Tech and knowledge issues

First the Tech issue.

I ordered a new 1TB Hard Drive from Dell that was on sale for 45.99.  They got my order on the 8th of last month.  I was charged for it on the 8th of last month. On the 10th of last month I got an e-mail that my order was "Delayed", and I had to contact them to "Confirm" my order.  I did so and was told by their automated phone system that my order would be shipped in "48-72 Hours".  On the 17th, I got an e-mail that my new drive had been shipped.  I took delivery on the 21st.  Well I opened the box and checked it over to be sure they was no damage from shipping and didn't see any, but I DID think it was weird that an ordinary sticker had been used to seal the anti-static bag.  Normally the bags are sealed with the manufacturers notice about static electricity and electronics sticker.  I didn't think anything about it as I had to remember where I had put my external drive adapter.

Found my external drive adapter the other day but couldn't find it's power cord, so I spent an few extra hours locating it.  This morning, I hooked it all up and went to set the drive up so I can clone my main hard drive and then swap this in to replace the main drive  and then put the main drive in the fireproof safe.

That was the plan...

Opened up the drive specs under storage in computer management.  A 1 TB drive should normally report 1 inactive partition and about 930-936 GB of available space.  Not this one.

It showed me I had 1 ACTIVE partition and 1 Inactive partition and only had 902 GB available space.  Hmmm curious.  Went through my bag of tricks software tools and I could NOT get the "ACTIVE" partition to let me into it.  Hmmm even curiouser.  Went digging through all of the old shipping boxes I have from stuff I've ordered in the past and found the box of the last hard drive I ordered from Dell.  It was shipped from Dallas Texas.  This NEW hard drive was shipped from Lebanon Tennessee.  Hmmm my brain has an itch now that I cannot scratch.

Rather than spend an inordinate amount of time trying to dig into this drive without specialty software I really don't have the $$ to buy, I said screw it.  I deleted the partitions, both of them and put a new partition on the drive and I am now hour 8 into a full format of the drive.

I wonder however, how many people would just pop in a new drive without bothering to check the specs and just let the automated windows helper set the drive up for them, and just WHAT is on the other partition.  Especially in light of the various reports of the NSA short stopping electronics during shipping and adding their own software and pieces of extra electronics to them.

I can't say that's what happened, as the last drive I ordered from Dell was over 7 years ago, (Yes I hang on to shipping boxes THAT LONG), so for all I know Dell has a warehouse in Lebanon.

However this is not the first time I've had issues with storage media having something hidden on it.  I've had issues several times with USB Thumb drives that had hidden partitions on them.  When 32GB thumb drives brand new in the packaging are only reporting 23 GB, and from different manufacturers and suppliers and all of them refuse to let you see what is in the hidden used parts, you kinda think that maybe someone is trying to mess with you.

At first I thought it might have been someone in China trying to install some malware on an unsuspecting consumer.  Then the reports from Edward Snowden about the NSA putting spying software on and hardware in electronics came out.  So I now have a rather healthy paranoia about ANY of my computers and any new hardware.

So now YOU know to check your hardware as well.

Now onto the knowledge issues.

My youngest daughter #4 Sprog sent me the following text message.

#4 Sprog: Dad what is the overall them and problem of the movie the great gatsby?

(That is her spelling and capitalization exactly as it come over my phone)

My reply: Look it up if i tell you you won't learn it for yourself

#4 Sprog: I cant i don't have internet

(She is at her mothers house about 120 feet away from mine)

My reply: There are other ways of looking things up like encyclopedias of which there are 5 sets of them up here just for that purpose

No response to that yet and it's been about 40 minutes.  Not to mention that besides the encyclopedia's, there are 5 computers tied into the home network, android tablets, dictionaries, thesauruses, a literally HUNDREDS of other books all related to having a decent reference library that doesn't require electricity to use.  Unless you need a light to read by and I have oil and kerosene lanterns in addition to battery lanterns and LED lights the whole plethora.

UGH!  Kids these days.