Oct 24, 2021The Fascinating Application of Rolling Hashes in Backup SystemsIntroduction Rolling hashes play a very important role in modern backup software like Arq Backup, Duplicacy or Kopia. …Backup5 min readBackup5 min read
Oct 13, 2021Designing a Backup System (Addendum)Recently, I’ve been studying how Kopia stores its data and from that, I have some changes I would like to make to the hypothetical backup system I’ve designed. Local Encrypted Index in each Pack How Kopia packs work is that each pack is basically just data from multiple chunks appended together without any marker in between…Backup2 min readBackup2 min read
Sep 4, 2021Notes on exFAT and ReliabilityWhy am I writing this? When you want a pick a file-system for external storage that’s compatible with multiple operating systems, you get to pick between these: FAT32 — An oldie supported by all popular OSes, but no longer a good choice due to lack of support for files larger than 4 GB NTFS —…Exfat9 min readExfat9 min read
Aug 22, 2021Designing a Backup SystemFirst things first, yesterday I’ve decided to write my own backup software, but after a bit more investigation, I came across Kopia which did most of what I wanted, has great CLI and documentation, and is in active development. …Backup14 min readBackup14 min read
Aug 21, 2021Writing My Own Backup SoftwareIntroduction As more and more of our life are becoming digitalized, I’m sure many of you will agree that it can be devastating to loss data, perhaps some important work that will take ages to re-do, or some photo with sentimental value that are lost forever. …Backup6 min readBackup6 min read
Aug 8, 2021Fixing LLDB on Android Studio on M1 MacTL;DR To fix: Error while starting native debug session: java.lang.RuntimeException: Found broken LLDB configuration Replace the content of Android Studio.app/Contents/plugins/android-ndk/resources/lldb with the one from the Intel version of Android Studio and everything should work. Tested on Android Studio 2020.3.1. Full Story So I’ve been testing Android Studio on macOS on Apple Silicon (M1)…Android Studio2 min readAndroid Studio2 min read
Apr 6, 2021Comparing the Speed of SSD, eMMC, Flash Drive and SD CardDecently large flash storage such as 64 GB flash drives or SD cards are now very affordable. With such a large size, one might think, why not install Windows or Linux on it and use it instead of a hard drive? Not a live-CD-style installation but an actual installation. I…Sd Card3 min readSd Card3 min read
Mar 20, 2021Block Alignment on SD CardsWhile I was playing around with connecting SD cards to the ESP8266, I ran the SdInfo sketch and found one interesting message. I find this intriguing since as a computer user, I’ve always seen SD card as a raw storage device where it stores bytes and you can put any…Sd Card3 min readSd Card3 min read
Mar 13, 2021Quickly Wipe an SD Card with ESP8266In a previous story, I have written about connecting an SD Card to an ESP8266. During my adventures, I have discovered some interesting tidbits. One thing is that SD cards support what is called “CMD38” which tell the SD card to erase certain blocks without actually writing zeros to the…Esp82663 min readEsp82663 min read
Mar 7, 2021ESP8266 (NodeMCU) and SD CardsI have decided to play around with connecting MicroSD cards to the ESP8266. From various examples sketches that came with Arduino, I know that it is possible but have never looked into the detail, thinking that it requires some dedicated hardware. The Protocol Fascinatingly, no such dedicated hardware is needed and with…Esp82664 min readEsp82664 min read