There've been *big projects* that maybe deserve their own page... but tonight I'mma rant about a "little" [160 friggin' Gigabytes little] discovery...

I'd fought for literally *months* to first consolidate all my old machines' data onto one drive, then slowly organize it better... this was a big process, requiring going through each drive in reverse-order [newest to oldest], making sure they were organized similarly for comparison/merging/deleting duplicates/keeping the oldest dated duplicate and so-forth via home-brew script, yet retaining the original directory structures /as well/ should I ever have one of those "I remember where it /was/, now where did I put that?" moments... so, now two copies of everything [well, hardlinked] from three different machines, then a copy of the newest machine... then merging/comparison, etc. Then *finally* [literally months later], when that was finished, I could move all that stuff from that latest machine's directory-structure to one that makes more sense now. Doing all this with hardlinks is key, as it means each machine only occupies a little more space than original, despite there being two+ copies on the new machine [and far more on the backup drive] for some time. 

Anyhow... I *finally* finished all that merging after months, then finally got rid of those old dir-structures... and finally started on, and got a ways in, reorganizing how I'd rather it be organized... despite the nagging feeling something was missing... just couldn't place my finger on what. And, surely that *couldn't* be the case, because I was *very* methodical and meticulous in my process, been literally working-out how I was going to go about it *for years*. I backed-up each machine's *actual* drive to my backup drive before starting. So nothing could be missing... right?

Well, shit... some brat reminded me of an old project I kinda intentionally forgot... [as best I could, anyhow, being that it affects me still, every day]... which, I guess, is to say it's getting near the time the trauma's worn off enough that I might take a look at what happened... 

and...

It's GONE.

Nowhere to be found... like, except for my HaD.io project-page for it, and a way-outdated github upload, like it never friggin' existed.

Which, frankly, I was /kinda/ OK with, not wanting to revisit the trauma... but if *that* was missing, what else might be...? And so I went looking, and sure enough my favorite project of all-time was missing, as well. So then I was panicked... and *thankfully* eventually found that somehow I just forgot to update its version number, so it was stored in a previous project's folder...

Whew.

but... still that nagging feeling... so tonight I got out an old backup drive... and... Yeah.

Somehow, I can't even begin to recall, the drive from my newest machine, prior to my current one, is *very* *very* different than the last backup made of that machine. I mean *very*. 

And... the last backup...? 

Well, it looks like about 160GB of sorting, merging, looking for duplicates, etc. again... only this time I've got two *very* different directory-structures to deal with. WEE!

But, yeah, there's a *lot* of stuff in there to confirm that "something's missing" feeling I had.

Lessee... I think I topped-out at 10MB/s between drives before... so... 16,000sec... about 4-5 hours? to transfer to the new backup drive... 

The backup drive and computer drain the car battery in about that, but here with two drives... Can't start the engine to recharge midway; the starter drops the batt voltage too low to keep the inverter running = unhappy drives... so, I've gotta do this in steps. I *think* rsync, as setup in my backup script, can resume where it left-off. Though I had a problem with CTRL-Cing /something/ like this, then resuming... I think that was 'cp', which left a half-written file whose date was newer than the original, so didn't "update" it when I tried again... yeah, I think my rsync backup script'll do it. Of course it will; start a /new/ backup, link-desting to the incomplete one. I've done this. OK. That'll also give the opportunity to --link-dest it with some other backups so maybe it won't take 160 friggin GB...

That gets it on the "everything backup" drive... then I can do basically the same as before, rsync portions to the new machine, link-dest as appropriate, keep the original, hardlink to a new folder, and sort those in...

Ugh! I thought I was done with this!

OK, now, at this point I *really* wonder what the heck happened four years ago that my machine's actual drive *barely* resembles the last backup. What was I doing?! upgrading the OS? Transfering to a long-lost bigger drive? Is this *not* that system's drive after-all? And, if so, where is that one?

And, you *know* if I do this from a *backup* rather'n the actual drive, I'll never stop wondering what's missing!

Ugh!

----

Mwahahaha! I've got this....

My backup script keeps a log of the differences between two backup runs. So, I can do this process from the latest backup on old backup drive to the new one... then do the merge-process on the new machine... then if I find out there's a *different* drive from that old machine, I can back it up to the new backup drive, link-desting to the old backup, and look at the log to see which files to merge onto the new machine...

Sheesh!

----

Three days later:

Apparently I'd had *two* drives in that machine; one was full at 160GB, with Debian 7... then, apparently, when I finally finished debating *how* to upgrade to deb8, I decided to wipe an old 250GB backup drive and start fresh. Apparently, I never physically mounted that drive, [I keep saying "apparently," but the memories are coming back like patchwork] it was sitting in the bottom of the tower, sidepanel off, for well over a year... so, when I packed-up when moving, I disconnected it and wrapped it in a loose/crumpled-enough paperbag as to protect it, then shoved it between the mobo, bottom of the tower, and bottom of the drive-bays, then sealed up the long-open side panel. 

Then, years later, when I grabbed what I thought was the main drive, I accessed it by opening the front panel, and slid it out [on its easy-remove screwless system] without ever opening the side to find that paper bag. HAH!

Funny thing is, when I slid out that drive, I thought it a bit odd it wasn't wired-up.

But here's the real kicker... I now remember... I spent *so long* debating whether to use that backup drive [and wipe those backups of a long-defunct machine], and/or how else to go about the upgrade-process, that I renamed the machine "deb8ed" in honor of that long debate... which, if I'da remembered... sheesh! I mean, I've had *months* looking at that name several times a day, even wrote it on the debian 7 drive by mistake!

But that whole old-machine merger process I'd been doing these past months kinda relied on my working from newest to oldest... and turns out *the* newest will be the last to be merged, and harder, still, because since I *thought* I was done merging, I started flat-out hard-core /reorganizing/. Which'll make the merger a pretty big job, trying to figure out where things already exist. Wee!
Once this is done, boy-howdy, am seriously contemplating wiping the old drives and using them as duplicate/triplicate backups... this *should be* *everything*, now, sheesh.