Repartition a Hard Drive the Easy Way

If there is one thing that I've tried to stay away from in my computer tweaking, it's been repartitioning a hard drive. Over the years, I've formatted, re-formatted and installed many a operating system. But I've never re-partitioned a drive. I've always tried to stay away from it for fear I'd damage a drive so bad, I'd have to make a trip down to my local Comp-USA to replace a drive I just fried.

But the other day at work, I didn't have a choice. I was given the task of running Microsoft Update on one of our Windows XP Pro systems. The problem was that the joker who had set the system up didn't understand the concept of "future growth". They had originally partitioned the 20GB drive to a primary partition of 4GB (for the OS and apps) and the other 16GB (which was actually around 15GB).

Lot's of room to grow right?

I guess this guy thought Windows updates didn't take up any space, or he was never intending to update it. It also sure didn't leave a lot of room for apps either... idiot...

So, back to the story, So here I am faced with re-partitioning a production drive. I was in luck on one account. The user primarily stored her files on the server (don't ask....) so backing up the important data was a breeze.

A couple of days before, in my random surfing, I stumbled upon a program called GParted. Well, I figured I might need something like this one day, so I downloaded and burned the image to disc.

Sure enough, a couple of days later, I needed the app. So I popped the disc in the drive, rebooted (already had the BIOS set to boot from CD-ROM drive first then the HDD) and watched as the program started up.

The program loaded quickly (especially on an old Dell 4500s) and was easy to use. At first, I was a little confused on how to move the free space from the second partition back to the primary small partition. But after a quick read through the GParted documentation section, it became very clear what to do. (The exact documentation is here)

The repartitioning itself also went fairly quickly. All in all I found it to be an easy-to use, strong and very useful program. So my thanks to the GParted dev team!

Are you a Hot Geek or Not?

We've opened up a section of the site for fun called Hot Geek or Not. It's a light-hearted way for you and your fellow geeks to see how you measure up in your "hot geekyness". ;)

As an incentive for people to post their pictures and help get the word out about the site, we're giving away a free sticker to everyone who posts at least one pic to the site. Details are at the site.

We're also giving away one of our CafePress Store items away free to the hottest Girl Geek and hottest Guy Geek for the month of February. To win all you need to do is be ranked #1 in your category (Male or Female) at 11:59 PM February 28th. U.S. residents only please.

Read all the Enron e-mails you want

Want to know something cool and scary at the same time?

You can read through hundreds of thousands of Enron employee and executive emails for free...

A company called Inboxer, Inc. has set up a website (enronemail.com) to demostrate their software to help companies manage their email. They refer to it as an: "Outbound Content Compliance appliance, [that] helps you protect intellectual property, maintain customer data privacy, demonstrate compliance, and manage inappropriate employee behavior."

And these days, with more and more folks using their company's internet connection for personal means, this kind of software is gonna be needed more and more.

How did they come upon the emails? According to the site, the Feds (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) gave it to them.

They're also holding a few contests for who can dig up the most firable message, the funniest joke, and the best "Oh crap! I wish I hadn't just sent that" emails from the database.

Discuss this post in our forums

Fresh Ice Cream while you wait

At the 2006 Demo Conference they had something very cool. MooBella has created a vending machine that will make you a customized Ice Cream scoop right in front of you. We're not talking spitting out a pre-made scoop and tossing some toppings on it. Nope. We're talking this puppy will mix together the fresh ingredients that you've selected, flash-freeze your selection and serve it right up to you in less than a minute.

Pretty freakin' cool huh? I have *got* to find one of these machines! If anyone finds one let us know what you think.

On the technical side of the machine, you can select from 96 differnet combinations of flavors and toppings, it runs on Linux, and it's smart enough to know that if it's out of a topping or flavor to not display it as an option.

There are videos of the system on both the MooBella under the "Click here to see what people are saying link" and at the 2006 Demo Conference site.

Discuss this post in our forums

Captain Picard Gets Funky

Somebody put together this music video of Capt. Picard and the crew of the NCC-1701D getting down and funky to a techno song pieced together from what I can only guess is bits of sound clips from ST:TNG.

It appears to have been made with the help of The Sims 2, and you can tell a lot of work went into it. Whoever posted it on PutFile misspelled Picard though. Dumbass...


Discuss this post in our forums

You may be eating crushed beetles and not even know it

Quick, check your refrigerator and look for the following ingredients: "carmine" or "cochineal". If you see those listed, you've got crushed bugs in your food.

It seems that those are the two names the FDA asks manufacturers put on their labels when including bugs in their products. But apparently they aren't required to do so.

You might also want to check the products you don't eat too. According to CNN the ingredients can be found in lots of other products:

"Carmine puts the red in ice cream, strawberry milk, fake crab and lobster, fruit cocktail cherries, port wine cheese, lumpfish eggs and liqueurs like Campari, according to the FDA. Carmine is also used in lipstick, makeup base, eye shadow, eyeliners, nail polishes and baby products, the agency said. Meanwhile, cochineal extract shows up in fruit drinks, candy, yogurt and some processed foods."



How's that for a crappy Monday surprise?

Discuss this post in the forums.

NASA's Visible Earth: Super High-Res photos of Earth

Check it. Over 200 GB of high res photos of Earth all freely available from NASA. Some of them are so huge that they're now offering them via BitTorrent.

Visit the Visible Earth site.


Discuss this post in our forums