'No Stupid Questions' (NSQ) Internet & Technology Edition

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It doesn't help with most laptops being designed with the assumption that Secure Boot will be enabled and it dictates a lot of how laptops boot as a result. That makes sense on a fully Microsoft designed platform like a Surface tablet but then again few OEMs ship Linux as a factory option anyway.

With your laptop getting hot, have you cleaned the exhaust port? That could be all it needs, and it just did a thermal shutdown to protect the hardware. Since it just showed a black screen and it sounds like you didn't even see the GRUB screen, a hardware fault is the most likely culprit so Windows tools wouldn't have been useful even if you weren't Linux based.
 
What is the feasibility of having fiber cable run all the way to the computer? Usually the fiber cables come into the house and then just turn into shitty copper cabling, but is there a port on a router and computer that takes fiber so i can get le epic 40 gigabit speeds? Does this stuff happen in data centers/industrial IT areas?
 
Overwrite7476 said:
What is the feasibility of having fiber cable run all the way to the computer? Usually the fiber cables come into the house and then just turn into shitty copper cabling, but is there a port on a router and computer that takes fiber so i can get le epic 40 gigabit speeds? Does this stuff happen in data centers/industrial IT areas?
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Yes and no.
It depends on the fiber and what protocol they're running. If it's just plain 40Gbit ethernet then yes, you could get a singlemode(probably) adapter and wire it directly into your PC. But I suspect most fiber ISPs don't run that and need some sort of translation(ONT).

Easier would be if the ONT supports 10G or 40G fiber or copper. And then you can get a 10/40G router or go to the PC.

If you go straight to the PC and the ONT has no other ports then you'd need to use PC as the router if you also wanted WiFi or to connect any other devices.

Usually the wide area fiber we use in datacenters comes into fiber termination devices which then hands it off to giant datacenter routers.

Sometimes between datacenters we'll have "Dark" fiber and if it's close enough we can hook that directly to a router with the proper adapter.
 
Kiwibros, I have fucked up. I was using a shitty SATA to USB drive enclosure for a 12 TB Seagate hard drive for important stuff. The enclosure shit itself dead and the computer (running Windows 10) will not recognize the drive with either cables or another identical enclosure. I know the drive partition is still there, the data is still there, I didn't go full retard and format it, and the hard drive itself is in perfect working condition mechanically. What are my options? How do I unfuck this?
 
Overwrite7476 said:
What is the feasibility of having fiber cable run all the way to the computer? Usually the fiber cables come into the house and then just turn into shitty copper cabling, but is there a port on a router and computer that takes fiber so i can get le epic 40 gigabit speeds? Does this stuff happen in data centers/industrial IT areas?
Click to expand...
Most ISP connections use something like GPON or XGS-PON with a single laser being split into 32 separate connections. Depending on how your ISP works you may be able to plug your fiber jumper into an SFP for a direct link, but most likely they have some sort of software provisioning that authorizes connectivity.

In the biz what you are asking for is a DIA, direct internet access connection. Such a connection is not going to be over a PON and will have its own dedicated laser. If you use a bidirectional SFP you can use just a single fiber but cool shit like high speed coherent DWDM requires two fibers - one for send, one for receive.

A DIA is usually a lot more expensive because it requires dedicated config and hardware rather than a ton of connections muxed into one.
 
Bass_Ackdwars said:
Kiwibros, I have fucked up. I was using a shitty SATA to USB drive enclosure for a 12 TB Seagate hard drive for important stuff. The enclosure shit itself dead and the computer (running Windows 10) will not recognize the drive with either cables or another identical enclosure. I know the drive partition is still there, the data is still there, I didn't go full retard and format it, and the hard drive itself is in perfect working condition mechanically. What are my options? How do I unfuck this?
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Worst case scenario, your bad SATA to USB adapter wrote junk data and damaged the partition somehow. Does the drive show up in Device Manager at all? Is it saying it needs formatted? Or is it not acting like it's responding at all?
 
Bass_Ackdwars said:
Kiwibros, I have fucked up. I was using a shitty SATA to USB drive enclosure for a 12 TB Seagate hard drive for important stuff. The enclosure shit itself dead and the computer (running Windows 10) will not recognize the drive with either cables or another identical enclosure. I know the drive partition is still there, the data is still there, I didn't go full retard and format it, and the hard drive itself is in perfect working condition mechanically. What are my options? How do I unfuck this?
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Replace everything one at a time. First use a different cable. Then use a difference enclosure. Then use a different hard drive with the new cable and enclosure. If none of that works, repeat with a different computer, preferably with a different OS.
 
MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti said:
Worst case scenario, your bad SATA to USB adapter wrote junk data and damaged the partition somehow. Does the drive show up in Device Manager at all? Is it saying it needs formatted? Or is it not acting like it's responding at all?
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It shows up in the device manager. I used a Sabrent enclosure and I bought a duplicate of it just in case an identical replacement would get things moving again. So two things show up, the Sabrent device itself and USB Mass Storage device. In Disk Management it says there is a single healthy partition. All options in Disk Management are grayed out.
Never Scored said:
Replace everything one at a time. First use a different cable. Then use a difference enclosure. Then use a different hard drive with the new cable and enclosure. If none of that works, repeat with a different computer, preferably with a different OS.
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I replaced the power supply on the original enclosure, then replaced the USB cable, then swapped the entire enclosure itself. The first enclosure itself died, it won't power on, but the hard drive still works and winds up just like it did before.

When I load it up on Windows it says 12 TB of free space and Healthy (GPT Protective Partitioning) Inspecting 'Properties' with right click says it is Master Boot Record partitioning. I'm not certain but I thought I mounted the damn thing in NTFS when I first started using it. When I use a non Sabrent regular SATA to USB cable without an enclosure it shows there is no partitioning at all on Windows in Disk Management.

When I load it up on Linux it says there is 12 TB of free space and unknown partitioning.

After replacing the enclosure failed took it to someone I know, said the Partition Table was fucked and he wasn't comfortable trying to recover the data, but then he told me to take it to DiskSavers... which is extortionately expensive. I can scrounge together the cash for that kind of service, but I'd be hurting for a long while afterward. With just a passing glance I can tell the 'Data Recovery' industry is full of snakes out for my money. I just want to know what my options really are.

EDIT: Just tried updating the Sabrent enclosure's firmware with a download from their website. Now the drive isn't showing as having a partition allocated at all. Still haven't done anything to the drive, just the enclosure...
 
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Bass_Ackdwars said:
After replacing the enclosure failed took it to someone I know, said the Partition Table was fucked and he wasn't comfortable trying to recover the data, but then he told me to take it to DiskSavers... which is extortinately expensive. I can scrounge together the money for that kind of service, but I'd be hurting for a long while afterward.
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Does it function like a normal drive when attached? Like, can you drag and drop files onto it? Are the files still there when you unplug it from the machine and plug it back in? If you do this, make sure to use tiny, byte sized txt files, because you don't want to overwrite the sectors your files were previously store in.

When files get deleted, the freed up sectors of the hard drive often still hold a lot of data related to the files until something new is written. This is because non volatile memory can hold logic gates in an on or off position for an indefinite amount of time, and deleting files doesn't actually switch all of them to on or off, it just flags those sectors as writable, so many logic gates will be left in the state that writing the original files to put them in until something else being written to the disk changes them. This is why it's important to do a through wipe before disposing of a hard drive. A program like Windows File Recovery can potentially recover files based on that data left behind in unallocated sectors, and it has an Okish success rate depending on the health of the hard drive. It is free in the Microsoft Store.

I don't know enough about partition tables to give you any advice about that. This is just some stuff I picked up trying to recover old deleted files.
 
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Never Scored said:
Did you try Windows File Recovery? It is free in the Microsoft Store.
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I'm running a version of Windows that doesn't have the Microsoft Store, Windows 10 LTSC, is there another way to get it or something similar?
 
Never Scored said:
Does it function like a normal drive when attached? Like, can you drag and drop files onto it? Are the files still there when you unplug it from the machine and plug it back in? If you do this, make sure to use tiny, byte sized txt files, because you don't want to overwrite the sectors your files were previously store in.

When files get deleted, the freed up sectors of the hard drive often still hold a lot of data related to the files until something new is written. This is because non volatile memory can hold logic gates in an on or off position for an indefinite amount of time, and deleting files doesn't actually switch all of them to on or off, it just flags those sectors as writable, so many logic gates will be left in the state that writing the original files to put them in until something else being written to the disk changes them. This is why it's important to do a through wipe before disposing of a hard drive. A program like Windows File Recovery can potentially recover files based on that data left behind in unallocated sectors, and it has an Okish success rate depending on the health of the hard drive. It is free in the Microsoft Store.

I don't know enough about partition tables to give you any advice about that. This is just some stuff I picked up trying to recover old deleted files.
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The drive itself isn't even mounting. It is treating it like it as uninitialized drive with nothing on it, and before I fucked around with the firmware of the Sabrent enclosure it seemed to be confused about what partitioning it had in the first place. The drive itself, from everything I can tell, is fine. Data wasn't deleted; It just can't be read.
Never Scored said:
Looks like Microsoft allows you to download it directly.
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I tried that, says it has to finish the download through the Microsoft store, then takes me right back to the website download page...
 
Bass_Ackdwars said:
The drive itself isn't even mounting. It is treating it like it as uninitialized drive with nothing on it, and before I fucked around with the firmware of the Sabrent enclosure it seemed to be confused about what partitioning it had in the first place. The drive itself, from everything I can tell, is fine. Data wasn't deleted; It just can't be read.

I tried that, says it has to finish the download through the Microsoft store, then takes me right back to the website download page...
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Ok I misinterpreted what you said earlier. I thought it was mounting in explorer and showing 12TB of free space like all the files were deleted.

I'd try chkdsk first, and then Windows File Recovery if that doesn't work. Anything more extensive than that is beyond my pay grade.
 
Never Scored said:
Ok I misinterpreted what you said earlier. I thought it was mounting in explorer and showing 12TB of free space like all the files were deleted.

I'd try chkdsk first, and then Windows File Recovery if that doesn't work. Anything more extensive than that is beyond my pay grade.
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chkdsk ran in read only mode, here's the output:

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

937061375 KB total disk space.
178726076 KB in 368112 files.
225748 KB in 121363 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
779831 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
757329720 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
234265343 total allocation units on disk.
189332430 allocation units available on disk.
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One possibility you can try is using the old Microsoft Disk2VHD software to dump the disk image to a file you can play with instead of risking the data on the drive. It will make a huge file but it gives you another angle to troubleshoot.
 
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Bass_Ackdwars said:
chkdsk ran in read only mode, here's the output:
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That looks good. Assuming it is the correct disk.

Personally I'd do the work in Linux. And run "parted" "fdisk" and "gdisk" to print the current partition table and see which tool can find it. It sounds like it's just a corrupt table somewhere.

The first rule being DON'T WRITE ANYTHING to the disk including a new partition table until you're sure what it needs to be.

If you can find the first sector of the real partition, then you can make a loop(fake) device
"losetup -o X /dev/loop0 /dev/sdY"
so, if the first sector is 2048, then losetup -o 1048576 ... (512 byte sectors)
then "mount -o ro /dev/loop0 /mnt"
 
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Never Scored said:
This is only showing around a terabyte of space as opposed to 12, is it not? There's definitely something fucky going on.

Does 178 GB of data sound about right for what you had on there?
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It was 600 GB just about. 178 GB is around the 171 GB that is on my C: disk.
davids877 said:
That looks good. Assuming it is the correct disk.

Personally I'd do the work in Linux. And run "parted" "fdisk" and "gdisk" to print the current partition table and see which tool can find it. It sounds like it's just a corrupt table somewhere.

The first rule being DON'T WRITE ANYTHING to the disk including a new partition table until you're sure what it needs to be.

If you can find the first sector of the real partition, then you can make a loop(fake) device
"losetup -o X /dev/loop0 /dev/sdY"
so, if the first sector is 2048, then losetup -o 1048576 ... (512 byte sectors)
then "mount -o ro /dev/loop0 /mnt"
Click to expand...
I'm very inexperienced in this, got any resources that I can study so I know what I'm doing here? I need this to work. Much of this data is irreplacable.
Is there anyway to confirm it is the correct disk? It is 12 TB with roughly 600 GB of data on it. This is what shows up in Disk Management:
2024-04-04_11-34.png
I might've fucked up a smidge, that updated firmware on the Sabrent enclosure changed the way the system recognizes the devices. I don't think that matters at this point, it wasn't helping me access it anyway and only proved the partition was still intact but inaccessible, but it helped me remember something. Sabrent's SATA to USB enclosure was how this drive was formatted, mounted, and used. The Device Manager recognized the enclosure as 'Sabrent' and the hard drive itself as a 'USB Mass Storage Device' while it was working, however it still required me to mount the drive and assign a drive letter to get it working... does that information help narrow down solutions at all?
 
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Bass_Ackdwars said:
I'm very inexperienced in this, got any resources that I can study so I know what I'm doing here? I need this to work. Much of this data is irreplacable.
Is there anyway to confirm it is the correct disk? It is 12 TB with roughly 600 GB of data on it. This is what shows up in Disk Management:
View attachment 5877076
I might've fucked up a smidge, that updated firmware on the Sabrent enclosure changed the way the system recognizes the devices. I don't think that matters at this point, it wasn't helping me access it anyway and only proved the partition was still intact but inaccessible, but it helped me remember something. Sabrent's SATA to USB enclosure was how this drive was formatted, mounted, and used. The Device Manager recognized the enclosure as 'Sabrent' and the hard drive itself as a 'USB Mass Storage Device' while it was working, however it still required me to mount the drive and assign a drive letter to get it working... does that information help narrow down solutions at all?
Click to expand...
The disk in your chkdsk output looks closer to your C drive. The output says its total size is 937061375 KB and available space is 757329720 KB. 757329720 / 937061375 = 0.808... or 81% space free just like your C drive.
 
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Bass_Ackdwars said:
It was 600 GB just about. 178 GB is around the 171 GB that is on my C: disk.

I'm very inexperienced in this, got any resources that I can study so I know what I'm doing here? I need this to work. Much of this data is irreplacable.
Is there anyway to confirm it is the correct disk? It is 12 TB with roughly 600 GB of data on it. This is what shows up in Disk Management:
View attachment 5877076
I might've fucked up a smidge, that updated firmware on the Sabrent enclosure changed the way the system recognizes the devices. I don't think that matters at this point, it wasn't helping me access it anyway and only proved the partition was still intact but inaccessible, but it helped me remember something. Sabrent's SATA to USB enclosure was how this drive was formatted, mounted, and used. The Device Manager recognized the enclosure as 'Sabrent' and the hard drive itself as a 'USB Mass Storage Device' while it was working, however it still required me to mount the drive and assign a drive letter to get it working... does that information help narrow down solutions at all?
Click to expand...
I'd try this product with the drive connected directly to the PC SATA:
And see if it can see the missing partition information.
Not sure if they charge for the recovery option, but the scan should at least tell you if it's going to work.

if it does
GET A SECOND DRIVE AND BACKUP YOUR SHIT.
 
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