB) Windows 7 (primary parition, 150 GB) Windows Server 2008 (primary partition, 150 GB) Extended partition (linux partitions (/,/swap,/home), 150GB + data partition, 150 GB) P.P.S. This is what my boot menu looks like using EasyBCD (Detailed/Debug mode) on my Windows 7 installation. Windows Boot Manager -------------------- identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1 description Windows Boot Manager locale en-US inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e} default {93f90e43-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} resumeobject {93f90e3e-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} displayorder {93f90e43-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} {93f90e3f-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} {93f90e46-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d} timeout 10 displaybootmenu Yes Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {93f90e43-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume3 path \Windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows Server 2008 R2 - Standard locale en-US inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7} recoverysequence {93f90e44-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} recoveryenabled Yes osdevice partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume3 systemroot \Windows resumeobject {93f90e42-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} nx OptOut Windows Boot Loader ------------------- identifier {93f90e3f-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} device partition=C: path \Windows\system32\winload.exe description Windows 7 - Professional locale nl-NL inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7} recoverysequence {93f90e40-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} recoveryenabled Yes osdevice partition=C: systemroot \Windows resumeobject {93f90e3e-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} nx OptIn Real-mode Boot Sector --------------------- identifier {93f90e46-cae8-11df-b05a-c9177e705936} device partition=C: path \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr description Ubuntu 10.04 - Lucid Lynx

    Read the article

  • USB hard drive not recognized

    - by user318772
    Until recently I was using the portable USB hard drive in my win 7 laptop and ubuntu laptop. Suddenly now none of the laptops recognize it. This is the message i get by doing lsusb... Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1058:1010 Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Elements External HDD Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 003: ID 0b97:7762 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 SmartCard Reader Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0b97:7761 O2 Micro, Inc. Oz776 1.1 Hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 413c:a005 Dell Computer Corp. Internal 2.0 Hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub fdisk doesn't show the external hard drive Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0004a743 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 2048 152111103 76054528 83 Linux /dev/sda2 152113150 156301311 2094081 5 Extended /dev/sda5 152113152 156301311 2094080 82 Linux swap / Solaris when i do testdisk TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER <[email protected]> http://www.cgsecurity.org TestDisk is free software, and comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. Select a media (use Arrow keys, then press Enter): >Disk /dev/sda - 80 GB / 74 GiB - ST980825AS Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB testdisk-> Intel->analyse I get partition error Disk /dev/sdb - 2199 GB / 2048 GiB - CHS 2097152 64 32 Current partition structure: Partition Start End Size in sectors Partition: Read error Here is the output of dmesg [11948.549171] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.549177] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.549181] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.550489] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.550495] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550499] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.550505] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550508] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.550514] Info fld=0x0 [11948.550519] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.550525] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.550531] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.550534] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 [11948.551870] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Invalid command failure [11948.551876] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551880] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [11948.551885] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551888] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [11948.551895] Info fld=0x0 [11948.551900] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] [11948.551905] Add. Sense: Invalid command operation code [11948.551911] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: [11948.551914] Read(16): 88 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 If possible i want to retrive at least some data from this hard drive. If thats not possible I would like to format it and use it. Any help will be greatly appreciated Thanks

    Read the article

  • Can't recover hard drive

    - by BreezyChick89
    My drive got corrupt after a thunderstorm. It used to be 1 partition of 2.5tb but now it shows 2 partitions. It's weird because 300gig free space is about how much it had before corrupting, but it was part of the first partition. I tried $ sudo resize2fs -f /dev/sdb1 Resizing the filesystem on /dev/sdb1 to 536870911 (4k) blocks. resize2fs: Can't read an block bitmap while trying to resize /dev/sdb1 Please run 'e2fsck -fy /dev/sdb1' to fix the filesystem after the aborted resize operation. sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdb1 e2fsck 1.42 (29-Nov-2011) The filesystem size (according to the superblock) is 610471680 blocks The physical size of the device is 536870911 blocks Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt! Abort? n .... Error reading block 537395215 (Invalid argument) while reading inode and block bitmaps. Ignore error<y>? yes Force rewrite<y>? yes Error writing block 537395215 (Invalid argument) while reading inode and block bitmaps. Ignore error<y>? yes ... A lot of these. I can't use e2fsck -y because the first question aborts if I say "y". If I put a weight on the 'y' key it fails because none of the errors were really fixed. I asked this question before and tried using gparted but gparted fails because the first thing it does is: e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1 giving the same error. The disk status says healthy. There are no bad blocks. This is very frustrating because I can see the data in testdisk and it looks like it's all there. I already bought another 2.5tb drive and made a clone using dd. The next step if I can't fix this is to wipe that drive and just move the data with testdisk, but it seems certain folders will copy infinitely until the drive is full because of symlinks or errors so it's also a difficult option. sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sdb: 2500.5 GB, 2500495958016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 304001 cylinders, total 4883781168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x0005da5e Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 2048 4294969342 2147483647+ 83 Linux sudo badblocks -b 4096 -n -o badfile /dev/sdb 610471680 536870911 badfile is empty I also tried changing the superblock with "fsck -b" but all of them are the same.

    Read the article

  • Secure wipe of a hard drive using WinPE.

    - by Derek Meier
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} The wiping of a hard drive is typically seen as fairly trivial.  There are tons of applications out there that will do it for you.  Point àClickàGlobal-Thermo Nuclear War. However, these applications are typically expensive or unreliable.  Plus, if you have a laptop or lack a secondary computer to put the hard drive into – how on earth do you wipe it quickly and easily while still conforming to a 7 pass rule (this means that every possible bit on the hard drive is set to 0 and then to 1 seven times in a row)?  Yes, one pass should be enough – as turning every bit from a 1 to a zero will wipe the data from existence.  But, we’re dealing with tinfoil hat wearing types here people.  DOD standards dictate at least 3 passes, and typically 7 is the preferred amount.  I’m not going to argue about data recovery.  I have been told to use 7 passes, and so I will.  So say we all! Quite some time ago I used to make a BartPE XP-based boot cd for the original purpose of securely wiping data.  I loved BartPE and integrated so many plugins into my builds that I could do pretty much anything directly from CD.  Reset passwords, uninstall security updates, wipe drives, chkdsk, remove spyware, install Windows, etc.  However, with the newer multi-core systems and new chipsets coming out from vendors, I found that BartPE was rather difficult to keep up to date.  I have since switched to WinPE 3.0 (Windows Preinstallation Environment). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748933(WS.10).aspx  It is fairly simple to create your own CD, and I have made a few helpful scripts to easily integrate drivers and rebuild the ISO file for you.  I’ll cover making your own boot CD utilizing WinPE 3.0 in a later post – I can talk about WinPE forever and need to collect my thoughts!!  My wife loves talking about WinPE almost as much as talking about Doctor Who.  Wait, did I say loves?  Hmmmm, I may have meant loathes. The topic at hand?  Right. Wiping a drive! I must have drunk too much coffee this morning.  I like to use a simple batch script that calls a combination of diskpart.exe from Microsoft® and Sdelete.exe created by our friend Mark Russinovich. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx All of the following files are located within the same directory on my WinPE boot CD. Here are the contents of wipe_me.bat, script.txt and sdelete.reg. Wipe_me.bat:   @echo off echo. echo     I will completely wipe the local hard drives using echo     7 individual wipes. The data will NOT echo     be recoverable.  I will begin after you pause echo. echo Preparing to partition and format disk. Diskpart.exe /s "script.txt" REM I was annoyed by not having a completely automated script – and Sdelete wants you to accept the license agreement. So, I added a registry file to skip doing that. regedit /S sdelete.reg rem sdelete options selected are: -p (passes) -c (zero free space) -s (recurse through subdirectories, if any) -z (clean free space) [drive letter] sdelete.exe -p 7 -c -s -z c: echo. echo Pass seven complete. echo. echo Wiping complete. Pause exit script.txt: list disk select disk 0 clean create partition primary select partition 1 active format FS=NTFS LABEL="New Volume" QUICK assign letter=c exit *Notes: This script assumes one local hard drive – change the script as you see fit for your environment.  The clean command will overwrite the master boot record and any hidden sector information – so be careful!   sdelete.reg: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Sysinternals\SDelete] "EulaAccepted"=dword:00000001   With a combination of WinPE, sdelete.exe and your friendly neighborhood text editor you can begin wiping drives as quickly and easily as possible!  I hope this helps, I get asked this a lot in my line of work. Best of luck, Derek

    Read the article

  • Feedback on "market manipulation", a peripheral game mechanic for a satirical MMO

    - by BerndBrot
    This question asks for feedback on a specific game-mechanic. Since there is not one right feedback on a game mechanic, I tried to provide enough context and guidelines to still make it possible for users to rate answers and to accept an answer as the best answer (following these criteria from Writer.SE's meta website). Please comment if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the question in that regard. So, let's begin with the game itself and some of its elements which are relevant for this question. Context I'm working on a satirical, text-based multiplayer adventure and role-playing game set in modern-day London. The game resolves around the concept of sin and features a myriad of (venomous) allusions to all the things that go wrong in this world. Players can choose between character classes like bullshit artist (consultant), bankster, lawyer, mobster, celebrity, politician, etc. In order to complete the game, the player has to live so sinfully with regard to any of the seven deadly sins that a demon is willing to offer them a contract of sponsorship. On their quest to live a sinful live, characters explore more and more locations of modern-day London (on a GoogleMap), fight "monsters" like insurance sales agents or Jehovah's Witnesses, and complete quests, like building a PowerPoint presentation out of marketing buzz words or keeping up a number of substance abuse effects in order to progress on the gluttony path. Battles are turn based with both combatants having a deck of cards, with which they try to make their enemy give in to temptations of all sorts. Tempted enemies sometimes become contacts (an item drop mechanic), which can be exploited for various benefits, depending on their area of influence (finance, underworld, bureaucracy, etc.), level of influence, and kind of sway that the player has over them (bribed, seduced, threatened, etc.) Once a contract has been exploited, the player loses that contact. Most actions require turns. Turns are limited, but refill each day. Criteria A number of peripheral game mechanics are supposed to represent real world abuses and mischief in a humorous way integrate real world data and events to strengthen the feeling of relevance of the game's humor with regard to real world problems add fun ways of interacting with other players add ways for players to express themselves through game-play Market manipulation is one such peripheral game mechanic and should fulfill all of these goals. Market manipulation This is my initial design of the mechanic: Players can enter the London Stock Exchange (LSE) (without paying a turn) LSE displays the stock prices of a number of companies in industries like weapons or tobacco as well as some derivatives based on wheat and corn. The stock prices are calculated based on the actual stock prices of these companies and derivatives (in real time) any market manipulations that were conducted by the players any market corrections of the system Players can buy and sell shares with cash, a resource in the game, at current in-game market value (without paying a turn). Players can manipulate the market, i.e. let the price of a share either rise or fall, by some amount, over a certain period of time. Manipulating the market requires 1 turn A contact in the financial sector (see above). The higher the level of influence of the contact, the stronger the effect of the manipulation on the stock price, and/or the shorter it takes for the manipulation to manifest itself. Market manipulation also adds a crime to the player's record. (There are a multitude of ways to take care of that, but it is still another "cost" of market manipulations.) The system continuously corrects market manipulations by letting the in-game prices converge towards their real world counterparts at a rate of 2% of the difference between the two per hour. Because of this market correction mechanism, pushing up prices (and screwing down prices) becomes increasingly difficult the higher (lower) the price already is. Whenever food prices reach a certain level, in-game stories are posted about hunger catastrophes happening somewhere far, far away (maybe with links to real world news stories). Whenever a player sells a certain number of shares with a sufficiently high margin, they are mentioned in that day's in-game financial news. Since the number of stock options is very limited, players will inevitably collide in their efforts to manipulate the market in their favor. Hopefully, it will also be a fun side-arena for guilds and covenants to fight each other. Question(s) What do you think of this mechanism given the criteria for peripheral game mechanics that I specified for my game? Do you have any ideas how the mechanic could be improved with regard to these criteria (or otherwise)? Could it be improved to allow for more expressive game-play, or involve an allusion to some other real world madness (like short selling, leveraging, or some other banking magic)? Are there any game-theoretic problems with this mechanic, like maybe certain dominant individual strategies that, collectively, lead to every player profiting and thus eliminating the idea of market manipulation PVP? Also, if you like (or dislike) this question, feel free to participate in the discussion on GDSE meta: "Should we be more lax with regard to SE's question/answer format to make game design questions possible?"

    Read the article

  • System locking up with suspicious messages about hard disk

    - by Chris Conway
    My system has started behaving strangely, intermittently locking up. I see messages like the following in syslog: Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078156] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078163] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000000 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078167] sr 2:0:0:0: CDB: Test Unit Ready: 00 00 00 00 00 00 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078182] ata3.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078184] res 50/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x1 (device error) Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078188] ata3.00: status: { DRDY } Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080887] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080890] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000000 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080893] sr 2:0:0:0: CDB: Test Unit Ready: 00 00 00 00 00 00 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080905] ata3.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080906] res 50/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x1 (device error) Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080910] ata3.00: status: { DRDY } And then this: Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000798] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000804] ata1.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000814] ata1.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000815] res 40/00:00:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout) Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000819] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000825] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:01 claypool kernel: [ 6549.360324] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:06 claypool kernel: [ 6554.008091] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 18 23:14:06 claypool kernel: [ 6554.008103] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:11 claypool kernel: [ 6559.372246] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:16 claypool kernel: [ 6564.020228] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 18 23:14:16 claypool kernel: [ 6564.020235] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:21 claypool kernel: [ 6569.380109] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.460243] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486595] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486601] ata1.00: retrying FLUSH 0xea Emask 0x4 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486939] ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486952] ata1: EH complete Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3910]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3908]: (CRON) error (grandchild #3910 failed with exit status 1) Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool postfix/sendmail[3925]: fatal: open /etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directory Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3908]: (root) MAIL (mailed 1 byte of output; but got status 0x004b, #012) Nov 18 23:39:01 claypool CRON[4200]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -n 200 -r -0 rm) There are no messages marked after 23:39. When I next tried to use the machine, it would not return from the screensaver (blank screen), nor switch to another terminal, and I had to hard reboot it. [UPDATE] The output of smartctl is here. I had trouble getting this, because / is being mounted read-only (?!), which prevents most applications from running. Also, it may not be related, but I have the following worrying messages in dmesg: [ 10.084596] k8temp 0000:00:18.3: Temperature readouts might be wrong - check erratum #141 [ 10.098477] i2c i2c-0: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x600 [ 10.098483] ACPI: resource nForce2_smbus [io 0x0700-0x073f] conflicts with ACPI region SM00 [??? 0x00000700-0x0000073f flags 0x30] [ 10.098486] ACPI: This conflict may cause random problems and system instability [ 10.098487] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver [ 10.098509] i2c i2c-1: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x700 [ 10.112570] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [ 10.155329] atk: Resources not safely usable due to acpi_enforce_resources kernel parameter [ 10.161506] it87: Found IT8712F chip at 0x290, revision 8 [ 10.161517] it87: VID is disabled (pins used for GPIO) [ 10.161527] it87: in3 is VCC (+5V) [ 10.161528] it87: in7 is VCCH (+5V Stand-By) [ 10.161560] ACPI: resource it87 [io 0x0295-0x0296] conflicts with ACPI region ECRE [??? 0x00000290-0x000002af flags 0x45] [ 10.161562] ACPI: This conflict may cause random problems and system instability [ 10.161564] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver [UPDATE 2] I swapped in a new SATA cable, per Phil's suggestion. The current output of smartctl is here, if it helps. [UPDATE 3] I don't think the cable fixed it. The system hasn't locked up yet, but my media player crashed a few minutes ago and I have the following in the syslog: Nov 20 16:07:17 claypool kernel: [ 2294.400033] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084581] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084588] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084592] ata1: hard resetting link I get the following response from smartctl: $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda [sudo] password for chris: sudo: Can't open /var/lib/sudo/chris/0: Read-only file system smartctl 5.40 2010-03-16 r3077 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: /0:0:0:0 Version: scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=47 offset=50 bd_len=46 >> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

    Read the article

  • Off The Beaten Path—Three Things Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful For

    - by Christine Randle
    By: Jim Lein, Senior Director, Oracle Accelerate Last Sunday I went on a walkabout.  That’s when I just step out the door of my Colorado home and hike through the mountains for hours with no predetermined destination. I favor “social trails”, the unmapped routes pioneered by both animal and human explorers.  These tracks  are usually more challenging than established, marked routes and you can’t be 100% sure of where you’re going to end up. But I’ve found the rewards to be much greater. For awhile, I pondered on how—depending upon your perspective—the current economic situation worldwide could be viewed as either a classic “the glass is half empty” or a “the glass is half full” scenario. Midsize companies buy Oracle to grow and so I’m continually amazed and fascinated by the success stories our customers relate to me.  Oracle’s successful midsize companies are growing via innovation, agility, and opportunity. For them, the glass isn’t half full—it’s overflowing. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Innovation The sun angling through the pine trees reminded me of a conversation with a European customer a year ago May.  You might not recognize the name but, chances are, your local evening weather report relies on this company’s weather observation, monitoring and measurement products.  For decades, the company was recognized in its industry for product innovation, but its recent rapid growth comes from tailoring end to end product and service solutions based on the needs of distinctly different customer groups across industrial, public sector, and defense sectors.  Hours after that phone call I was walking my dog in a local park and came upon a small white plastic box sprouting short antennas and dangling by a nylon cord from a tree branch.  I cut it down. The name of that customer’s company was stamped on the housing. “It’s a radiosonde from a high altitude weather balloon,” he told me the next day. “Keep it as a souvenir.”  It sits on my fireplace mantle and elicits many questions from guests. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Agility In July, I had another interesting discussion with the CFO of an Asia-Pacific company which owns and operates a large portfolio of leisure assets. They are best known for their epic outdoor theme parks. However, their primary growth today is coming from a chain of indoor amusement centers in the USA where billiards, bowling, and laser tag take the place of roller coasters, kiddy rides, and wave pools. With mountains and rivers right out my front door, I’m not much for theme parks, but I’ll take a spirited game of laser tag any day.  This company has grown dramatically since first implementing Oracle ERP more than a decade ago. Their profitable expansion into a completely foreign market is derived from the ability to replicate proven and efficient best business practices across diverse operating environments.  They recently went live on Oracle’s Fusion HCM and Taleo. Their CFO explained to me how, with thousands of employees in three countries, Fusion HCM and Taleo would enable them to remain incredibly agile by acting on trends linking individual employee performance to their management, establishing and maintaining those best practices. Growing Midsize Companies are Thankful for: Opportunity I have three GPS apps on my iPhone. I use them mainly to keep track of my stats—distance, time, and vertical gain. However, every once in awhile I need to find the most efficient route back home before dark from my current location (notice I didn’t use the word “lost”). In August I listened in on an interview with the CFO of another European company that designs and delivers telematics solutions—the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics—for managing the mobile workforce. These solutions enable customers to achieve evolutionary step-changes in their performance and service delivery. Forgive the overused metaphor, but this is route optimization on steroids.  The company’s executive team saw an opportunity in this emerging market and went “all in”. Consequently, they are being rewarded with tremendous growth results and market domination by providing the ability for their clients to collect and analyze performance information related to fuel consumption, service workforce safety, and asset productivity. This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for health, family, friends, and a career with an innovative company that helps companies leverage top tier software to drive and manage growth. And I’m thankful to have learned the lesson that good things happen when you get off the beaten path—both when hiking and when forging new routes through a complex world economy. Halfway through my walkabout on Sunday, after scrambling up a long stretch of scree-covered hill, I crested a ridge with an obstructed view of 14,265 ft Mt Evans just a few miles to the west.  There, nowhere near a house or a trail, someone had placed a wooden lounge chair. Its wood was worn and faded but it was sturdy. I had lunch and a cold drink in my pack. Opportunity knocked and I seized it. Happy Thanksgiving.  

    Read the article

  • Oracle Database 12c Spatial: Vector Performance Acceleration

    - by Okcan Yasin Saygili-Oracle
    Most business information has a location component, such as customer addresses, sales territories and physical assets. Businesses can take advantage of their geographic information by incorporating location analysis and intelligence into their information systems. This allows organizations to make better decisions, respond to customers more effectively, and reduce operational costs – increasing ROI and creating competitive advantage. Oracle Database, the industry’s most advanced database,  includes native location capabilities, fully integrated in the kernel, for fast, scalable, reliable and secure spatial and massive graph applications. It is a foundation for deploying enterprise-wide spatial information systems and locationenabled business applications. Developers can extend existing Oracle-based tools and applications, since they can easily incorporate location information directly in their applications, workflows, and services. Spatial Features The geospatial data features of Oracle Spatial and Graph option support complex geographic information systems (GIS) applications, enterprise applications and location services applications. Oracle Spatial and Graph option extends the spatial query and analysis features included in every edition of Oracle Database with the Oracle Locator feature, and provides a robust foundation for applications that require advanced spatial analysis and processing in the Oracle Database. It supports all major spatial data types and models, addressing challenging business-critical requirements from various industries, including transportation, utilities, energy, public sector, defense and commercial location intelligence. Network Data Model Graph Features The Network Data Model graph explicitly stores and maintains a persistent data model withnetwork connectivity and provides network analysis capability such as shortest path, nearest neighbors, within cost and reachability. It loads partitioned networks into memory on demand, overcomingthe limitations of in-memory analysis. Partitioning massive networks into manageable sub-networkssimplifies the network analysis. RDF Semantic Graph Features RDF Semantic Graph has native support for World Wide Web Consortium standards. It has open, scalable, and secure features for storing RDF/OWL ontologies anddata; native inference with OWL 2, SKOS and user-defined rules; and querying RDF/OWL data withSPARQL 1.1, Java APIs, and SPARQLgraph patterns in SQL. Video: Oracle Spatial and Graph Overview Oracle spatial is embeded on oracle database product. So ,we can use oracle installer (OUI).The Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) is used to install Oracle Database software. OUI is a graphical user interface utility that enables you to view the Oracle software that is installed on your machine, install new Oracle Database software, and delete Oracle software that you no longer need to use. Online Help is available to guide you through the installation process. One of the installation options is to create a database. If you select database creation, OUI automatically starts Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to guide you through the process of creating and configuring a database. If you do not create a database during installation, you must invoke DBCA after you have installed the software to create a database. You can also use DBCA to create additional databases. For installing Oracle Database 12c you may check the Installing Oracle Database Software and Creating a Database tutorial under the Oracle Database 12c 2-Day DBA Series.You can always check if spatial is available in your database using  "select comp_id, version, status, comp_name from dba_registry where comp_id='SDO';"   One of the most notable improvements with Oracle Spatial and Graph 12c can be seen in performance increases in vector data operations. Enabling the Spatial Vector Acceleration feature (available with the Spatial option) dramatically improves the performance of commonly used vector data operations, such as sdo_distance, sdo_aggr_union, and sdo_inside. With 12c, these operations also run more efficiently in parallel than in prior versions through the use of metadata caching. For organizations that have been facing processing limitations, these enhancements enable developers to make a small set of configuration changes and quickly realize significant performance improvements. Results include improved index performance, enhanced geometry engine performance, optimized secondary filter optimizations for Spatial operators, and improved CPU and memory utilization for many advanced vector functions. Vector performance acceleration is especially beneficial when using Oracle Exadata Database Machine and other large-scale systems. Oracle Spatial and Graph vector performance acceleration builds on general improvements available to all SDO_GEOMETRY operations in these areas: Caching of index metadata, Concurrent update mechanisms, and Optimized spatial predicate selectivity and cost functions. These optimizations enable more efficient use of: CPU, Memory, and Partitioning Resulting in substantial query performance improvements.UsageTo accelerate the performance of spatial operators, it is recommended that you set the SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION database system parameter to the value TRUE. (This parameter is authorized for use only by licensed Oracle Spatial users, and its default value is FALSE.) You can set this parameter for the whole system or for a single session. To set the value for the whole system, do either of the following:Enter the following statement from a suitably privileged account:   ALTER SYSTEM SET SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE;Add the following to the database initialization file (xxxinit.ora):   SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE;To set the value for the current session, enter the following statement from a suitably privileged account:   ALTER SESSION SET SPATIAL_VECTOR_ACCELERATION = TRUE; Checkout the complete list of new features on Oracle.com @ http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/options/spatialandgraph/overview/index.html Spatial and Graph Data Sheet (PDF) Spatial and Graph White Paper (PDF)

    Read the article

  • Meet our 2009 Oracle Graduates in South Africa

    - by anca.rosu
    Focusing on the broader Oracle community, Oracle South Africa initiated its first skills development programme in May 1988. Since its inception the programme has developed and improved and every year more graduates are taken on board. The Oracle Graduate Programme is made up of specific learning paths designed around customer, partner and Oracle specifications and is structured to meet the urgent skills requirements in the Oracle “economy”. The training programmes have a specific duration and incorporate both theoretical and practical application of Oracle product sets. It is aimed at creating: Meaningful employment for graduates; Learning opportunities for individuals within the organization so that career growth opportunities are exploited to the fullest; Capacity building for small enterprises which is aligned to Oracle’s Enterprise Development Programme Meet our five graduates who joined us in December 2008 and have spent over a year with us! Let’s get their initial feedback on the graduate programme and on their assignment to Jordan. Lector   On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The Oracle Graduate Programme is an experience of a life time. I would not trade it for anything. It’s challenging and rewarding. I am proud and happy to be in an organization like Oracle” On the assignment in Jordan: "Friendly, welcoming people, world class instructors always willing to go the extra mile. What more can you ask for?"   Lungile On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “I joined Oracle as part of the graduate intake for pre-sales in order to develop my skills and knowledge. Working at Oracle has been an overwhelmingly positive experience as it has encouraged me to progress with my personal development. I am hugely grateful. It has been a great challenge and an awesome opportunity.” On the assignment to Jordan: “Going to Jordan was a great opportunity and the experience of a lifetime. The people were very welcoming and friendly. The culture was totally different from ours - the food, the clothes and the weather. It was an amazingly different experience to work from Sunday to Thursday with Friday and Saturday as the weekend.” Thabo On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Life is an infinite learning path. I truly value growth. I believe for one to grow, one needs to be challenged to your full potential. The Oracle Graduate Programme offers real growth – and so much more.” On the assignment to Jordan: “I was amazed by the cultural differences. I now understood that to be part of the global community, I must embrace our similarities and understand our differences.”   Albeauty On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “Responsibility, dedication, focus and taking initiative … these are the key points I learned from Oracle. It is such an honour to finally be part of the Oracle family. The graduate programme itself was a great experience as I managed to learn how Oracle operates – it has been the highlight of my year. I believe that my hard work will assist in the growth of the company.” On the Jordan assignment: “A memory worth embracing. Going to Jordan was a great opportunity as I learned a lot with respect to integration between different cultures and getting to adapt to all things different. I, along with almost every other graduate, discovered that Oracle is far more than a database company. Now I know there is far more to the ‘Big Red’ name.” Emmanuel On the Oracle Graduate Programme: “The programme gave me invaluable exposure to the ICT sector and also provided an opportunity to travel, network and exchange ideas with others. The formal training helped me to improve my presentation skills and gave me a better understanding of business etiquette and communication.” On the assignment to Jordan: “It was my first trip abroad. It was a great chance to get to know each other. I had the opportunity to share ideas, share personal stuff as a team. We met experts who gave us superb training in Oracle Technologies. It was great.”   If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact  [email protected].  You can find our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com.   Technorati Tags: Oracle community,South Africa,Graduate Programme,Jordan,Technologies

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 29 30 31 32 33 34 35  | Next Page >