Episode 34: Clone Your Windows Machine for Free! Saving Photos On Vacation. S/PDIF 10

[warkro]

Show description:

We've got a free alternative to Symantec's Ghost for drive imaging in this episode, the answer to Veronica's Time Machine problem, ideas for saving all those photos you take on vacation -- without bringing a notebook along, help with the Tekzilla RSS feeds in iTunes, and the winner of our Zune contest!

Watch and Download here (http://revision3.com/tekzilla/ghost/)

Edited with description

[tokenuser]

Show description:

We've got a free alternative to Symantec's Ghost for drive imaging in this episode, the answer to Veronica's Time Machine problem, ideas for saving all those photos you take on vacation -- without bringing a notebook along, help with the Tekzilla RSS feeds in iTunes, and the winner of our Zune contest!

[warkro]

System Rescue CD has alot of the imaging and backup tools for comps. Lifehacker System Rescue CD tutorial (http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/partition-and-image-your-hard-drive-with-the-system-rescue-cd-292972.php)

[shinigami052]

For those doing backups and disk cloning other great suggestions are:

Acronis (some versions of Ghost don't work properly with SATA drives). Acronis is a good straightforward program with a great UI.

WinPE. I haven't used this too much but I hear it's got a lot of options for frequent system re-installs.

[ryudo]

In the bloopers was that music from an old 90's band "La Bouche"? Think I used to have a cd of theirs.

[veronicazilla]

In the bloopers was that music from an old 90's band "La Bouche"? Think I used to have a cd of theirs.

YES! It's my "default song," the song that gets in my head when nothing else is there at the moment... I have no idea why.

[ryudo]

YES! It's my "default song," the song that gets in my head when nothing else is there at the moment... I have no idea why.

I by mistake left my CD's in my locker in jr high when it was time to clean up at the end of the year. :(
One of them was LA BOUCHE I think I had the sweet dreams album.
Gah must have been almost 12 years ago...sheesh but I still remember the music on that CD.

[oct_dragon74]

Great episode Patrick and VB! I have to say best bloopers reel ever!

[photeu]

Great show, and yay for Camilla.

There is an additional benefit from connecting AV-equipment with optical Toslink, as it separates your gear electronically which eliminates groundloop currents (heard as a low humming noise in your speakers). I'm not sure about the details of American electrical standards but here in Europe (Sweden) there could potentially be quite high electrical currents running through the shared groundplane of the connected machines (like a computer and an AV-receiver)… enough to damage the equipment or even hurt someone if something goes wrong.

However, I do agree that optical connection (or any other fancy digital connection) does not improve sound quality.

[fzbravozf]

Great show! I like the chemistry of the hosts, it worked well.

One thing I noticed while watching is that Patrick used the word "basic" or "basically" a lot when answering viewers questions. He must have said it 20 times in this episode. Not a big deal though.

Favorite quote

"I mean thats what they're usually for cases that make your ipod to thick to fit in the dock,"
"Thats what she said"


LOL

[cablegeek]

Good Show. Love the Bloopers this week. LOL

/0
> ( )
\0

[cybersuchus]

Great show overall. Loving the incorporation of more video questions (I'm rather astonished at the quality of those youtube vids). Also enjoying the incorporation of more Camilla, and blooper reels.

The only thing missing from the show this time was Patrick's trademark "wax on/wax off" wave at the end of the show. Keep on waving Pat.

[runsoverfrogs]

Hey guys,

I had no idea this show had bloopers. I started watching the show maybe a week ago, and I guess when it gets to the end I switch over to another podcast or hit music.

Now about the s/pdif deal, I figured Veronica would've tackled that since I noticed she's an Emerson graduate! The only reason I would've thought of this is that I noticed on her wiki that she's an audio major at Emerson, which is also my friend at work's an alumni of, which she is also in audio. This explains how I knew anything about some far away college in Boston.

Good show.

-runsoverfrogs

[silentspyder]

Great show! I like the chemistry of the hosts, it worked well.

One thing I noticed while watching is that Patrick used the word "basic" or "basically" a lot when answering viewers questions. He must have said it 20 times in this episode. Not a big deal though.

Favorite quote

"I mean thats what they're usually for cases that make your ipod to thick to fit in the dock,"
"Thats what she said"


LOL

For some reason I never notice the "basically" what I do notice is "I like that thought" but frankly It's not important. Great show!

[computoman]

Good to see the show back up there!! Guess with ms as an alleged advertiser, I will not be able to say what I think anymore about their fine software.

[djoutlaws]

In the bloopers was that music from an old 90's band "La Bouche"? Think I used to have a cd of theirs.

La Bouche were great, sadly no more since the singer Melanie Thorton died on a plane crash near to Zurich on 2001...

she was about to unleash a new album or smthing like tha xD
real tragedy http://www.airsafe.com/events/celebs/thornton.htm

My favourite of theirs:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5P0_v__IOrE

[tobyweston]

Good show, good to see some bloopers at the end . Didnt seem as long as usual though :(

[chaoticinfinity]

One app I use for my own backups and that I used when I upgraded my laptop from a 120gb to a 320gb and didn't want to do a fresh Windows XP install was "Acronis True Image".

I've had to use Norton's Ghost at work from time to time, but I think Acronis is a lot less of a hassle and makes the process as painless as possible. It offers the same basic features as Ghost (if not more), and costs only 50 bucks for a single Home edition License. (Oh... and version 11, which just came out, is Vista compatible... if you use that sort of thing.:rolleyes:)

Here's a link to the Home edition: http://affiliate.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

And if you want additional features as well, check out "Acronis Disk Director Suite". It's another package that has tools to do things like resize partitions, set up an OS selection boot screen, or recover drives and partitions. This is also just 50 bucks for a single license. (Be aware that version 10... which i believe is the most recent version of Disk Director is not yet Vista compatible.)

Here's a link to Disk Director: http://affiliate.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

A co-worker got me a copy of an all in one package that happened to have the features of both True Image and Disk Director on one bootable disc, but for the sake of what was discussed in episode 34, True Image basically has everything you need.

[computoman]

For a while there, when you bought a new motherboard, norton personal version of ghost would come free with the purchase. At home, I use systemrescue on windows boxes to do wholesale backups. i use a linux raid based file server box in combination with cron, dd, rsync, and tar via scripts to access sshfs (instead of samba) shares on windows boxes to do automated file backup on them. We use norton ghost enterprise at work. It is awesome. It is one commercial product I do recommend highly if you do any amount of cloning. Wish I could use it at home.

[sphinxer]

It was nice to see the segment on ghosting, although it would have been nicer to actually see Clonezilla at work instead of just ending it like "if you can't figure it out, go buy Norton".

But more importantly: Patrick what exactly is your problem with open source software? Calling something "open sourcy" just because it is not extremely user friendly is frankly pretty offensive. What you are basically saying is that open source software lacks the user friendliness of proprietary software, and that is simply not true.
If you spent just five minutes doing a bit of research, you'd find thousands of open source applications that are user friendly to the extreme. You want examples? I give you Firefox. I doubt anybody will accuse it of being "hard", and with the ability to add extensions it is actually more user friendly than IE.
More examples? How about Pidgin (and the fork Funpidgin)? It has a much cleaner and nicer interface than the proprietary instant messaging programs it is meant to replace.
Of course open source programs can also be complicated. Blender has an interface which reminds you of being at the control panel of a nuclear reactor 2 minutes before meltdown. But this is not limited to open source software. I invite you to go download ten random shareware programs from download.com (or wherever) and I can guarantee you that half of them will be confusing, a third of those will be directly illogical, and at least one of them will make you wish you were somewhere far away.
Why is this, you may ask. Well you see, proprietary software is made by people, and open source is made by people. Some of those people are very good developers, and some are morons who hate humanity.
Open source is not a term for software which is developed by pimple-faced teenagers in dark basements, with no regards to design rules or usability. In fact, a lot of developers take great pride in their work, and put much effort into making the best piece of software possible. You might only be motivated by money, I don't know, but that doesn't mean that there aren't those of us who choose to be motivated by things such as giving something to humanity for no reason other than being nice. And we want our work to be just as good as if we were paid for it.
I have been creating open source software for close to ten years now, and my bookshelf is as full of books on usability as it is full of books on programming. The only time I don't take usability into account is when I make something that's strictly for my own use. In all other cases, usability is always on my mind when developing both features and the interface. So to hear you equal open source to lack of usability feels like you spitting in my face to be honest.
At the very least you owe open source developers everywhere an apology Patrick. And on the show, not here on the forums where only a few people will see it. And if that's too much for you to do, well then I guess we'll know what kind of person you really are.

[ashgotti]

Well said but maybe over reacting?

Open source has taken the conotation of being "ideological", which some people, who fall into the "proud capitalist" group, dismiss as not having the ability to be successful in the realworld.

[computoman]

It was nice to see the segment on ghosting, although it would have been nicer to actually see Clonezilla at work instead of just ending it like "if you can't figure it out, go buy Norton".

But more importantly: Patrick what exactly is your problem with open source software? Calling something "open sourcy" just because it is not extremely user friendly is frankly pretty offensive. What you are basically saying is that open source software lacks the user friendliness of proprietary software, and that is simply not true.
If you spent just five minutes doing a bit of research, you'd find thousands of open source applications that are user friendly to the extreme. You want examples? I give you Firefox. I doubt anybody will accuse it of being "hard", and with the ability to add extensions it is actually more user friendly than IE.
More examples? How about Pidgin (and the fork Funpidgin)? It has a much cleaner and nicer interface than the proprietary instant messaging programs it is meant to replace.
Of course open source programs can also be complicated. Blender has an interface which reminds you of being at the control panel of a nuclear reactor 2 minutes before meltdown. But this is not limited to open source software. I invite you to go download ten random shareware programs from download.com (or wherever) and I can guarantee you that half of them will be confusing, a third of those will be directly illogical, and at least one of them will make you wish you were somewhere far away.
Why is this, you may ask. Well you see, proprietary software is made by people, and open source is made by people. Some of those people are very good developers, and some are morons who hate humanity.
Open source is not a term for software which is developed by pimple-faced teenagers in dark basements, with no regards to design rules or usability. In fact, a lot of developers take great pride in their work, and put much effort into making the best piece of software possible. You might only be motivated by money, I don't know, but that doesn't mean that there aren't those of us who choose to be motivated by things such as giving something to humanity for no reason other than being nice. And we want our work to be just as good as if we were paid for it.
I have been creating open source software for close to ten years now, and my bookshelf is as full of books on usability as it is full of books on programming. The only time I don't take usability into account is when I make something that's strictly for my own use. In all other cases, usability is always on my mind when developing both features and the interface. So to hear you equal open source to lack of usability feels like you spitting in my face to be honest.
At the very least you owe open source developers everywhere an apology Patrick. And on the show, not here on the forums where only a few people will see it. And if that's too much for you to do, well then I guess we'll know what kind of person you really are.

Whoa - Easy now Easy now........ Patrick has touted quite a bit of open source software if you ever listened. He also admitted that he has a lot to learn. He also mentioned that it would be nice if someone with the appropriate expertise could come on the show and display their knowledge. That takes class to say that. The only thing I might add to that is just becauae the the software is free as in speech does not mean you can not charge for installation and support of open source software. I see a tremendous profit opportunity for capitalism in open source software doing service and support. I would prefer a customer spend the money on me instead of an allegedly overpriced product. More and more companies are doing this. Besides there is not the markup that there used to be in commercial software except in certain niche markets or where the polyester is still being pulled over consumer's eyes.

[durham4556]

for the guy asking how to backup his sd cards, I don't think buying something more expensive than a pc is really what he wanted. I would suggest this http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665185948&tab=Features

also you can get like 2gb micro sd cards for like 7 bucks on sale if you look around. I just got a 8gb micro for like 40 bucks on amazon

[burkhartmj]

It was nice to see the segment on ghosting, although it would have been nicer to actually see Clonezilla at work instead of just ending it like "if you can't figure it out, go buy Norton".

But more importantly: Patrick what exactly is your problem with open source software? Calling something "open sourcy" just because it is not extremely user friendly is frankly pretty offensive. What you are basically saying is that open source software lacks the user friendliness of proprietary software, and that is simply not true.
If you spent just five minutes doing a bit of research, you'd find thousands of open source applications that are user friendly to the extreme. You want examples? I give you Firefox. I doubt anybody will accuse it of being "hard", and with the ability to add extensions it is actually more user friendly than IE.
More examples? How about Pidgin (and the fork Funpidgin)? It has a much cleaner and nicer interface than the proprietary instant messaging programs it is meant to replace.
Of course open source programs can also be complicated. Blender has an interface which reminds you of being at the control panel of a nuclear reactor 2 minutes before meltdown. But this is not limited to open source software. I invite you to go download ten random shareware programs from download.com (or wherever) and I can guarantee you that half of them will be confusing, a third of those will be directly illogical, and at least one of them will make you wish you were somewhere far away.
Why is this, you may ask. Well you see, proprietary software is made by people, and open source is made by people. Some of those people are very good developers, and some are morons who hate humanity.
Open source is not a term for software which is developed by pimple-faced teenagers in dark basements, with no regards to design rules or usability. In fact, a lot of developers take great pride in their work, and put much effort into making the best piece of software possible. You might only be motivated by money, I don't know, but that doesn't mean that there aren't those of us who choose to be motivated by things such as giving something to humanity for no reason other than being nice. And we want our work to be just as good as if we were paid for it.
I have been creating open source software for close to ten years now, and my bookshelf is as full of books on usability as it is full of books on programming. The only time I don't take usability into account is when I make something that's strictly for my own use. In all other cases, usability is always on my mind when developing both features and the interface. So to hear you equal open source to lack of usability feels like you spitting in my face to be honest.
At the very least you owe open source developers everywhere an apology Patrick. And on the show, not here on the forums where only a few people will see it. And if that's too much for you to do, well then I guess we'll know what kind of person you really are.

Calm down man. He's speaking from experience. It wasn't until the last couple of years that OSS focused on usability. It's too bad there weren't more developers like you back when he probably had bad experiences with it, but it's a fact. Now speaking from recent experience [got pidgin and firefox open right now, with thunderbird installed as well as linux dualbooted] I agree that OSS is completely and utterly better and more usable than the proprietary ones, so yea, he mighta been wrong, but give him a break.

On top of that, he doesn't visit the forums very often.

[m3wse]

the solution is simple: linux live cd and dd. just use a command line bitcopy. I believe this is how various government agencies clone drives in their investigations.

[badweasel]

Veronica, you took another jab at the popcorn this week - under your breath about it being slow. I just want to say that I watched your show this week on the PCH in HD and it looked great! True that it took a minute to get it loaded and buffering (I'll give you that one) but honestly not THAT bad (60 seconds) considering that I was able to watch the show in HD on my wall (projection). 60 seconds probably felt like an eternity when trying to demo it on your show, but again, you guys demo'd the slowest part of the box.

I know, I know. I already b'ched about this in last week's show thread but, you also called it slow in this weeks show... and I have a point.

For comparison I also watched National Treasure 2 this weekend on BluRay. It took a full 3 minutes for the menus to load - not counting the time it takes for the Sony BD player to boot. If I download your show in HD and then watch it, that takes a while also. So my point is that the startup speed (to start watching content) is all relative and that the quality and experience of the PLAY is the thing to compare.

ALSO.. to show that I'm not all "just about the PCH".. on the SPDIF talk.. I'd like to point out that AESEBU and SPDIF are the same data format and can communicate with each other. One is a balanced and one is an unbalanced signal. Example use, in my Final Cut Pro setup I connect the AES output from my Blackmagic card to the SPDIF input on my amplifier. You have to use a XLR to RCA connector but it works great and presents audio that is in sync with my video.

[davmoo]

Calling something "open sourcy" just because it is not extremely user friendly is frankly pretty offensive.

It may be offensive to you and some others. But its also the truth. I've used open source software since the early 90s. I'm also a professional programmer. And not only is the majority of open source software not user friendly, a lot of it is down right user abusive. Its like they go by one of three philosophies..."it was hard for me to write, so it should be hard for you to use", or "you're a geek, you'll figure it out", or "its free, get over it". And with many open source packages, you can't RTFM because there is no FM, or its so poorly written that it makes the situation worse.

There are programmers, obviously like yourself, who take the time to make sure their projects are easy to use by those who didn't write it. But the sad truth is the majority only worry about "the guts", because writing documentation and polishing the UI isn't glamorous.

[ArmpitOfDeath]

I wouldn't say offensive either, but rather 'a pithy observation'.

If anything, Patrick may be being charitable.

[klipschfan]

I'll get to the new drive question, but first I want to state that I totally disagree with electricyoda about the iPod dock question. These kinds of hardware hacking questions dovetail nicely with Systm. Kudos for the latest Systm!

I have been solving this new drive problem for people at my wife's job. The easiest way to do it is to download the drive software from the drive manufacturer's* website and install it or burn it to a CD. Samsung calls theirs Disk Manager and/or ES Tool. Western Digital calls theirs Data Lifeguard Tools. Seagate calls theirs either MaxBlast, with the addition of Maxtor to their inventory, or DiscWizard. I have absolutely no clue why these manufacturers have stopped adding the 10 cent disk in the box!?

*I have had the misfortune of trying to use one company's program to move data to a competitor's drive without success. This works best to replace a WD with WD or Seagate with Seagate etc.

Each company offers a very simple way to install the new hard drive by following the wizard. I think all of them guide you through the actual physical installation of the hard drive in the case, usually first as a primary slave. You will at some point in the installation process have to tell the program if you want to install the new hard drive as additional storage or to replace the primary (C:\) hard drive. When you tell it that you want to replace drive C:, it will format the primary slave and copy all the files** over to the new drive. After it is done, you simply remove the primary hard drive and set the new drive as master and plug it into the proper place on the cable. When you turn the computer back on, it should boot right up just like it did before.

This assumes that you don't have the primary master partitioned into smaller chunks already. I'll assume that if you know enough to have an extended partition on the primary that you also know enough to remember to partition a new extended partition and copy that data over as well.

**Also please note that big name manufacturers like Dell, HP and Gateway have hidden service partitions that I have never bothered to save. I suppose it can be done, but I have never tried.

[dralezero]

You can clearly tell the difference between optical audio and RCA analog connection. If you have a PS2 plug the optical into your stereo and the RCA into the TV and run both audio at the same time. (or whatever audio/music source you got) Especially in music you will hear a delay between the two. Because the optical gets to the speakers slightly faster? Sounds like someone put an echo on the track. I did this with Burnout Takedown.

[computoman]

It may be offensive to you and some others. But its also the truth. I've used open source software since the early 90s. I'm also a professional programmer. And not only is the majority of open source software not user friendly, a lot of it is down right user abusive. Its like they go by one of three philosophies..."it was hard for me to write, so it should be hard for you to use", or "you're a geek, you'll figure it out", or "its free, get over it". And with many open source packages, you can't RTFM because there is no FM, or its so poorly written that it makes the situation worse.

There are programmers, obviously like yourself, who take the time to make sure their projects are easy to use by those who didn't write it. But the sad truth is the majority only worry about "the guts", because writing documentation and polishing the UI isn't glamorous.

Funny, I have been around since the days of punch cards and the ibm360 model 40. I can list a quite a few programs for any os including windoze that seem not to be friendly. Bsd is probably has better documented than linux though. Having spent many years as a tech installing applications both on client and client/server environments in the windoze world. Having have also wriitten my share of code for some of the major houses. Having have spent a lot of time using Microsoft's technet and the like. I would as soon just google to find an answer than use technet. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have contacted a software vendor and asked for help was told they did not know what to do or they had no intention of resolving the issue. In most cases I find more info for unix/linux/bsd applications than I have ever found for Commercial OS applications. Once you use enough of open source you get an instinct. You can contact the author of a program directly with any issues. Most all the major gui applications are on all the most popular platforms. they work almost exactly alike. so I feel your argument is not exactly valid. Actually sometimes I find it easier, more explcit, and faster to do the command line than the gui and appreciate the extra commands available to a 'nix text based apps.

[davmoo]

Funny, I have been around since the days of punch cards and the ibm360 model 40.

Not trying to get in to a "mine is bigger than yours" contest here, but I didn't say I've been around since the early 90s, only that I've used open source since the early 90s. As far as computer programming goes I've been around since approximately 1972, and also started out programming on a System 360...I want to say model 165, but its been a while and that bank of ram doesn't work as well as it used to. That was when I learned the First Rule of Punch Cards...if your program uses more than 5 cards, number them :)

There are indeed some great open source packages out there. Apache comes to mind as a perfect example. But there also is a boat load of open source out there that is worth exactly what it costs...nothing.

[computoman]

I do not want to get in a tit for tat either. I will agree that for every platform there are applications commercial or not, there are ones that are not robust. All I am saying is that do not make open source a scapegoat . One institution I worked for used something called "Banner" which cost over a million dollars (i was told) when it came out. It was a originally piece of "expletive deleted". Blackboard and OOXML was such wonderful things also.....
To change the subject: If you remember correctly that Dbase came out with Dbase II first. They did not want to come out with Dbase I and have people think it was a fledgeling product.

[mav7469]

First off, I love the show. Been a fan of Patrick's since the screen saver days.

I saw on episode 34 that someone was looking for a way to store photos from an SD card. My wife and I are semi-pro photographers. She has a Nikon D200 and I have a D70. I use an IPod Camera Connector (http://www.macworld.com/article/44013/2005/03/ipodcamconnect.html). Since I always have my Ipod with me when I am out shooting, it was the perfect solution for those times that I use up a 4GB Compaq Flash card with RAW photos. All you need is a camera with a USB connector (which most have). I can connect my camera to my 60GB Ipod and in a few minutes, copy all of my photos I just took and empty my card. If you take pictures in JPG format, you can even view the pictures on the Ipod (although the sceen is not much better than my camera). However, you can not view RAW files. Best part is, it only cost $25 or less.
You can see my most recent photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/27142235@N06/sets/72157605322280455/ and my wife's photos at http://www.philiaphoto.com.

Thanks for the great show.

Bill

[julian_photo]

"what is he shooting raw??"

i sure hope so

[vw195]

You can clearly tell the difference between optical audio and RCA analog connection. If you have a PS2 plug the optical into your stereo and the RCA into the TV and run both audio at the same time. (or whatever audio/music source you got) Especially in music you will hear a delay between the two. Because the optical gets to the speakers slightly faster? Sounds like someone put an echo on the track. I did this with Burnout Takedown.

Not only that, but if you want Dolby Digital from either your cablebox or your DVD player, you HAVE to use toslink. If one wants the ultimate sound from their PS3 or blu-ray player, then one must use HDMI. For as knowledgable as Patrick is, he blew this question. This deserves an errata on a future tekzilla, the advice is so bad.

[jerryg20]

(Sorry for bumping an old thread)

I think you guys misinterpreted what Patrick was talking about. He was talking about coaxial vs. optical. Coaxial, which tends to use an RCA cable, is part of the S/PDIF standard. You can just use a regular old video cable, but I think it should be noted that there are "special" cables just for coaxial audio that are 75 ohms (Blue Jeans, in fact, sells such cables; they're quite common in the audio world). People report differences in sound quality between such cables. Your mileage may vary. I'm a little disappointed Patrick didn't mention 75 ohm cables, especially considering Veronica was there (audio engineer, right?) and they've done a lot of segments focused on audio quality.

Anyhow, Patrick was not saying that he thinks using optical out to use an external DAC won't make a difference or will sound worse (why would he say such a think when he uses an external DAC himself?). I feel it is worth mentioning that many (audiophiles, at least) feel coaxial is superior to optical when it comes to jitter (again, another thing I was disappointed to not hear mentioned by Patrick or Veronica); the two aren't identical and it should be acknowledged that there are cases where you'd want to go coaxial instead of optical.

Lastly, am I the only one that pronounces each individual letter of "S/PDIF"? I never thought of pronouncing it as some kind of mashed up word, and I've never heard it pronounced as such until I saw Tekzilla.

[davmoo]

I've always heard it pronounced as "spidiff", and never spelled out.

And maybe its because I'm way more of a video person than an audio person, but when I hear the term "coaxial", I think of RG6 with f-connectors at each end.