Re: XP Repairing System.

On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 19:17:59 +0100, Johnny B Good
<jcs.computers***@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The message <mvhv83p9p5e7l4inlc5e0ehisd1dtvhero@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

On Sat, 7 Jul 2007 16:16:36 +0100, Johnny B Good
<jcs.computers***@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Using FAT32 instead of NTFS on a desktop PC for the OS partition at
least, gives you a fighting chance of evicting any unwelcome guests
using nothing more complicated than a reboot with a win9x boot floppy

Every time I've ever used FAT on a Windows boot drive, Windows has
managed to spanner that boot drive all by itself, without needing help
from non-MS code. From Windows 3.0 upwards to XP.

I've either been extremely lucky, or you've been a little bit unlucky.

Both can be true!

If you've suffered frequent FS 'fry ups'. that would tend to suggest
some sort of hardware instability somewhere. In spite of the claims that
NTFS is a more resilient FS (it can be, given expensive enough repair
tools), the practice (relying on Microsoft's own repair tools) has not
indicated any improvement.

My practice shows quite the opposite, see my reply to Mike.

I've had the NT version of chkdsk 'curl up and die' often enough when
trying to repair a borked winXP installed to an NTFS partition (to be
fair, just about as often as the MSDOS scandisk was liable to do) to
know that FS 'reliability' is not a major issue between the two.

I don't recall ever having that.

The last time was just after I'd arrived at my three week holiday
destination, and the laptop twatted itself on the first evening after
IE froze the computer and needed a hard reboot.

Possibly the result of acquiring a nasty piece of malware? The phrase
"IE froze the computer" suggests you should have been suspicious of this
possibility (I know I would have been!).

Probably not, I'd only installed it a week before and it had only been
on the Internet to a single website - Windows Update. From behind two
firewalls, and with AV.

Oh, plus the guaranteed first visit to MSN.com, thanks to the IE6
start page.

I was opening IE to read a local text-only HTML file. After the freeze
and reboot it was bluescreen halfway through boot, I forget the stated
cause.

Presumably, you ran a FS check to prove it was due to corruption of the
FS rather than the OS (or some malware) corrupting critical files.

Not in that case, no - the laptop is a little tiny thing with no CD
drive, and I didn't have my reinstall kit with me. Since it was a new
install I just reformatted it (with NTFS) when I got home. No bad
blocks, so no excuse there.

FAT32 may be easier to evict unwelcome guests from, but NTFS isn't
suicidally fragile - and has never stopped me from evicting malware.

I think "suicidally fragile" is a bit strong an expression, although it
might be more a description of the operator's attitude to potentially
fatal FS events (such as skipping or bypassing an FS scan after a system
crash or lockup in a multitasking OS environment)

That's good enough for me, though naturally as sysadm I never skip
fsck. I'm not a purist about these things, I'm not going to quibble
over how it happens - under normal use, FAT (and particularly FAT32)
disks are eventually suicidally fragile compared to any other FS I've
ever used on any machine.

(Er, except microdrives on a Sinclair QL - but that was physical
problems, the tape stretched over time. More data blocks for free!)

Though while I'm thinking about it, it occurs that I'm specifically
thinking of system disks being suicidal - I have much less trouble
with FAT on D: and up, but then Windows doesn't scribble over those so
much (tempfiles and the like).

.... I've given up on it now. All my Internet-facing machines run OSX,
it's only the servers in the cellar and the gamesbox that are
homebuilts.

There's no such thing as an indestructable FS, just varying levels of
resilience (usually, such elevated resilience carries a small
performance penalty, depending on complexity).

Naturally. Although there's enough spare performance these days to
mean that the hit is barely important any more - if it ever was, since
data integrity is almost always more important than sheer speed. I'd
say always, for me and anything under my control.

And anyway, FAT32 is a dog under common situations like lotsofiles in
a folder. Just because it's low-feature, that doesn't mean that it's
faster!

Total reliance on the 'robustness' of even an extremely robust FS, is a
recipe for disaster (and totally futile when the hard disk fails) if you
haven't taken the precaution of backing up your vital data and/or boot
partition elsewhwere (even if it's only another partition on the same
drive, but best use another physical drive if available and better yet,
onto removable media).

Once you stop being totally dependant on the reliability of the FS, the
'reliability' issue of said FS tends to become somewhat academic.

I've never been dependent on the reliability of the FS, but given a
choice I'll *always* choose the ones that have more. NTFS over FAT,
Journalled HFS over unjournalled or UFS, Ext3 or Reiser over Ext2. XFS
a while back, and ZFS over all of them eventually...

Cheers - Jaimie (busy setting up new backup schedules to
integrate his new RAID5-with-hotspare terabyte NAS and secondary JBOD
terabyte backup-of-NAS array into the house automated daily backup
strategy. Really, that's what I'm doing right now in another window! I
simply *don't* trust disks.)
--
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing
.