External hard drives and sound quality

Map...

I'm the last guy to ask about image or video file deterioration.

As there's tons of variables in my case (s), I've mixed and pulled in and out drives now into and out of several boxes over the years, all I can account for is the audio side of things getting duller and duller. Again, side by sides show it well. Only the oldest Files I have stored way back from Napster's free file trading deally seem most affected.

Kijanki
yeah... Gatesware. 100% on every box and notebook.

...and all govt boxes too. Meaning over priced and low end units usually. Everytime I get one I'm grateful for it, but have to upgrade a good bit of it for it to be stable and as responsive as I prefer.

lately they'vve come with ACRONIS loaded onto a hidden partition, with an image of the fresh install of OS. A re-do takes only 15-30 min. A full re-do and reload of all my accessiblity software and fav apps takes longer. So I've begun doing an image of the partition once fully restored onto a separate drive, and thereafter simply clone to each successive drive as needed. Takes about an hour, front to back... inst the HDD and loading the completed image.

if you don't mind things slowing down a bit, and are keeping all the data off the OS drive, you can go a couple years I suppose. I've done that once... my oldest now retired box has 4yrs or more on it, maybe five, without wiping & reloading. it's a JIC box anyhow.

With windows it makes sense on the larger discs 500GB & up, to partition. Error checking and defragging then take way less time... and the data is easier to recover and back up.

It's simply what I did and do, until high functioning accessibility software makers take aim at Macs.... which likely isn't going to happen.

maybe it's like driving a stick or an automatic... once you get into it, it's OK.

it is what it is.

Richard_stacy - I completely forgot about laptops. It's good to hear that it can be done successfully - I might need it one day (wife uses laptop).

Blindjim - the most important that you can manage it over long time. Some things are better in Windows some in Mac. Friend of mine uses Dragon Naturally Speaking (Windows program) on the MAC instead of Mac Speech that is based on the same engine, because it works better for her. Multiple Sclerosis affected vision and her hands are shaking a lot.
I use 1TB drive but with close to 1,000 CDs in ALAC it is only 300GB. I keep second identical backup drive at work but am still worrying about something going very wrong during backup.

Kijanki: Fat32 is garbage. Using non-journaled format is asking for a disaster.

Excellent point. One way in which such a disaster could happen is if power were to drop out at exactly the wrong moment. The file table could be corrupted, resulting in the entire contents of the drive being lost.

Kijanki: If bits would "decay" then checksum errors would be reported all the time with hundreds of thousand of files on computer, compressed files (including jpegs) would be corrupted etc.

Agreed 100%.

Blindjim: With windows it makes sense on the larger discs 500GB & up, to partition. Error checking and defragging then take way less time... and the data is easier to recover and back up.

Also, partitioning can make the computer faster and more responsive. Read and write times for files near the "beginning" of a hard drive (corresponding to the outermost parts of the platters) are typically about twice as fast as read and write times for files near the "end" of the drive (corresponding to the innermost parts of the platters). The reason being that since the platters are spinning at fixed rpm's, tangential velocity is much faster near the outer edge than near the inner edge.

Since the operating system and program files typically consume just a very small fraction of the size of a modern hard drive, it therefore makes sense to put them on a relatively small partition that is located at the "beginning" of the drive.

Blindjim: If you don't mind things slowing down a bit, and are keeping all the data off the OS drive, you can go a couple years I suppose. I've done that once... my oldest now retired box has 4yrs or more on it, maybe five, without wiping & reloading. it's a JIC box anyhow.

While it is very common for Windows PC's to become increasingly sluggish over time, that need not happen if the right practices are followed. I have five Windows XP PC's in my house, most of them a few years old, and one that I built 7 years ago. I have never had to do an os reinstall, and they all work as well as when they were new. See the second of my two posts dated 11/22/09 in this thread for what I attribute that to.

Best regards,
-- Al

AL

Like I said it is what it is.. hence some of what I’ve said might be contingent on my use of the Accessibility softw it’s ongoing updates etc. But whatever I’ve said here or elsewhere, even if I’m misinformed, or off the mark a mite, is always the truth as I know it to be.

Aren’t the File Allocation Tables written & rewritten as they are accessed such as a log of sorts?

I use NTFS again, now, exclusively but once lost 50 or so out of 200GB of audio files residing on a NTFS disc . The word I got from my tech who had to use NOPIX to get in there to them, said the permissins had been changed for access. I could see ‘em all but couldn’t run any of them.

That foloowed me finding out someone close by was onto my wireless router without my knowledge. I knew squat about wireless security back then, but a tad more now . It was some WAR driver sitting out on the street using my bandwidth covertly. They must have messed up something. Since I’ve made some changes on my WAP’s security features I’ve had no other issues.

That Geek told me if they’d all been on a FAT drive permissions wouldn’t have been able to be altered, or been a problem and access to them would have been a breeze unlike NTFS which has provisions for permissions to files..

Was he right on that point? I know most of that 50GB were ‘purchased’ files and many were lost altogether . Or scatter across a couple hundred CD compilations

Backing up files has a higher priority for me now

My exp with using govt. pc boxes and the accessibility software I have to run which enables me to see things better is a mixed bag.

With daily use on predominately one box I do the usual things for maintenance and ese of use. Erroe check usually each mo. Defrag about every 60 days. Keep the OS on a smaller active partition and the data on a logical partion and/or an outboard drive.

I run minimal processes. And aps at any one time. Add the full bank of RAM as much as is required.. 3-4GB on 32 bit sys.

I feel the main issue that accounts for a good number of incompatibility issues is the AI squared software. The Zoom Text screen reader magnifier. There are things it simply does not like. Times when it just won’t do what it’s supposed to do. It’s almost like a person. At best it’s a two edged sword. I’ve finally gotten to where the latest box which I’m turning into a dedicated server soon, works great. No bugs so far. Quick, responsive, etc. So I leve well enough alone there.

Even some of the Windows updates affect ZT. And after updating at MS website, a day or so later things tend to act differently. So in all, MS plays a role in all this too. Same thing with the ZT updates, though they normally fix the MS ones . At times. Amazing.

Aren’t the File Allocation Tables written & rewritten as they are accessed such as a log of sorts?

Jim -- I think you might be referring to the fact that FAT32, NTFS, and many other file systems store information about when each file was created, modified, and most recently accessed. However what I was referring to were the file tables that define the location(s) of each file on the drive, which are updated whenever a file is written or modified or moved. Those file table updates typically require considerably more than one write operation, and if a power dropout or system crash occurs during that sequence of writes, the file tables of non-journaling file systems such as FAT32 can easily become corrupt.

NTFS, on the other hand, is a journaling file system, which means that it keeps track of the changes it intends to make in a journal before committing them to the main file system. The journal normally allows a crash or power dropout to be easily and quickly recovered from, invisibly to the user.

Another disadvantage of FAT32, btw, is that defragmenting a FAT32 partition is a much slower process than defragmenting an NTFS partition of comparable size.

You are correct that NTFS incorporates file permissions as metadata, while FAT32 does not. I have no idea, though, how the problem you ran into might have happened, in which permissions were somehow changed. I've never heard of that happening before. Just your luck!

Best regards,
-- Al