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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 April 2

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April 2 edit

Reading/copying Unix floppy on Windows XP system edit

One of the managers here at work thought I might be able to help them out with an issue they're having. I'm trying to help but am a bit out of my depth. And it's Friday night, so any real help won't be in until Monday morning.

I have a 3.5" floppy that is used on tools running some form of Unix. They want several more copies of this disk made. All I have available to me is Windows XP, a USB floppy drive, the original disk (they have more, they only gave me one), and a blank disk.

When I put the source disk into the drive and try to open it on my laptop, I get a warning saying that the disk is not formatted and I'm asked if I want to format it. Any ideas? Thanks, Dismas|(talk) 00:33, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Probably ext3 format or ext4. There are some Windows drivers for ext3, but I don't know if they support format and copy.[1] I used to use CopyQM Plus to copy non-Windows floppies and to create image files back in the day (they were system disks for a Kentek printer that booted from a hard drive).[2] ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 01:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If you simply wanted to copy the disk without actually reading its contents, you can use any "floppy image" programs, like RawWrite or WinImage, to copy the disk. 118.96.157.155 (talk) 02:08, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't actually need to read the contents. I just need to make copies.
  • What I got from fs-driver.org didn't allow me to read the disk
  • CopyQM won't work as it's not made to work on anything later than Win98
  • RawWrite doesn't work because I don't have a disk image on the disk. It still fails telling me that the disk isn't formatted.
  • I suspect the results for WinImage will be the same as RawWrite.
Anyone else? Dismas|(talk) 02:22, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Really? Did you image ("read") the disk first before writing it in RawWrite? Also, even if Windows keeps saying that the disk is "not formatted", if you copied the disk using RawWrite, it is still copied no matter what. Copying a disk has nothing to do with Windows saying the disk "formatted" or "not formatted". 118.96.157.155 (talk) 02:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Really. I opened the program, clicked on the "Read" tab, and it's asking me for a disk image file. If I go looking for one on the disk, the program tells me that the disk is not formatted and asks if I want to format the disk. Dismas|(talk) 02:32, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Don't do it. Instead save the image on your hard disk with the "Read" tab, then write the saved image to a blank disk with the "Write" tab. To use CD burning analogy, the "Read" tab is used to "rip" the disk to a disk image, and the "Write" tab is used to "burn" the image to a disk. 118.96.157.155 (talk) 02:37, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't. What I'm trying to get across is that there is no image. There is nothing, according to Windows or RawWrite, on the disk. There's nothing there to rip as far as the program is concerned. Dismas|(talk) 02:39, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There is indeed no image in the disk. You need to create the image first from the disk, then write the created image to a new, blank disk. 118.96.157.155 (talk) 02:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
When the "Save As" dialog comes up, you should choose a place to save the (newly created) image on your hard disk. The floppy drive is selected from a different drop-down box in the main application window. -- BenRG (talk) 03:04, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(indentation reset) Here's a walkthrough:

  1. Insert the source disk into drive A:.
  2. Launch RawWrite, then do the following:
    1. select A: in the Floppy drive list box,
    2. select the Read tab,
    3. enter C:\asdfghjk.img (or any non-existing file on your hard drive) in the Image file text box,
    4. press the Read button, then
    5. follow further instructions onscreen.
  3. Eject the source disk from drive A:, then insert a blank disk into drive A:.
  4. In the RawWrite again, do the following:
    1. select A: in the Floppy drive list box.
    2. select the Write tab,
    3. enter C:\asdfghjk.img (the file name you enter above) in the Image file text box,
    4. enter 1 in the Number of copies text box,
    5. press the Write button, then
    6. follow further instructions onscreen.

Good luck. 118.96.157.155 (talk) 03:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I no longer have the disk. It had to be returned. And I don't see how "Read" means "Create an image file". Doesn't seem very intuitive to me at all. Dismas|(talk) 06:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am sorry you couldn't copy the disk on time. Next time someone is asking me how to copy floppy disks, I probably should tell them to run the DISKCOPY A: A: command instead. It is simpler and more intuitive (yet far less powerful) than RawWrite or WinImage. Oh well. 118.96.154.96 (talk) 08:34, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I wonder if you are able to download and burn a (small) linux live CD. Boot your PC from the CD and use linux to copy your floppy. Don't have a CD?... maybe some virtual machine software will work directly with the live CD's .ISO file and let you start linux without needing a CD. Astronaut (talk) 07:24, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Microsoft Comfort Mouse 4500 in Ubuntu edit

Hi everyone, I recently bought a new Microsoft keyboard and mouse. The keyboard works perfectly except for a few of the random Messenger/Documents/Zoom buttons which I don't care about, but the mouse is driving me crazy - the scroll wheel seems to act as a Page Down/Page Up button! Scrolling down by one click is the same as using the page down button, and scrolling up acts like Page Up. I'm using Ubuntu 10.10 and I thank you in advance for your help :)

110.175.208.144 (talk) 06:13, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A mouse will typically come with a driver CD which allows you to customize this type of behavior. Is the problem that this driver lacks Linux support (or specifically Ubuntu) ? (It wouldn't surprise me if MS does everything possible to sabotage Linux users.) StuRat (talk) 16:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicate file detection edit

Is there an easy way to detect and perhaps remove duplicate files from a directory? The files could be anything: documents, text, images, music, etc, but there could be hundreds of files to process. Any duplicates would have some things in common, but other things could be different: filenames, dates, other meta data. I thought about writing a program to do this, something using MD5 and moving duplicates to a different directory, but maybe there's already such a program available (preferably for free). Astronaut (talk) 10:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots, I like this one 82.43.90.38 (talk) 10:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

See fdupes. ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I like Duplicate Cleaner http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/duplicate-cleaner , and Visipics for finding similar images http://www.visipics.info/index.php?title=Main_Page . Both freeware. Edit: I used the 1.6 version of Duplicate Cleaner. I havn't tried the latest version yet, which seems somewhat different. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 16:31, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Similar file detection edit

Following on from my question immediately above, is there a program that can identify similar image files (again, preferably for free)? By similar, I mean perhaps an image has been converted to a different file format (eg. .jpeg -> .png), or has been resized, or has broadly the same colour palette (I'm thinking something along the lines of the colour selection in Google's image search). Astronaut (talk) 10:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This program can 82.43.90.38 (talk) 11:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Content-based image retrieval ¦ Reisio (talk) 20:41, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Visipics, as mentioned above. Something similar that would be very useful would be a program that sorts similar images into the same sub-directories. 92.15.2.39 (talk) 16:33, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Laptop edit

Which brand is most reliable among laptops. Is it OK to buy one without an OS ? Will it be as easy to install Windows (XP or Vista) as on a conventional desktop ? Is the laptops BIOS any different from desktops ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 17:57, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Of the major brands, I doubt there is much difference in quality. I have an 11 year old Dell that a relative still uses; I've most experience with Acers, and they've proven to be very reliable. But others will doubtless have good experiences with other brands, and maybe bad experiences with these. You'll find it very difficult to find a laptop without an OS; these days most have Windows 7 Home Premium or Home Basic - netbooks might still have XP. The BIOS is much the same as for a desktop and a laptop. In general installing XP on a laptop is straightforward, but you will increasingly run into problems where there is no XP driver available for some of the laptop's hardware. Laptop manufacturers figure they're shipping the machine with Windows 7, so they need only code a driver for Windows 7. -- Finlay McWalter ☻ Talk 18:20, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:34, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Note that you'll probably wind up paying more for Windows this way. Microsoft sells OEMs Windows for an undisclosed but probably large markdown over buying it off-the-shelf. It makes sense to buy OS-less computers to install Linux on them, but not Windows. (Sadly, it often makes sense to buy a Windows computer, even if you're going to install Linux on them, because there aren't many options when purchasing OS-less or Linux laptops.) Paul (Stansifer) 08:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
One caution: It may be impossible to fully test a laptop without an O/S. So, if you do purchase one this way, make sure you install an O/S and fully test it out, well before the warranty expires. StuRat (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

RAR for mac edit

Anyone have a recommendation for a good free application for unpacking RAR files using a Mac?--141.155.147.132 (talk) 21:03, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's a command line version of WinRAR available here and a mac version of 7zip available here. I've never used a mac so I don't know how good they work 82.43.90.38 (talk) 21:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
StuffIt Expander (link) can extract .rar files. 118.96.156.239 (talk) 01:36, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both for the effort. However, let me repeat my question with a bit of emphasis: "Anyone have a recommendation for a good free application for unpacking RAR files using a Mac?" I downloaded the first, installed it, then, when I tried to use it, I learned you must register for it to work, which requires getting a serial number, which in turn requires payment. Stuffit is "free" alright, you just have to "successfully sign up with or purchase from any one of our affiliate partners during the TrialPay checkout".--141.155.147.132 (talk) 04:10, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I have downloaded this, blindly, though at least it's through a site that appears to be reliable.--141.155.147.132 (talk) 04:21, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oops. Sorry. I gave you the "wrong link" (StuffIt Expander is indeed free). Here is the corrected link, but I guess it's too late now. 118.96.154.96 (talk) 08:16, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. If you are still interested in StuffIt Expander and want to download it, ignore all the "Buy", "Special Offer", and "TrialPay" links, and all the banner ads on the page. As I say, StuffIt Expander is indeed free. 118.96.154.96 (talk) 08:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
UnRarX seems to be what you're looking for. link -- Bob drobbs (talk) 05:23, 5 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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