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15 Jan 2021 - Podcast #726 - (23:53)
It's Like NPR on the Web
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I thought I'd do a short segment on updating a disk drive from one solid-state device to a larger one. It seemed like a quick, easy project that could be explained in just a few paragraphs with a couple of photos. But it wasn't, and that explains the length of this piece.
The computer I wanted to update is a Lenovo ThinkPad P50 that's several years old. I had opted for a 500GB SSD instead of a 1TB mechanical drive when I bought it to get better performance without breaking the bank. Now 1TB SSDs have become more affordable and the built-in SSD was nearly full, so it seemed like a good end-of-year project.
I ordered a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD, priced at $100. That's the same model I used several weeks earlier to upgrade my wife's computer from a half-terabyte mechanical drive to a one-terabyte SSD. In mid-November, the drive cost $20 more. At this rate, maybe I could wait until May and they'd pay me to take the drive. But I didn't want to wait until May.
The ThinkPad P50 has one 2.5-inch drive bay and two M.2 drive bays. It may or may not be possible to use all three (the documentation wasn't exactly clear), but I wanted to use only one because I planned to replace the 2.5-inch half-terabyte drive with a one-terabyte 2.5-inch drive, I would clone the new drive drive in an external case, the take the old one out, and put the new one in.
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The new disk arrived on a Saturday in mid-December, so I started the clone process using the pro version of EaseUS ToDo Backup Home, which has a clone option built in. If you don't have the pro version of EaseUs ToDo Backup, you can download a trial version of EaseUS Disk Copy and then uninstall it later. The process took a little more than two hours. I expected that to be the most time-consuming part of the process. Silly me.
When the cloning process ended, the new drive had only a 500GB partition. That was expected because it was a clone of a 500GB drive. The partition that would be drive C was followed by the recovery partition, and then half a terabyte that was unallocated. It's not possible to extend a partition when a recovery partition is between the primary partition and the unallocated area. At least, it's not possible to do that with the Windows disk management tools. Third-party partition managers can move the recovery partition and extend the boot drive into the unallocated part of the new disk.
Fine, I thought. I'll go ahead and install the new drive, make sure the system boots, and deal with extending the partition later. Before removing the computer from its dock and opening the case, I marked all of the locations where cables were attached so that I could replace them in the proper slots.
Then I removed the computer from its dock, flipped it over, and used a shop-vac to clean dust from around the air inlets. The computer is hardly ever out of the dock and I clean the dust whenever it is.
Then I removed the screws that hold the bottom plate in place. Lenovo makes this easy. There are just a few screws and, once they've been loosened, it's easy to pry the bottom cover off to reveal the existing disk in the 2.5-inch disk bay.
The only problem was that there was no disk in the 2.5-inch disk bay. Instead, there was one M.2 drive in one of the M.2 bays. M.2 is also known as the "Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF)". There's a period between the M and the 2, so there's some question about whether we should say "M 2" or "M dot 2". The proper pronunciation apparently is "M 2", but some people still think the dot should be pronounced.
I wasn't expecting an M.2 drive, but one might think that this wouldn't be a significant problem. Just remove the M.2 unit, plug in the 2.5-inch drive, put the bottom cover back on, and boot the system. If one would think that, one would be wrong. For this model computer, Lenovo requires a special bracket and a special cable for 2.5-inch drive, neither of which had been included with the computer, of course, because the computer used an M.2 device instead.
Should I have opened the case before ordering a 2.5-inch drive and expecting it to be a replacement? Of course. But did I have any reason to expect that Lenovo had installed an M.2 device instead of a standard SSD? Well, no. M.2 drives were less common when I ordered the computer, and I had no reason to expect that the newer technology would be used instead of what was common at the time. But there it was: An empty 2.5-inch bay, no mounting bracket, and no data cable.
The rubber bracket and cable are assembled from approximately $2.97 worth of materials, but they are no longer available from Lenovo and must be purchased from third-party vendors for about $25. Perhaps I should note that the bracket and data cable increase the price by 25%. So I ordered one. It was scheduled to arrive just before Christmas, so this could still be an end-of-year project.
Four days before Christmas, I had a cloned drive and the appropriate mounting hardware in hand: Mounting bracket, data cable, and a sticky label. Sticky label for what? Presumably it was intended to be attached to one side of the disk drive, but which side? There were no instructions, I couldn't find any information online, and no YouTube videos mentioned the sticker, so I made a command decision: Proceed without it. I forged ahead. How difficult can this be?
Well, there were some unexpected twists and turns.
Placing the rubberized bracket around the disk drive was easy enough. I had done this with my wife's computer. Her computer had a mechanical drive that just plugged in to the motherboard. For some reason, Lenovo designed the bay in the P50 so that the user needs a data cable. Attaching that to the disk was easy enough, but plugging the tiny connector into the appropriate tiny receptacle on the motherboard was a challenge for my fingers.
Success. The disk was in place and I restarted the computer so that I could confirm the new drive was working. I knew it wouldn't boot from the new drive because the old drive was still there and I hadn't modified the boot sequence in the CMOS settings. The computer booted from the old drive and the new drive was visible.
So that I could make sure which disk was which in the Disk Management Console, I removed the M.2 drive, modified the CMOS settings to boot from the new disk, and booted the computer. That worked as expected, but the Recovery Partition was between the C drive and the unallocated space. I would have to move the Recovery Partition, but that was a task for later.
Hmmm. I have a new boot drive that will be one full terabyte, and I unexpectedly have another half-terabyte drive that could stay in place and be used for fast caching. I like that idea. So I put the M.2 drive back in place, the computer booted to the new drive — but only after the boot screen showed an error: "2100 Detection Error or Storage Device (M.2) Press Esc to continue." The new disk was now drive C, but the old drive was no longer being detected.
I decided to postpone solving the problem with the old M.2 drive and to proceed with the process of moving the Recovery Partition and expanding logical drive C to consume all the unallocated space on the new drive. That turned out to be extremely easy with the free version of Aomei Partition Assistant. In about 15 minutes, I had downloaded the application, installed it, moved the Recovery Partition, expanded the C drive, and rebooted the computer to complete the process. EaseUS also has a partition manager application. I tried it first, but was unable to find a way to move the recovery partition. The Aomei application's instructions were clear, concise, and correct.
While continuing to use the computer for normal operations, I found that somehow the Outlook .ost file had become corrupt, but the .pst file was fine. The .ost file is an off-line data file, so it can be deleted. Outlook will then create a new file when it's started. Easy.
But Google Backup and Sync was throwing errors and the local GoogleDrive folder's permissions had been scrambled. Fixing the permissions was relatively easy and everything was working by the end of the day. Well, everything except for the old M.2 drive being invisible.
The computer then had a 1TB boot disk, and that fulfilled my original objective. Remember what that was? It's been so long that you may have forgotten my objective was simply to replace a half-terabyte drive with a one-terabyte drive. I could just remove the M.2 drive, call it good, and continue.
But now that I had an "extra, free" SSD, I could use it as a fast cache drive for photo processing, video, and even audio. A bit of additional effort might make the project more successful. So ....
The next day, I tried removing and reseating the M.2 drive and even disconnecting and reconnecting the CMOS battery. No change. Getting the old M.2 drive to function as a cache drive seemed like it might be a bridge too far.
So now the old M.2 drive is no longer in the computer. The computer boots properly. The C drive is a one terabyte device, and I have a spare half-terabyte M.2 device sitting on the shelf. Although it would have been nice to have that old drive in the system, I couldn't justify spending any more time on the project.
Mission complete.
Shortly after the first of January, I started having screen problems. The left screen would go black and the only way to recover involved rebooting the computer. Was the computer's video subsystem failing? Would I have to replace one or both of the external monitors?
I didn't like either of those options and, keeping with my "Don't Panic" motto (thanks to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), I didn't panic. I glanced at how it might be possible to replace the notebook computer's video subsystem and found that it's not possible. Is there a Thunderbolt video option? If so, I didn't find one, so if the problem is the video subsystem the solution would be a new computer. I didn't like that idea, but I didn't panic.
Might the problem be with one or both of the external monitors. Even an economy replacement would cost $250 or more for each monitor. I didn't like that idea, either, but I still didn't panic.
Instead, I kept watching to see when the problem occurred. I had always been able to recover by rebooting the computer, which seriously interrupts work that's in progress. If whatever was causing the problem failed entirely, I might still be able to work using just the notebook computer and its built-in monitor. If the problem turned out to be a failing video subsystem, I could switch to the Surface 6 Pro tablet. It wouldn't be pretty. It wouldn't be convenient. But it would allow me to continue working.
The one common factor seemed to be Firefox. The problem always seemed to occur when I switched from one tab to another in Firefox, dragged or resized Firefox, or clicked on a Firefox menu option. So maybe it's not the computer. Maybe it's not the video subsystem. Maybe it's not one of the monitors. The monitors will be three years old in July. The computer will be five years old in August. The hardware is all out of warranty, but I just replaced the hard drive in the computer and I'm expecting it to last a few more years. The monitors should also operate reliably for at least a couple of years.
So maybe the culprit is Firefox.
I prefer Firefox, but could switch to Chrome, Opera, or even Microsoft's Edge browser, but first I thought I'd investigate a bit further. I used Chrome to launch a Duck Duck Go session and searched for "monitors blank when firefox is running". There were several reports dating back to 2016, but I wanted something more recent. After limiting the search to returns from just the past year, I found an item on WindowsReport.com that seemed to describe the exact problem I've been seeing. The article was from mid-year 2020.
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I continued not to panic. The article told me "A black screen while using Mozilla Firefox is a common error that still has no clear cause," and then promised to provide some "possible solutions".
Maybe. I made this change on 2 Jan 2021 and so far I haven't seen the problem again. That doesn't mean that the cause really isn't something else that's currently hiding and will pop out again to bite me at the least opportune time, but it does mean that the problem now has a potential solution.
What's the point of all this? It's to follow the advice Douglas Adams gave us in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Don't panic, always know where your towel is, and beer is essential to dealing with threats posed by construction of hyperspace bypasses that will destroy your planet.
There's a lot of concern expressed for older people who may be targets for scams. Although it's true that scammers often target older people, recommendations for seniors also may apply to younger people.
I'll admit that I'm an old geezer. I've received calls that supposedly came from my "grandson" who had been arrested in another country (even though he was only six years old at the time). I've seen and ignored other scams too. Older people like me are prime targets because age often reduces a person's ability to differentiate between truth and lies. But younger people can use guidelines for older people to protect themselves.
Peter Lichtenberg, director of the Institute of Gerontology at Wayne State University in Michigan notes that one out of every 20 older adults in the US is a victim of financial exploitation, losing $80,000 to $186,000 to the scam. Nearly half of these crimes are committed by someone the older adult knows and trusts, like a relative or caregiver.
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Regardless of your age, taking a few minutes to answer 17 questions in a Wayne State assessment survey is worth your time. The survey reported that I am at the low end of average for risk, that's good, but I'll pay increased attention to any financial information that comes my way.
The quiz is from Lichtenberg's private company that seems to have some connection with Wayne State University. Although the assessment is open to anyone, the site cautions that it does not provide diagnosis or treatment recommendations. "Assessment reports are not stand-alone," the site says, and they "require the interpretation of the interviewer and possibly a relevant professional within their scope of practice and in the context of all information they have gathered about their client."
Lichtenberg says financial health is linked directly to physical and mental health. Scammers — whether on websites, by email, or on the phone — are rapidly changing their scams, but the underlying ploy is the same whether they're hawking phony masks, useless cleaning supplies, ineffective cures, or the more recent claims to provide access to immunization.
Scammers know what frightens people and they exploit it. The number one defense against scammers has been, is, and probably always will be "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." View any offer with suspicion, think critically, don't fall for offers that expire at the end of the day.
Regardless of your age, the Older Adult Nest Egg website is worth visiting because there are sections for family and friends, and professionals, in addition to resources for older adults.
If you've ever visited Microsoft's support site, you've probably seen references to a couple of tests. Although these tests, and other diagnostics, are helpful in diagnosing problems once they've happens, they can be even more helpful if you run them occasionally to look for trouble before it erupts.
No matter what problem you report on Microsoft's support site, there's a nearly 100% chance that you'll be asked to run sfc /scannow and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. The first is the system file checker and the second is the Deployment Image Servicing and Management module. Even when there are no discernible problems with the computer, these two utilities can find and fix problems with system files. I have calendar reminders to run both of them on the first Saturday of every month from a Command prompt (as administrator).
On the first Monday of every month, I run Crystal Disk Info to look for potential problems with any of the disk drives that are attached to the computer.
Although I don't run Malwarebytes continuously because it uses too many system resources, I have set a reminder to run it and have it scan the computer every Monday.
The free version of Speccy shows the operating temperature of the CPU, the GPU, and any installed or attached disk drives. The test takes less than 30 seconds and, because heat is one of the primary foes of all hardware, I run it every Wednesday.
The most time consuming tests are SFC and DISM, but they can run in the background and use minimal system resources. The others provide nearly immediate results. When there are signs that a component is failing, you can make plans to replace it on your schedule instead of dealing with an emergency.
Two protocols exist for website connections, HTTP and HTTPS. Doubtless you already know that the S means "secure". On a secure connection, everything is encrypted. Many websites force the browser into secure mode if if you use HTTP. Try typing "http://www.techbyter.com" into your browser's address line and you'll see that HTTP will immediately be converted to HTTPS.
It's a good practice even if the website doesn't maintain or collect any data.
You can make Firefox a bit more secure by turning on the HTTPS-Only function. On either a MacOS or Windows computer, (1) click the three horizontal lines (the "hamburger" menu) in the top right corner. Then select (2) Options on a PC or Preferences on a Mac. Choose (3) Privacy and Security from the tabs in the left column and scroll down to (4) HTTPS-Only mode. Select the option to enable HTTPS-Only mode in all windows.
Using HTTPS-Only Mode ensures all connections are encrypted. This is especially useful when you are using a public Wi-Fi where you can’t be sure of the integrity of your internet connection. Of course you should be using VPN software on public Wi-Fi, but this is just one additional security step that's easy to take.
If you connect to a website using HTTP, Firefox will automatically switch to HTTPS if it's available.
Some websites fail to support HTTPS. When this is the case, Firefox cannot enable it. Instead, the browser will display a “Secure Connection Not Available” page. You can then continue to the site if you want to. If you visit a non-secure site regularly and want to stop seeing the warning page, you can click the lock icon on the address line and disable HTTPS-Only mode for that site.
Macromedia had included a full version of Allaire's Homesite web editor with Dreamweaver for quite some time, and acquired the company in early 2001. That might have seemed odd, but Homesite had a better raw text editor than what Macromedia had been able to create for use in Dreamweaver. The acquisition also brought Allaire's family of server and application development products to Macromedia. Approximately five years later, Adobe acquired Macromedia.