windows | Community Survival Org

As far as I can see, almost the entire computer industry was created to cater to grifters and lazy authors of manuals. Way back in Windows 3.1 they used the primitive FAT32 file system to ‘format’ old ‘spinning disk’ hard drives (and modern computers use persistent solid state hard drives — which can be 35⛌ faster, enabling people to back data up in less than hours). And IIRC they used FAT32 until Windows XP (from DOS until Windows 98). Windows XP moved to NTFS (New Technology File System). There are now (in T251016) three file systems that are of most concern — NTFS, ext4, and exFAT. (Computers will not work with ‘bare’ unformatted drives.)

The latest Windows versions (so far as I know) still use NTFS. Most modern Linux uses the ext4 file system, which must be safer because each and every directory (so-called ‘folder’), and file comes with ‘permissions’ so only its ‘owner’, or ‘group’ or (all) ‘others’ can execute programs, or write to it, or even read it (via passwords if not for ‘others’). With Windows OS one can only open a (very limited) ‘Administrator’ whole-machine mode to access (certain) special files and directories.

The exFAT file system is a modern version of the old, bizarrely limited FAT32, which can read and write to the Windows NTFS, Linux ext4, and Mac OS systems. It will ‘flatten’ ext4 files and directories (sometimes needing an ‘owner’ permission) so (all) ‘others’ can mess with them, so a few must be backed up on ext4 or else some Linux programs will reject them (this is unusual for most user files which ‘others’ can use). Unlike NTFS and ext4, exFAT lacks ‘journaling’, so if the power goes out during a write it may take a long time to repair some data.

People often get confused by the Linux ‘command line interface’ (CLI), But with user-friendly Linux (like MX Linux) only about six ‘commands’ will ever be used. Lazy authors will make it seem like the ‘cd’ command somehow affects the whole machine, when it only affects the operation of the CLI itself, for example.

You probably need two USB 3 to SATA Adapters, and also two persistent solid state hard drives so you can move data back-and-forth because data (on all consumer types of drives) is said to fade away about (maybe) three years after it is written (but just reading it causes no degradation).

I hope all this makes some things clearer.

I have told some people that I would help them move to Linux from the evil/insane, and soon-to-be uninstallable-for-many Windows 11. This turns out to be quite a lot of people, so I will attempt to get them started via my blog. I know of three realistic choices: my favorite ‘MX Linux’ which is derived from the hard-to-use ‘Debian Linux’, ‘Ubuntu Linux’, also derived Debian Linux, and ‘Linux Mint’ derived from Ubuntu, which mitigates some of Ubuntu’s peculiar quirks, and probably most resembles Windows.

However, before one gets started, one surely needs to back up their existing data! You probably need to do this any case. I think the easiest way to do this is to buy a good USB-to-system-disk (SATA III ) adapter, plus a quality SATA III SSD drive. I would not format it with the Windows NTFS, nor the Linux ext4, which are sophisticated but may create some issues. I would just format the whole drive with ‘exFAT’ (really old Linux may require installation of ‘exfat-fuse exfat-utils’ to use it). It will also work in Windows. You might need someone with Linux to do this formatting.

Now here are a few things that might possibly spare you some confusion.

People sometimes use gigabytes (GB) units, but in other situations use gibibytes (GiB) units to measure storage capacity. The main difference between these units is that a gigabyte is a multiple of 10 and a gibibyte is a multiple of 2. One gigabyte (GB) equals 10⁹ = 1000,000,000 bytes of data, while one gibibyte (GiB) equals 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824 bytes of data. They are nearly the same since 1000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = about 0.93. The reason for this is that humans use base 10 arithmetic, but computers use base 2 arithmetic. You can almost always ignore this difference.

Solid state drives (SSDs) can achieve read speeds up to 35 times faster than traditional spinning disk hard disk drives (HDDs). You will very likely find yourself searching for information on a disk. My computer took a whole day to find something on an HDD.

All storage eventually fails, including SSDs, HDDs, tapes, CDs/DVDs, etc. This happens regardless of whether the media is in-use or not. For consumer-grade SSDs, data retention typically ranges from 1 to 5 years without power under normal storage conditions, i.e., at a temperature of around 30°C. The cooler the temperature the longer data remains uncorrupted.

Flash memory can be read any number of times without any wearing-out issues. However each flash memory cell within a consumer-grade SSDs can typically endure from 500 to 3,000 write cycles before reaching their end of life. But good SSDs contain circuitry that automatically distributes data to minimize the reuse of their memory cells.

I buy through eBay.com. For a really fast USB-to-system-disk (SATA III) adapter (they’re still cheap so buy two so you can refresh your data yearly):
USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter for Hard Drive 2.5″ 3.5″ HDD SSD with 12V 2A Power
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224060531713

For SSDs I think Kingston is pretty good (consider how much you need to back up, maybe buy two since the price will likely go up; I would get the good one):
Kingston SSD 2.5” SATA III
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_dkr=1&iconV2Request=true&_blrs=recall_filtering&_ssn=memorydiscounters&store_cat=0&store_name=memorydiscounters&_oac=1&_nkw=kingston_ssd

Now you can install without fear, or just back up. Every install is likely a bit different. Have fun.

Tag Archives: windows

Moving to Linux — File Systems

Moving to Linux — Backing Up Data

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