Core Dump

Longtime readers will remember the computer drama that unfolded back in May of 2008 when I bought my new 500 GB hard drive. Basically, when I tried to resize my NTFS partitions, GParted (or, more specifically, the tool ntfsresize) said “you’ve got bad sectors on your disk, I’m not touching anything” and refused to run. I eventually lost the battle and settled for a (less than ideal) configuration for my new disk.

Fast-forward to today – the public beta of Windows 7 is meant to come out today, and although there’s always the virtual machine route, for something like this I thought it might be worthwhile to dual-boot so it could have the full power of my machine (Vista under Virtual PC is OK, but sloooooow – imagine what a beta version of an even newer OS would be like?).

Since Microsoft’s web servers seem to be totally overwhelmed with the demand for Windows 7, they’ve taken the download off-line for the time being. So, given that it seems like I might have to wait a bit, I figured I might as well download the latest GParted LiveCD (version 0.4.1-2 in case you’re curious) and make a little partition space available.

As you might imagine from the title of this post, I wasn’t able to do it. It was the same problem as before – there were “bad” sectors on the disk, so ntfsresize refused to do anything. Oh, sure, I could have tried to do it from the command line and used the –bad-sectors option of ntfsresize, but I’m not one for specifying disk sizes based on cluster locations, which is how you’d have to do it. And I couldn’t even get the parameters that the GUI interface would have used when resizing, because it wouldn’t even let me try to resize under the GUI to get the parameters!

After all, what’s the point of a GUI LiveCD if you can’t use the GUI!

What’s even more confusing/infuriating is that every forum post or help document I could find on this subject seems to go like this:

Novice User: I’m getting this “bad sector” warning – but I ran CHKDSK two times like it said, it found no bad sectors (or it found one and repaired it), but I still can’t run ntfsresize!

Linux Guru: Your disk is failing, get a new one.

Novice User: But…

Linux Guru: YOUR DISK IS FAILING AND WILL DIE SOON GET A NEW ONE IT’S NOT A PROBLEM WITH NTFSRESIZE YOU JUST NEED A NEW HARD DRIVE DON’T QUESTION ME.

I have, of course, embellished this somewhat for dramatic effect, but you get the idea. The assumption is always that the problem is with the hardware. (Even the Wikipedia article on ntfsresize seems to support this point of view, although in fairness it is marked as [citation needed]!) I can understand a certain amount of healthy skepticism (in many cases bad sectors are a legitimate sign of a dying hard drive), but there seems to be a certain amount of… I don’t know, denial – for lack of a better word – going on with respect to bad sectors that aren’t actually all that “bad.”

If your hard drive develops a bad sector (as a result of a sudden power loss situation, for example – which is what caused my bad sectors), CHKDSK for Windows will find the problem, recover what data it can, and mark the sector as “bad” so it doesn’t get used again. Barring another power loss situation (fixed for me since I now have a UPS for my computer), the drive should be just fine for the rest of its natural life.

Likewise with defects that were detected by the manufacturer (but not bad enough to reject the disk over) and marked as “bad” before they left the factory. I know they used to do this with disks – I assume they still do.

So, it certainly seems like there are situations (possibly quite common) where a drive will have “bad” sectors, but should still be safe to use and operate on. After all, the fact that they were marked “bad” means that they were detected and won’t be used again.

Of course, I do have to mention again that ntfsresize has a –bad-sectors option which will ignore bad sectors… but there’s no way to access this option from the GParted GUI. You HAVE to do it from the command line – which kind of defeats the point. The whole wonderful thing about GParted in the first place is that it’s a graphical way to resize your disk partitions. I’m a geek, but even I don’t like to have to specify partition sizes by sector/cylinder offsets.

So, if you were to ask me, I’d say that either:

• ntfsresize should be a little more forgiving regarding bad sectors; or
• The GParted UI should detect the ntfsresize error and allow the user to proceed with the –bad-sectors option, obviously with a stern warning about making sure you’ve checked the disk thoughougly with CHKDSK or some other tool to make sure there are no further problems and the drive isn’t failing even more.

I know this post ended up being sort of just me whining – but I do wish that I could resize my disks with GParted. I like GParted – I think it’s a great tool – but, unfortunately, it’s just not a tool I can use anymore.

If anyone has any tips or ideas on how I might be able to work around this limitation – or of perhaps another partition-resizing tool (free and/or open source preferred, of course!), I’d love to hear from you – feel free to speak up in the comments!

UPDATE: I’ve found a program called EASEUS Partition Manager – it’s free for the “home” edition. (But not open-source, unfortunately.) I’ll update with a new post if I’m able to resize my partition, but first I need to do a full backup, just in case!

UPDATE 2: Follow up article here – the news isn’t good, I’m afraid.

So, I started using Skype recently (for videoconferencing). It’s a good program, and I like it – though I do just use it for Skype-to-Skype calls with a few people.

However, while browsing through the settings, I came across this little gem:

The sample chat that Skype uses is an exchange from two characters in George Orwell’s 1984.

That is just awesome on so many levels. Well done, Skype – I like your style!

A serious security flaw has been found in Internet Explorer – no big surprise there. But this one really IS serious – it was found by attackers before it was found by Microsoft. So exploits are already out there “in the wild.” (This BBC News story has more details.)

The worst part of it is that you could be hit by this exploit just by visiting a “normal” site that’s been infected – being vigilant isn’t enough anymore.

“In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did,” said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. “This is never a good thing.”

As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

“What we’ve seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it’s inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals,” he said. “It’s just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs.”

Said Mr Ferguson: “If users can find an alternative browser, then that’s good mitigation against the threat.”

The flaw affects even IE7, the latest (released) version of Internet Explorer – so this isn’t just a flaw in older versions of the program.

So if you’ve been dragging your feet over changing to a different browser, now’s a better time than ever to switch! I’d recommend Firefox, but any alternate browser (such as Opera, Apple’s Safari, or Google’s Chrome) would do to keep you safe.

UPDATE (12/18/2008): Microsoft released a fix for this yesterday – it’s available through the normal Windows Update. Just be aware that you’ll have to reboot your computer (which seems silly for a fix to your browser, but that’s an argument for another day).

That’s not a sarcastic “nice,” or an uninterested “nice,” that’s high-praise “niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice!”

I just happened to be up late last night and logged on to my blog’s admin interface, only to see that WordPress 2.7 had been released. Who-hoo!

I love new versions, especially of free software. I love the way people put their heart and soul into creating these things. As a fellow programmer myself, I can see the signs.

This latest version of WordPress (as you may already know) is a big one – and it shows. The sheer amount of polish (for lack of a better word) is astounding. This is high-class stuff here, folks.

So if you’ve ever considered starting a blog of your own, or if you already have a blog but are using a different blogging platform, now is definately the time to give WordPress a try! And if you’re using an older version of WordPress – upgrade now! Seriously, it’s well worth it.

This is a question that has been floating around in my head for a while now: Is the MDI windowing model dead?

I think the answer is: maybe yes, and maybe no.

It’s certainly true that the “traditional” MDI (multiple document interface) model has fallen out of favor, for a lot of reasons – not the least of which is it looks kind of dated. But other, very good reasons are:

1. For many users, the idea of “windows within windows” is confusing. Microsoft Excel is one major application that even today still uses this “classic” MDI model, and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had to talk people through how to manipulate their windows. Mostly, people don’t understand “windows within windows” and when the MDI child window isn’t maximized to its parent window’s size, it can be dragged all around – often accidentally towards the edge of the parent window, where it hides the close box and other window controls – like scroll bars – and people don’t know how to get it back.
2. The reasons for having “windows within windows” were born in a different time – as far back as Windows 3.1, at least. Back then, it made sense to have a “parent” window that could control all of it’s “child” windows, because you didn’t have things that we have now – like the taskbar – for switching easily between windows. Times have changed – with bigger screens (and in some cases, multiple monitors) there’s just no real “need” to confine windows to a single, larger, parent window – it just adds unecessary complexity.
3. Taking a step back from a pure Windows-centric view, the “classic” MDI model also doesn’t work in everyone’s favorite medium for new applications – the web.

Example of the Problems with the MDI Model

So, for these (and probably other) reasons, the “traditional” MDI model is effectively dead (with rare exceptions like Excel).

Or is it?

It didn’t occur to me at first, but when you think about it, the MDI model is still with us today – we just don’t recognize it. It’s a “new” model, that can be used in both windowing environments and on the web. In fact, chances are you’re using it right now to read this article – I’m talking of course about tabs.

Think about it – tabs allow you to have multiple documents open – the only distinction being that they’re not really “windows” in the classic sense (they can’t be resized independently, nor do they have all the traditional window controls), but in essence they are windows. So really, the MDI model lives on, but now it’s a “tabbed” MDI model instead.

Example of a Tabbed MDI Application

Tabs take away all of the negative aspects of the traditional MDI model, but keep the flexibility of multiple documents (or pages or whatever) within the same application. In fact, tabs today have become so ubiquitous that it’s easy to not recognize them as being a form of MDI.

That’s not to say that tabs don’t have their problems – because they do. For example, if you try to create a tabbed MDI application, but you also want implement one of the new “ribbon” style toolbars, you’ll end up with tabs in your ribbon and tabs in your windows – which can be confusing as well.

Still, the tabbed MDI model does address a lot of the shortcomings that the traditional MDI model had – and although the traditional model has pretty much gone the way of the Dodo, the tabbed MDI model has been firmly implanted in the toolkits of application developers worldwide, and I think it will be here to stay with us for quite some time.