---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: Tech things I have learned in the last 12 hours

wordpress_id: 2567
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=2567
date: !binary |-
  MjAxMi0xMi0zMCAxNDoxMDo1MiArMDEwMA==
date_gmt: !binary |-
  MjAxMi0xMi0zMCAxNDoxMDo1MiArMDEwMA==
categories:
- Technology
tags:
- Linux
- windows
comments: []
---
<ol>
<li>It is not worth trying to restore a Windows partition using dd unless you restore it to *exactly* the same offset on the new drive. Even then it might not work. No amount of dicking around with bootrec fixmbr rebuildbcd etc. will solve this.</li>
<li>A fresh Windows install that complains that it is missing the "cd/dvd driver" actually means that there's a problem reading the DVD you've booted from. Do this by USB instead.</li>
<li>There's a cool piece of software called <a href="http://en.congelli.eu/prog_info_winusb.html">WinUSB</a> that will create a Windows installation USB stick for you from inside Linux. You need to download the install media for this, but they're easy to find (and legally distributed).</li>
<li>Windows' partitioner isn't as aggressive as I'd feared, but it will overwrite grub and you need to go back in and use the chroot method to reinstall it.</li>
<li>Bumblebee is great, but <a href="https://www.martineve.com/2012/12/30/using-bumblebee-for-opteron-graphics-on-ubuntu-12-10-on-a-samsung-chronos-7-series-laptop/">hardly works "out of the box"</a></li>
<li>The "discard" flag has to be added to both fstab and crypttab to enable TRIM on a luks device.</li>
</ol>