CF-19 MK5 "Air Combat Command" edition dual builds!!!

As posted elsewhere, my orange MK1(ish lol) CF-19 had some issues. It was time to give it a good reworking over, and to upgrade it. After looking around, the simplest path to upgrading it, was to just grab a newer machine....

I picked up a nice and cheap MK5 on eBay for $150! Came with everything except the HDD and caddy. Good OEM battery and also the correct OEM charger. And it came with a bonus!!!

I am a bit of a drone geek! I am into other radio controlled toys also, but the drones involve lots of programming and fiddling while hooked up to computers. I have had some Air Combat Command stickers on my watchlist for ages.

The bonus? This is a genuine ACC military laptop. The dog-bone badge was replaced with a custom badge with the ACC logo and MIL-Standard numbers. I was concerned as the bios is also custom. But I seem to have full access. And so far haven't found any whitelisted issues.

There is one super annoying feature of the ACC build, they used that damn blue anti tamper/
thread locker crap on every outside screw... If anyone knows what I can soak these screws in to get rid of that, would be super helpful... Most likely I will need to get another set of screws from Bob Johnson.

Minor annoyance, rubber keyboard. As much as I would like to leave the machine mostly "as built" for ACC, I can't live with one of these constantly.

And another bonus, the machine has less than 3000hrs on it! In fact I liked the first one so much, I bought another one! The second one has many many more hours on it, but it is still pretty clean.

Both of these machines appear to have been Class 1 Division 2 hazmat certified. The newer one actually still has the stickers on it! The second you can see where they were, but they are gone. Sadly missing though, was the little corner bracket and screw to keep the battery door closed. (If anyone has a couple of these, I want! Please hit me up!)

So far, I have one hdd and caddy loaded with W7 64bit and fully operational as shipped from Panasonic. All drivers, and most of the Panny software installed. I am fully setting one up, and then maybe cloning the drive over to the second one. I have already tried it, and I can swap the drive from one machine to the other.

I also picked up a fingerprint scanner. That is in and working. Not fully setup yet, still need to register prints.

I also managed to get two complete caddy's for $45 shipped. VERY GOOD price!

And of course, I grabbed a normal keyboard.

I am not sure what exactly I will do with the second machine. I could sell it and have a coworker who has expressed interest. Or I keep it as a quick hardware backup. I left the rubber keyboard installed in the high hour unit. It is easy enough to swap HDD, if I ever wanted/needed the full rubber keyboard protection. Like watching movies in the tub.

I could easily make back what I have invested in it, and maybe turn enough profit to pay for the second one too.

I plan on adding, or swapping over, GPS. I also want a chicklet backlighted keyboard. They are almost at reasonable price levels now. I went with 64 bit and will be maxing out the memory. Some of the upgrades I could mirror on both machines. 16g memory isn't cheap enough to get on that list though.

I am almost ready to start installing my software suite, but first I want to make a clean recovery image. Then I will do a second recovery image with everything installed.

Not sure what I will do with the older CF-19. It might just go to my work. It does match my orange Snap-On toolbox nicely. If I take it in, I will likely upgrade to a SSD hard drive. It needs some help, but that should be just enough. It doesn't get very intensive use at work. I need windows for the small amount of software I use there. But that one is also easy to setup with a linux boot too. Or I transfer that bit of cool tech into the new machine. Turning on WWAN in bios enables the PCI-E slot there. I have an adapter card plugged in with an 8gig chip soldered in. Upgrading that to a 32gig thumb drive here shortly.

So far I am super happy with the way the new CF-19 is building and working!

 

I just upgraded my mk5 ACC to a 960gb samsung SSD and trying windows 10 out on it. It wont play some of my games on it so 10 may not be long lasting on it. My other caddy has 32 bit 7 on it. I know I like 7 on it. After this i will be installing a GPS as well. Still using the rubber keyboard for now.

 

are you talking about the original blue thread lock (opaque ... looks like blue paint) ... or ...
the clear blue (think candy apple) *loc tite* ?
i have never had an issue with the former .
the latter , you might try MEK (methylethylketone) ... do not get this stuff on any finished surface .
many paint and hardware stores carry it .

depending on what was actually used , heat will soften the stuff up enough to put the screws in place .
i suppose you could always burn the stuff off .
plunge into cold water while still hot to keep the temper .

 

It is a Lock tite type stuff. It is always put on to extreme excess. I have seen it 3/16 of an inch thick covering the screw heads.
VERY difficult to remove. Heat softens it some but not enough to be a huge help.
I use tiny tools and chip it away. Then replace the screws. Very painstaking.
I have done many CF31's with the lock tite screws.
A CF19 will be really difficult as the CF19 screw heads are very fragile even when new and clean.

 

ok ... that stuff .
yep , seen it on a lot of equipment .
i cranked up the soldering pencil and stabbed right down onto the screw head and then let things get toasty .
a warmed screwdriver can then be used to back the screw out .
back in the heyday of the 4.2 GHz *earth stations* many of the LNA and LNB assemblies had screws with that stuff in the threads and on the screw heads .

seen that stuff in many colors .

 

I have only backed out the 4 screws to the keyboard hold down so far they only had the blue locktight on the heads the threads didn't have any

 

A while back @Shawn changed all his screws in his 19 to Stainless steel. I did the same thing to mine and they look great. Got them all on ebay. Not sure if he still has the link to the seller.

 

I like to replace the screws with stainless screws with either a torx or socket cap head. All you have to do is measure the size (they're always metric) and order some from ebay or somewhere like fastenal.

 

Yeah once you get a hold on the head, they come out easy enough. I think the main purpose is simply to be a visual tampering indicator. With perhaps a secondary purpose to protect from vibration and loosening. Mostly a tampering indication though. It is impossible to remove them without leaving signs on the heads.

The reason why they aren't in the threads I suspect is laziness. Whoever prepped them just applies them directly to the head and called it a day. My machines have hand written numbers on them of 705 and 726. That would be a LOT of computers to take all the screws out of. Heck, it is a lot of time to gallop just a spot on each screw head!

Yeah, eBay. I found his thread here: Those are "hot rodded" for sure. I am on the fence. While I really like it, not sure I like if for mine. But I like synchronicity. So upgrading all the case screws to hex heads would do that for me. I think I would do button head style for them all. It might be the stainless part that throws me. I could go black oxide though.

As for the good quality tools needed to do it, I have that covered. I didn't skimp when I got tools for my RC stuff. I will give that upgrade some thought. Bob Johnson is still a good option too. But I suspect I can get much more mileage out of the same amount spent on the upgraded ones.

 

tacosalad, I REALLY like the torx head idea! For small screws like these, the heads grip better. But you REALLY can't skimp on tool quality for those... While I do have the right tools, the quality on those is not so good. I bought them just to have on hand for the very few times I have come across them in laptop teardown.

I might try to see if I can come up with a full set of screws in the right sizes. That would be different enough to appeal to my modding bug.

EDIT: Strike out on the torx stuff. Simply not enough variety available on eBay or fasten to pull that off. Too specialized.

Wait... maybe on eBay. As I go further down I find smaller stuff.

 

Here is another thread... http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/stripped-screw-removal-thread.783241/

Here are the screws for the bottom.
http://m.ebay.com/itm/Metric-M2-304...f90ea3e7fff9873f%7Ciid%3A1&varId=561977590336
And black
http://m.ebay.com/itm/M2-Black-10-9...f90ea3e7fff9873f%7Ciid%3A5&varId=561977590068

 

This thread.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/cf19-stainless-hex-screws.761113/

Base screws are M2 x 6mm
GPS screws are M2 x 8mm
Antennae cover screws are M2.5 x 5mm
Lid screws are M2 x 4mm
Hinge screws are M3 x 8mm
Hinge cover screws are M2 x 4mm
Hand strap screws M3 x 8mm
Keyboard holder screws are M2 x 4mm
Door hinge screws are M2.5 x 3 mm

 

Thanks Blair, those links had just the right amount of info with all the lengths too!

Thank you for doing the legwork Shawn!

Fortunately for me, many years of wrenching gave me the needed experiance. I got all the screws out without any issues, other than buggering many of them up.

And as good as my tools are, those Wiha screwdrivers look EXTRA nice. I may grab a set of the regular and hex. I am a tool whore, I like having tools specific for each category. Work, automotive at home, house repairs, woodshed, rc, and computer. I haven't had a dedicated set of computer tools in a while. I usually just use my RC stuff...

For now, the solution was easy. I just didn't screw the bottom back on! It is held on well enough with the covers all in place, for now. I also have the screws out of my orange CF-19 I could temporarily put in play.

I do not want to open up the second CF-19. If it stays together, no need to replace the screws yet.

 

"I am a tool whore"
i guess that is better than the other way around ...

 

I hear you....I have 6 sets of Wiha screwdrivers now

 

I just pulled a complete set of blue screws from a FZ-G1.

What I do is heat the tip of a Wiha 261 PH00 x 40 with a ciggy lighter. Push it all the way in and let it sizzle. Maybe tap lightly (like with another screwdriver handle as a hammer) to seat in the very bottom. PUSH hard and un-screw. When you pull the screws off the driver they are warm from heat transfer.

I've had some success with hot air re-work station but heating the screwdriver works quicker.

The Wiha has held temper very well. I'm not heating it red hot. Don't use a junky worn screwdriver for this. I'm lucky enough to have several PH00 size drivers.

A while back I had to drill the head from a CF-31 Air Force blue screw special. (blue glop plus blue lock-tite) It looked scary in the drill press. Maybe I'll find the pictures. (note: this was a drill press...not a hand held drill) The bit never touched the paint.

Sent from FZ-G1.

 

As mentioned ....scary pictures:

 

Ha! He said "Tool Whore!"

Sorry I am late to the party guys... I was going to suggest Wiha screwdrivers as they bite better than an alligator with lockjaw! When disassembling ANY laptop (and most other stuff) I will find the proper fit Wiha, push hard into the screw while turning ccw... It never fails to break loose! My Wihas have saved me hours, if not days, of work!

There are several places to buy ss screws, hex head and otherwise, on the web. Years ago I used to do this for my custom Toughbooks I sold on the Bay. I would use blue threadlocker on them to keep them tight. They add a cool custom touch I think. I sometimes would go a little further to add bling to make it look even cooler! Just swab out the pit of the hex cavity with alcohol and use a toothpick to put a little tiny drop of your favorite enamel paint color in the bottom of the hex cavity. Once dried and hardened it can look fantastic! It's hard to get more custom than that! Just please... For the love of GOD... Don't paint your laptop black! I can't believe those idiots are still on the Bay...

 

Getting the screws out hasn't been a big problem for me, yet.

It is getting the screws out WITHOUT mucking them up. And if I accomplished that, how to clean off the blue crap. To prevent the muckup, cleaning the blue crap off FIRST might be the ticket. But then I would need to do that without messing up the OEM powder coat...

That is my first, but for now simple problem. The immediate solution is just to ignore it. I need to get the second machine online TODAY. My coworkers laptop is officially dead now, and he has cash for me tomorrow. It is enough to cover what I have into it, just. So the "build budget" is basically nothing. For now, his needs to stay assembled. Mine is missing all the bottom screws. But I can temporarily snag those from the older CF-19. he is already planning on upgrades though, so some sort of screw solution will need to be implemented. I think the stainless ones will win over a set of OEM ones.

I have one of the two fully setup to the barebones starting configuration I want. The critical problem is, I can't get Acronis to work!!! I have two .tib files. One I made of my MK5 ACC CF-19, and another generously gifted to me by a member of a MK1 CF-19 setup.

Let me start off with saying my Acronis copy is a trial. I paid for a registration key on eBay (actually from one of the Toughbook resellers I have gotten stuff from in the past). They promised delivery in an hour or my money back and a free key. Then in small print (not readable on the phone), I saw they are only open Monday-Friday. It was $5. I can afford that with my budget, but I can't afford to pop out $40-50 and or have to wait. I need this machine online for tomorrow. He has already gotten a couple excuses for it not being ready sooner.... BTW, I suspect he will become a new member here too!

So the hangup is that in the Acromis Media recovery mode (using a dvd via usb optical drive), it is not seeing the .tib files. I put the files on an external usb hdd. It sees the drive, but shows nothing on it. I "think" (it was 2am when I gave up) I also tried putting Acronis on a thumb drive. I have it on said thumb drive anyways. I thought I had tried putting the backup on there also, maybe not. I am going to try a couple more combinations right now and see if I get further.

One of those days. My normally reliable MacBook is giving me trouble today too... I would rather deal with PC issues. While rare, Mac issues are usually a much bigger pain.

Once or if I get somewhere today, I will get some pictures posted up of these guys!

 

This deserves its own post!

Most of them do a BAD job too. If you going to paint or recolor, do the whole thing. Not just easily removed portions... I am on the fence about painting in general, but these two WILL NOT get painted. I want (mine at least) as close as possible to how it was delivered to the Air Combat Command. Maybe why I am a little hesitant to do the screw upgrade too perhaps... And in fact my coworker wanted this one BECAUSE of the back history on it too. He liked the size of the CF-30 keyboard more, but it was the uniqueness of the ACC one that sold him.

Back to painting though. If you change color, do ALL the grey or it just looks dumb. The problem is with the palm rest. On my Orange MK, Krylon worked awesome for the rest of the machine, and held up well enough. It is like 5yrs later and while it could use a freshen up, it still looks nice. But you can see and feel where the paint has softened up a little on the palm rest. It looks a touch duller.

Not to mention, that is the hardest part to mask off and paint cleanly. Somebody needs to make up vinyl skins for the palm rest...

Powered coating the palm rest might work, if one could even do that with them since they are plastic.

 

Regarding Acronis, just use another email address for a trial copy. Put that on a USB drive.
Store your image for multiple copies on a hard drive in enclosure.
You're gonna have to activate the Windows after cloning and install. Certainly very doable

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

Yeah the trial copy simply isn't working. Period. And everyone seems to think it should...

OH WAIT>>>> I never used an email address PERIOD. Do I need to do that to get ANY functionality?????

Otherwise I did it just as you said, mostly. I burnt it to a DVD and had the image files on an external drive. Let me try inputing an email and start again that way.

 

I never install Acronis. I always boot the rescue media and run Acronis from it's own OS.

 

Well I did that, sorta. I had to install Acronis to make the rescue media. I installed it on the drive I am cloning since that is my only running PC at the moment. When I installed it, I skipped the registration and entering the email portion. Obviously, since the drive on the other machine is blank, Acronis isn't installed on it.

That drive I am trying to backup to, has no OS installed and is formatted FAT 32 instead of NTFS (like the drive it is backuped from). Do either of these matter?

I guess that is worth a shot.... I need to format the drive for NTFS perhaps. I just couldn't do that plugged externally into the MacBook.

Okay I may see the problem, but NO CLUE how to fix it grrrr. The drive I am putting the .tib images on isn't even showing UP when I boot into Acronis rescue media mode.

Simple, put the backup image on the usb, right? EEEEERRRRR, wrong. "This file is too big for the format of this drive." WTF ever that means. The Mac won't let me send files to an NTFS formatted thumb drive it seems. It was fat 32. I can move files with the Mac on and off the exFat formatted drive with the backups on it, but maybe Acronis isn't seeing that one.

So right now, got a thumb drive formatted NTFS and moving the file via my operational Toughbook. Lets see how that goes. That process is PAINFULLY slow.

Will report back shortly. Well eventually, since its not going quickly haha...

 

OKAAY!!! So it seems the problem was simple, Acronis in recovery mode either doesn't see a USB attached external drive, or it didn't have the drivers to see mine specifically.

I figured out the right combination of thumb drives to use. I snagged 4x 32gb SanDisk drives and had setup one with Acronis Boot software. That had worked, so safe bet another one would work for the backup files. It did!

I have "Time left: 2 minutes" supposedly. I think it has said that for 5 minutes though.

It was not readily apparent what options to choose, and I had 5-6 retros before I got it to do something.

"Time left: 40 seconds" heh now it is 1 minute 38 seconds. Wank.

Whatever options I picked, I hope they work.... Just went up to 6 minutes. Whatever the case, I should know if I got it sorted in half an hour or so.

Crap, I am getting hard disk read errors now. I hope that doesn't burn me. I shouldn't get read errors from the thumb drives, so it could be a bad destination drive... But why read errors on that?

EDIT: It will be longer than half an hour for sure. It is CRAWLING SSLOWLY past this section. I think there is a bad sector(s) on the drive.

But there is a sketchy plan B.... I can simply pop my known good drive into his machine, and hope I made a good clean backup... I kinda want a SSD drive for mine anyways. That makes me think of some interesting questions to go ask...

 

Okay so it finally booted up and, "BOOTMGR IS MISSING"... Popped in the windows install stick and ran recovery/repair a few times until I got "shows system boots fine."

It took a while on the first black screen with cursor blinking in left corner. Then I got a Windows Starting logo and animation. Now it has been trying to tool past that point for 10 minutes or so. I have a mouse arrow now that moves around. HDD spinning constantly. And I get the circling halo on and off now and then.

I will let it sit here overnight I guess. Maybe it will sort itself out. crtl/alt/del doesn't make it reboot at this point. It appears that something got installed to the HDD at least...

 

"And I get the circling halo ..."
i call this the "bead chain circling down the drain" .
a rather apt description based on actual events from my childhood .

W10 ... this is what the results are when the software gods are feeling rather flippant and mischievous .
much as zeus disguised as a swan managed to talk leda into rolling in the hay with him .
(now there is some weird stuff)

i have been where you are at and it did not end well ... turns out it was a "bad" (as in bogus) copy of W10 ...
PP got involved and i eventually got my money back .
however , i had the same sort of experiences as you have (thus far) even with two known good DLs (SHA matched) right from M$ .
it is my personal belief that W10 is too fussy and complicated (insert something about ex-gfs here ---> X ) .
W10 trying to *fix itself* smacks of the old windows ME (millennium edition ... not W2K) ... a self-destructive OS .
a major concern that i have with all this is winding up with a bricked machine :
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=W10+bricked+computer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

i have seen comps bricked for less .
a while back it was far too easy to (truly) brick a toshiba laptop when trying to install a version of a linux operating system on them .

i hope i am wrong and magically it starts working .
i wish you the best of luck with this project .

 

Good thing I am trying to install W7 then! As for Millennium, I kept three Fujitsus running on ME for several years. It was a fussy os, but if you had a good install, good machine, and regularly maintained the heck out of it... And I mean defraying it once a week etc etc, it worked awesome!

As for legitimacy of windows, I grabbed OEM .iso from microsoft to install it, and used the COA on the bottom. So no issues there.

I did find out how to invalidate an activated Windows 7 copy... Pop the working os and drive caddy into another identical laptop... I got my coworkers online today by popping my caddy into his machine. But a quick call to Microsofts phone system got it sorted all out. I like the new smartphone method, works super nice!

So I go from a 320gig drive to a 250gig one, crap. Oh well whatever. I am likely replacing his drive ASAP as it has bad sectors on it. Anyways his is online at least. Mine has the "repaired" drive getting a fresh W7 OEM install. I will try the drivers package again, but I am resigned to likely needing to go through all that again.

 

ya know ...
i have seen a high percentage of borked or dying 320 gig drives ... above the average of the 250 gig stuff .
this is for the small drives in laptops .

i had a friend (now RIP) that had his business books on an ME machine .
got it running four times ... i tried to tell him to switch over to XP before it was too late .
yeah ... he called me after ME made mincemeat out of the hard drive .
i built him a machine with XP and salvaged his corrupted hdd .

 

I have had dozens of spindle drives fail on me and customers, sometimes very painfully as precious photos were gone for good. Seagate are dropping like flies at the moment. I use SSD in everything if I can, it's the future and I feel, with no hard evidence,that the manufacturers know it and are cutting corners while they can still make a buck. I use WD drives if I can't afford SSD.

I have been thru 3 WD black 2.5 externals in 7 months. One was my fault as it pulled max G's...oops.

 

lemme guess ... you played football for the other team back in high school ?


yeah ... done that too , it was the original drive ... about two feet onto the bench top .
(it survived)
and this morning i was transferring the coffee filter basket to the brewer and managed to spaz and hit the microwave ...
yep ... ground coffee all over the place ... uuuggghhh .
/me now waiting for propranalol to kick in .

i still say that those spinners were designed to be run in the horizontal right-side-up mode .
i have seen many failures of external types as well as those mounted in other than the "proper mode" .
many years ago HP/compaq made a few models of "toasterized" desktop machines ...
the drives were mounted vertically in them .
yeppers , i replaced many of them ...
i had a friend that was a service tech for a company and he had boxes of replacement drives supplied by HP .

 

Well yeah poop on spindle drives... I had two things going against my mission to get his 250gig drive going. First was I was seeing the right "number" of drives in Acronis. But on closer inspection realized that it was showing one drive at two. It actually wasn't showing the drive at all that had the images on it.

Second, that 250gig drive is bad beyond salvage. It eventually got there, but it was spinning slowly or something. It took almost a day to get windows installed on it, then yesterday figured out the "driver wonder bundle" and it took ALL DAY to install it and do the needed reboots. But it would lock and freeze if you asked it to do anything. It felt like wrong processor drivers or a virus locking it up.

When I got home I swapped in an old 100gig 7200rpm drive I have, and had windows installed on it in 15-20 minutes. The driver extraction took a little longer, BUT NOT ALL DAY... 2hrs later and it was running smoothly.

The driver bundle its the way to go. Works much better when you run it as administrator... The seller (toughbookspecialist) I got the Acronis had me give him a call when he heard I was working on a CF-19. He was all, "Just use the one click driver bundle, but you have to run it as administrator..." and right there I knew that was where I had gone wrong.

Anyways mine is working smoothly now. I may still recover my image to it though. There is a folder on the image I can't find elsewhere (well it is on my coworkers machine, but I took a sick day today), and also that has all the Windows updates installed. That took a CRAZY amount of time to go through. The image will take much less time.

Quick question, mine will likely get upgraded to SSD shortly so any cheap recommendations? Do we still need to stay away from the OCZ drives? Or is pretty much anything safe these days?

 

hmmm ...
that is still a fairly long time to install that bundle .
something aint quite right to my notion ... especially with a 7200 rpm drive .
even if the AV/AM were set to the rock-n-roll mode , that is still a long time .
(ide vs sata mode ?)

as far as ssd types go ...
i would stay away from the old sata 1 and 2 drives ...
i regularly get used drives off of ebay , reasonably priced .
of course , the samsung evo series is a good product for a decent price .

for fun ... and i think i got this right ...
install linux mint in a box and look at that 250 gig drive with the disk tools ...
the SMART data will tell some of the story .
or , send it to me and i'll take a look at it .
whatever ya do ... do not use it for anything or clone it .

 

I ment 2hrs from start to finish INCLUDING installing windows. Also I wasn't staring at it nonstop, so it could have been waiting for me a few times. I did have to restart it a couple times after it finished. And lets say that 2hrs isn't a precise time. I didn't run a stopwatch. It went quickly enough and didn't concern me. The other one had me worried....

That minimal install effort reassured me that everything is right with this computer and HDD combo. Right now it is recovering the image I made the first time around. I may then play Russian Drive Roulette... If I am VERY CONFIDENT in my ability to use Acronis.

Somebody (I thought it was CWB32) to to run the Victoria drive utility on my orange MK1. This is when I had issues with it deciding it wouldn't boot up. It has run fine since it was fixed, but I still really need to do this. Especially since it is a 320gb drive.

There is 140 taken up on it. I am not sure how I have even that much on it. If I can slim it down to half of that, then I could swap the 100gb drive into my MK1, and put the 320 drive into the MK5.

Ideally, I need to put SSD into both machines. Perhaps starting with the MK1. It needs the speed boost a little more. The MK1 is a lot more likely to become my work computer. I don't do as much intensive browsing or run processor heavy programs there. And the orange one matches my toolbox perfectly. But the 7200rpm drive would likely be just fine for work too. I would rather spend money on the MK5 if I have to.

Well whatever the case, I need to figure out what I have on there that is taking up so much space first.

I do have Mint downloaded and ready to go. I went to put it on the hidden boot drive in my MK1, and didn't have enough space... I am in process of trying to find the motivation to resolder up a plug so I can exchange the "drive" out quicker. I have parts coming on slow boat from China too to make the next install go much faster. I have a thread over here about that though: CF-19 MK5, alternate boot drives, lets discuss!

Still, you might get around to it quicker lol and I am not sure I want to put more effort into it. PM me if you want me to send it your way for entertainment!

 

The drives that were made a few years ago; 2014 and back...yes. Toshiba bought them out then. I could not tell you how they are now. I would check the reviews before I bought one.

 

gee thanks ... but i didn't tell you to run the "victoria drive utility" .

yeah ...
i'll pm you my addy .

i have found drives that had a complete image of the main section on a partition of that drive ...
not just restore data but the whole cannoli .
some had sooo many recovery images and a very large section had been dedicated to these .
and how many *restore points* does one really need ?

 

Well it was a fresh install without any recovery images on it. My old MK1 also didn't have any images on it. Although I think the 250gb drive had a recovery partition on it. I thought I had wiped it all clean though...

So the MK5 ran its Acronis recovery for a couple hours and finally finished up. And on boot up, nothing had been recovered. Not sure what it did that whole time... Well whatever not a big deal. I need to go in and figure out what Panasonic goodies didn't get installed. I know the fingerprint software at least is missing. I think a lot of the specialized Panasonic "bloatware" is missing too. And a lot of that is actually a little bit useful.

The crappy part is that catching up on windows updating takes multiple checks, reboots, and lots of time. On the first drive I setup, it took the better part of a day to do.

Anyways, Acronis isn't working for me. I have enough backup storage to do the swap, but only the two drives. So I have take both down to try to just get one. If I can't get the setup working before hand, kinda in trouble once I go to swap them both.

So instead of just working on the 100gb drive in the MK5 and finishing it out, I need to get the updated image recovered to it I guess. Well lets go try this again....

Things are going well with the MK1 cleanup at least. I have it down to 71gb now. I want to try and clean out 5-10gb more. But I am not still finding folders full of gigs of crap I can dump or move elsewhere.

 

hmmm ...
this reminds of the time a new guy , myself and the old chief engineer went to a mountaintop site to work on a 20KW output fm transmitter ...
it took us some time to fix it but it fired up and settled right down and purred right along .
after a while the new guy noticed some readings bobble a tiny bit and adjusted the plate resonance ... machine was stable .
we were cleaning up the place and sorting through stuff when the chief nudged me and pointed ...
the young guy was at the transmitter ... messing with it .
we kept cleaning and sorting and the young guy kept messing with the transmitter .
soon there was a *bang* and the lights dimmed and went out .
the chief engineer said : "yep , he done engineered it right off the air" .

 

LOL thats awesome!!! Gimme two more hours and I either do the same, or win!

Alright PROGRESS! I guess I figured out what I was doing. I got the MK5 with 100gb drive imaged with the backup Acronis file. Purring right along with all windows updates happily installed etc!

So I know the image and my process are FINALLY good! Now I need to make a backup of the MK1...

I cleaned the hell out of the MK1. Funny, the drives are at 67.8gb for the MK5 with nothing on it, and 68.7 on the MK1 with all my files and installed software. So yeah I got it pared down very nicely!!!

I think the best process will be to image the MK1, then swap in the smaller drive and recover it. Then put the bigger drive into the MK5 and do the same.

Humm I smell something burning....

 

Something I use to do the updates is "Simplix Pac" . Check it out here http://update7.simplix.info/ . You will have to translate it to English but it's easy to use and it's fast. No waiting for hours for your laptop to update.

 

I am pretty good with the hardware side of things. But I am struggling to use a "supposedly simple" program like Acronis... And ya think it is a good idea for me to complicate things using a Russian website to make my like, simpler?! Maybe not such a good idea me thinks...

Besides, once I get the correct backup images on the correct drives, I will have all but the very last Windows update installed.

But that does look interesting!

 

Well I guess you do have a point.

 

Hehe yeah me thinks.

Hey, so does the medium you back up to with Acronis, make a big difference to the compression rate? My first backup I did to an external platter drive (the 100gb 7200rpm one in fact), then moved it onto a usb flash drive. This one I just backed up to the flash drive, and it looks like it is going to be double the size!? Won't know for sure until it is finished...

EDIT: Yeah it finished at 19.5 GB vs the 10 GB of the other. Both drives were basically the exact same size too.

 

So it gets weirder... MUCH WEIRDER! And I may have stumbled across the ultimate way to clean up a HDD, back it up!

After cleaning up (including running disc cleanup a few times) the MK1 drive had 68.7 GB on it. I just finished the recovery and now it only has 36.1 GB on it. How is this even POSSIBLE???

Curious to see how the MK5 goes! The backup image was compressed a lot more, I wonder if the completed backup will be bigger or smaller. Will edit with the details in a little bit...

EDIT: This apparently matters, and may have some relevance. Okay so earlier I was using my (I think) NTFS formatted "datastorage" external HDD. This HDD hooked up to either PC or Mac nicely. And I think I was able to move files in and out when attached to the Mac.

Well I ran out of space since my "datastorage" drive got put into play and I had to resort to transferring files around and dropping the images onto my Mac backup drive. Which of course makes life amusing since I can't plug it into the PC, and can't put files onto an NTFS formatted thumdrive via the Mac.

Seems using FAT32 for a recovery drive is a bad idea. NTFS is miles better. SO gonna dump this file onto the MK1, format the thumb drive back to NTFS, then drop the file back onto it.

 

Well forgetting all the little details above, it seems that backup and recovering the drives frees up a ton of space!!!

The MK1 went from 68.7 GB to 36.1 GB.
The MK5 went from 67.8 GB to 25.2 GB.

Not sure how that happened. Makes sense to see a smaller size from the MK5 since it has zero extra software installed. In fact it is such a mystery, I made an account over in the Acronis forums just to ask!

Both the MK1 and the MK5 are happily online now! I am fixing AVG in the MK1. Something broke it. The recovery maybe, who knows. I need to install AVG into the MK5. And enroll some fingerprints. But that can wait for tomorrow as it is time to go crash.

Best part of it all is that not only is the new MK5 happy, but my old faithful MK1 seems to have a new lease on life again. And it is just the perfect one to take to work!

 

Anyone want to trade an awesome rubber backlit keyboard for a standard run of the mill base keyboard??? Such a good deal!

My coworker is LOVING his! I changed out his rubber board for a stocker today. That was my last regular one (that works right anyways). I have 2-3 bad ones...