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Anonymous...i dont think so

idiotekniQues

idiotekniQues

Platinum Member
i just installed the xp powertoy sync toy on my new rig. everything in this rig is brand new except my audigy 2zs, a leadtek tv tuner & a 250gb ide WD hard drive which was NOT my windows or proggie files drive on my old rig.

so i install sync toy which is a nifty little proggie that lets you create folder pairs and use a variety of options to sync them together. it is all done then it asks me if i want to participate in anonymous survey stuff regarding my hardware configuration and user habits and i say no.

then sync toy opens up and it has ALL MY OLD FOLDER PAIRS LISTED! from my old PC with my old drive letters assigned with all settings still memorized.

wtf?

there is nowhere that this program could have drawn my previous folder pairs except from my IP address where it must have been stored by microsoft.
 
Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
there is nowhere that this program could have drawn my previous folder pairs except from my IP address where it must have been stored by microsoft.
Click to expand...

Well, except the hard drive you apparently reused.
 
Sooo...
You formatted the harddrive in between system installs rigth?

Because it's probably likely that the powertweak tools are just using one of the more obscure features of the NTFS file system and if your "sync'd" folders existed from one install to another then there is a pretty good chance that it's scanned your file system and found the ones you already made.
 
1st off the hard drive running windows in this new rig is a completely brand new 320gb sata drive.

secondly, the 250gb ide hard drive that was in my old rig had nothing but image and media files. my windows install was on an 80gb ide which is not in the new rig, still in the old.
 
Yes..

But the same filing system in 250 gig drives is used in your old install and your new install, correct?

And also your 'links' you made have to do with directories found in that 250gig drive, correct?

So, for example, one of the features of NTFS is alternative data streams. With this you can add metadata to directories and files for extra information. This information will survive a OS reinstall, you have to copy files to a non-ntfs file system or reformat the file system to get rid of ATD.

NTFS version that came with XP also support what is known as 'hard links' and 'junctions'. (new with Vista is support for 'symbolic links')

Now a hardlink is another way of saying you have two filenames for the same file. This informatin will survive in between reinstalls. You have to 'delete' the file to get rid of the hardlink.

'Junctions' are a bit more complicated http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524

With junctions you can take one folder from one NTFS file system and 'bind' it to another folder on another file system. (or C: or D: or E: (etc etc) letter drives as file systems are represented in Windows, generally).

Also you can 'mount' file systems to directories/junction points similar to how mount works in Unix-like systems.


These things will survive a OS reinstall quite easily. You'd have to delete (or umount them.. some types of deletes in Windows with junctions can do _very_bad_things__) them manually or reformat the file system to get rid of them.


The powertweak tool, although I am not sure what it does or what your talking about, is probably making junction points.

This 'feature' of powertools is not supported with Fat32 file systems, isn't it?

I am just guessing, but I think I am probably right.
 
i downloaded the white paper for it. requirements say nothing about ntfs:

Minimum requirements for installing SyncToy are:
Microsoft Windows XP SP2
Microsoft .NET Frameworks V1.1
1GHz Intel P3 processor or equivalent
256MB RAM, 512MB RAM recommended
20MB free disk space
Hardware and Software Requirements
The following hardware and software requirements are necessary to use this software:
Operating System. Windows XP Home or Professional (including Tablet PC and Media Center Editions) with Service Pack 2 or later installed. This program has not been tested on any other version of Windows.
Hardware. A system with at least 256 Mb of RAM and a Pentium III or better CPU is required. For best performance, 512 Mb of RAM and a Pentium 4 or better CPU is recommended. 20 MB of free disk space is recommended.
Microsoft .NET Framework. Version 1.1 of the Microsoft .NET Framework is required. Other versions of the .NET Framework may be safely installed on your system without affecting the use of SyncToy.
 
Well it doesn't look like it nessicarially uses junctions, although it may do it for some features.

BTW that whitepaper was pretty ******, it gave absolutely no details on how the stupid thing works. Bizzare that they can call it a 'white paper'. Most people would call it a 'advertisement pamphlet'.

If you go to that knowledge base article I linked to it has commands for displaying junctions. See if that command shows anything familar.

I know that Microsoft has in the past had it's OS spy on you (for example some versions of windows media player would report back to Microsoft what files you played on it), but in this case I think it's doubtfull. Even if it does report information to Microsoft.com it's very unlikely it would automaticly retrieve the information back off of it! It's a bit too paranoid to make sense.

Maybe one of the Microsoft guys can come by and tell you why it's retaining information. I am still pretty sure that some of the stuff it does is tied to the file system, which is going to stick around till you reformat, but I don't know what all it would use.
 
im just curious. id love to find out 🙂

it is a bit strange and i just want the explanation. i dont know anything about the software side, just how to muck around with hardware and build rigs when i need to 🙂
 
And did you keep your My Documents folder around? Which just so happens to have a SyncToyData directory with a SyncToyDirPairs.bin file? This stuff is not magic and I do not believe that SyncToy uses any ADS streams. It just uses the SyncToyData folder to keep track of the file listings to figure out what has changed from invocation to invocation.
 
May want to change your title to "Powertoy keeps your data when you copy it from the old computer" 😉
 
yes i overreacted 😀

since i know people constantly want the information of our computer using habits it did not seem so farfetched at the time.
 
Originally posted by: idiotekniQues
yes i overreacted 😀

since i know people constantly want the information of our computer using habits it did not seem so farfetched at the time.
Click to expand...

Yes it did. Please change your thread title or request a lock.
 
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