Notebook Review forum archive – NBRCHIVE

[Aaron44126]

Presenting: NBRCHIVE — a static, read-only archive of the NotebookReview forum.  (Super early version.)

Along with myself, @Sandy Bridge, @Reciever, and @Hiew have been involved in this project.  I'll give extra props to @Sandy Bridge who brought along a tool specifically designed to pull data from XenForo forums.  Without that, we would have been basically left with HTTrack, which takes way longer... and much less of the forum would have been able to have been archived with the level of resources that we have.

 

We've been working over the past few days to grab as much as possible.  We have not yet captured every single post, but we have hit the areas that appeared to be of the most value and also areas that were requested by other NBR users.  (We are actually still actively pulling down content and will continue until NBR shuts down.)

 

I'm still working to tie everything together and I will edit this post with updates as new sections are hooked in.

 

This was a quick and dirty job, to some degree.  TechTarget didn't give us that much time, and their web application firewall which starts throwing errors if you download too many pages too quickly also slowed down progress.  For some forums, we only pulled threads with a certain number of posts (varying from forum to forum) and excluded the smaller threads.  Also, I wanted to get something live for everyone as quickly as possible and I'm still working through cleaning some stuff up.  You may see oddities while browsing threads — missing images, links from one thread to another not going to the right place, and maybe even a small number of threads that are cut off or otherwise "damaged".

 

There are some known but fixable issues that will be addressed over the coming days and weeks.  Threads downloaded with the XenForo archiver tool are not paginated, so your browser might choke on very long threads.  (Internet Explorer seems to handle these the best, if you can believe it.)  The Dell business laptops section (pulled via HTTrack) also has issues with some attachments and the "up arrow" link next to quotes, and it's still trying to pull a few files from the live NBR server when you view one of these threads.  If you see anything else odd that seems like it could be fixed, feel free to let me know.

 

Bear with me as I work to integrate all of the downloaded threads into a cohesive archive.  I'm working on a simple tool to link threads downloaded by @Sandy Bridge's tool into the forum/thread list that I grabbed with HTTrack.  This project is dealing with literally millions of tiny files so there is also some just waiting for stuff to be transferred around as I get it all prepped for hosting.

 

When the integrated archive is ready, any threads that were not pulled down before the cutoff will still be present in the list.  I will have them point to archive.org, which hopefully has a record of most of the threads.  Also, I'm going to see about changing the top-right search function (currently pointing to "live" NBR) to just perform a Google site search.  I will also clean up the presentation somewhat — removing any hint of the ads, non-functional bits like the logon link, and so forth.

 

I don't think that I should be the sole holder of the archive.  For NBR regulars who would like to download an offline copy, contact me via PM and I will arrange it, once the archive is in just about the best shape that I think that I can get it in.

 

If TechTarget issues a takedown request, obviously I will have to comply.  I'm hoping that they will leave it alone.  I'm hosting the archive at my own expense; there are no ads and I am not taking donations.  By taking the forum offline, they are not in a position to profit off of the material anymore, so it might as well be made available.

 

The current status of the archive is:

Forums integrated into the archive:

• Dell business laptops (Precision, Latitude, Vostro)

Forums available to browse but not yet fully integrated into the archive:

• Hardware, software, and accessories
  • Hardware components and aftermarket upgrades
  • Accessories
  • Gaming software and graphics cards
    • eGPU / external graphics discussion
  • Windows OS and software
    • Security and antivirus software
  • Linux compatibility and software
  • Chome OS and software
  • Networking and wireless
  • Notebook cosmetic modifications and custom builds
  • Desktop hardware
  • Smartphones and tablets
• Notebook news, reviews, and deals
  • Notebook news and reviews
  • Notebook and tech bargains
• Notebook manufacturers
  • Acer
    • Packard Bell
    • Gateway
      • eMachines
  • Alienware
    • Alienware M11x
    • 2015+ Alienware 13/15/17
    • Alienware 14 and M14x
    • Alienware M15x
    • Alienware 17 and M17x
    • Alienware 18 and M18x
    • Alienware Area 51/Aurora and Legacy Systems
    • Alienware desktops
  • Apple and Mac OS X
  • Asus
    • Asus reviews and owner's lounges
    • Asus gaming notebooks
  • Dell
    • Dell XPS
  • Fujitsu
  • Gigabyte and Aorus
  • HP
    • HP business class notebooks
  • Lenovo
  • LG
  • Microsoft
  • MSI
    • MSI reviews and owner's lounges
  • Panasonic
    • Toughbook buy, sell, and trade forum
  • Razer
  • Sager and Clevo
    • Sager and Clevo reviews and owner's lounges
    • Reseller feedback forum
  • Samsung
  • Toshiba
  • VAIO / Sony
    • VAIO / Sony reviews and owner's lounges
  • Other manufacturers

You can Ctrl+F for the name of a thread that you are interested in if you want to take a look at it.

[Mr. Fox]

Nice job, bro.

[Papusan]

Good job. 

[Rinconmike]

Awesome.

[serpro69]

This is awesome! Thanks for the work you guys are doing!

[xexexex]

Hi. Thank you for that. Can I trouble you to please get the HP business subforum fully backed up as well? Especially the mods to install dreamcolor LCDs in the elitebook and Zbook threads. It's just too much precious all of it :(

[Ishayin]

13 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

Presenting: NBRCHIVE — a static, read-only archive of the NotebookReview forum.  (Super early version.)

...

Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to putting this together. It's an amazing resource! Could you please kindly check the following thread which seems to be missing from the Clevo section? It has a huge amount of info in it with over 1,000 pages of posts:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-clevo-p75xzm-batman-sager-np9752-owner´s-lounge-welcome-to-the-batcave.767105/

[Aaron44126]

13 minutes ago, Ishatix said:

Thank you very much to everyone who contributed to putting this together. It's an amazing resource! Could you please kindly check the following thread which seems to be missing from the Clevo section? It has a huge amount of info in it with over 1,000 pages of posts:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-clevo-p75xzm-batman-sager-np9752-owner´s-lounge-welcome-to-the-batcave.767105/

It’s from the Clevo “owners lounges” subforum which we have downloaded but is not posted yet.

[Aaron44126]

39 minutes ago, xexexex said:

Hi. Thank you for that. Can I trouble you to please get the HP business subforum fully backed up as well? Especially the mods to install dreamcolor LCDs in the elitebook and Zbook threads. It's just too much precious all of it 😞

I believe the HP business subforum is completely backed up (linked in my original post).  I know that the thread list is yucky right now; I'll be addressing that this coming week.  But do you see any threads missing that you were interested in?  https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/hp-business-class-notebooks.1083/

[slnotebook]

2 hours ago, Aaron44126 said:

I believe the HP business subforum is completely backed up (linked in my original post).  I know that the thread list is yucky right now; I'll be addressing that this coming week.  But do you see any threads missing that you were interested in?  https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/hp-business-class-notebooks.1083/

First of all, thank you and the others so much for setting up this archive!

I just wanted to point out something that I'm not sure is a problem or maybe not all the posts are in the archive yet. You said above that the HP business subforum is completely backed up. Does that mean all the posts should be viewable in the archive right now?  For example, the HP ZBook 17 Owners Lounge archive https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/hp-business-class-notebooks.1083/HP Zbook 17 Owner's Lounge/ is only showing posts until 2017 (even when I viewed it in Internet Explorer). However, the original thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hp-zbook-17-owners-lounge.751269/page-59 has posts until this year.

 

 

[Aaron44126]

17 minutes ago, slnotebook said:

I just wanted to point out something that I'm not sure is a problem or maybe not all the posts are in the archive yet. You said above that the HP business subforum is completely backed up. Does that mean all the posts should be viewable in the archive right now?  For example, the HP ZBook 17 Owners Lounge archive https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/hp-business-class-notebooks.1083/HP Zbook 17 Owner's Lounge/ is only showing posts until 2017 (even when I viewed it in Internet Explorer). However, the original thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hp-zbook-17-owners-lounge.751269/page-59 has posts until this year.

I will check on this.  Thanks.

[Samir]

Fantastic work and I even like the basic html presentation as it is far faster than any search system on any forum. 😍

In the future when it is done, I too would like a copy of the entire archive.  I think if many of us have this copy, the data will surely never completely die off.  Once I get back to working on my own forum which I have had to put aside to deal with family issues, I will probably also host a copy since I should have unlimited storage and bandwidth on my vps.

What I wanted to post about was that one of the threads that I was personally about to start archiving to pdf (all 169 pages), is the 8760w owners lounge (http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hp-elitebook-8760w-owners-lounge.581056/) and when I compared the wonderful 1 page archive here to the original, the archive seems to stop at post 550 while the thread currently goes to post 1689.  Does anyone else see this, and is a function of what is currently processed or did not all the posts get grabbed?

 

[Ashtrix]

Fantastic work in preserving the legacy of NBR and it's history.

[Sandy Bridge]

2 hours ago, Samir said:

Fantastic work and I even like the basic html presentation as it is far faster than any search system on any forum. 😍

In the future when it is done, I too would like a copy of the entire archive.  I think if many of us have this copy, the data will surely never completely die off.  Once I get back to working on my own forum which I have had to put aside to deal with family issues, I will probably also host a copy since I should have unlimited storage and bandwidth on my vps.

What I wanted to post about was that one of the threads that I was personally about to start archiving to pdf (all 169 pages), is the 8760w owners lounge (http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/hp-elitebook-8760w-owners-lounge.581056/) and when I compared the wonderful 1 page archive here to the original, the archive seems to stop at post 550 while the thread currently goes to post 1689.  Does anyone else see this, and is a function of what is currently processed or did not all the posts get grabbed?

 

For some of the first forums archived (HP Business Class was one of the first two), there were still some technical hiccups to be worked out.  In particular, some broken images and links could cause progress to stop at times, leaving the archival of that thread "dead".  The program I wrote had mainly been used for individual threads as of two weeks ago, and prior to this effort it had only been run against individual sub-forums twice, totally roughly 2000 threads - and only downloading the first page of those 2000 threads at that.  So, with hundreds of thousands of threads and millions of posts over the past week, it was not very surprising that it ran across some invalid data that tripped it up, which it had not come across before.

The good news is improvements have been made to how resilient our archiving process is.  I've started a second archive of the HP Business Class forums, since it has perhaps the most incomplete threads, due to being prioritized as early.  It's also worth noting that as of a week ago, it was far from certain that we'd get even a partial archive of all the manufacturer forums, which is why we decided to start with high priority ones even though we knew we might have some growing pains.

[Samir]

Thank you so much for the explanation!  Makes perfect sense as this effort has been a huge undertaking to say the least.

I printed all 169 pages of that thread to pdf so I have them in case someone needs them, and I grabbed some of the other 8760w threads out there.  Interestingly enough, the pdfs retained some of the hyperlinks so some posts that had links behind a word/etc, were captured.  I hit the download limit a few times, but it was easy enough to swap to a different system on a different public IP and just continue where I left off. 

If I had a place to upload them to, I don't thing I'd have a problem sharing them all.  I was logged in when I retrieved them, but I don't think there's anything important left behind in the pdfs from that from what I can tell so far.  I'm sure a consolidation effort of all the crowdsourced downloads will be the next thrust as there are going to be missing pieces and a lot of people out there that may have those pieces.

[slnotebook]

2 hours ago, Samir said:

Thank you so much for the explanation!  Makes perfect sense as this effort has been a huge undertaking to say the least.

I printed all 169 pages of that thread to pdf so I have them in case someone needs them, and I grabbed some of the other 8760w threads out there.  Interestingly enough, the pdfs retained some of the hyperlinks so some posts that had links behind a word/etc, were captured.  I hit the download limit a few times, but it was easy enough to swap to a different system on a different public IP and just continue where I left off. 

If I had a place to upload them to, I don't thing I'd have a problem sharing them all.  I was logged in when I retrieved them, but I don't think there's anything important left behind in the pdfs from that from what I can tell so far.  I'm sure a consolidation effort of all the crowdsourced downloads will be the next thrust as there are going to be missing pieces and a lot of people out there that may have those pieces.

How were you able to print all 169 pages of the thread to PDF, when there's no way to view the thread as a single page?

[Sandy Bridge]

The second HP Business Class run has finished, and I'm pleased to say that none of the threads conked out this time, and not a single error was printed in the logs (although of course some external images from years ago are no longer up).  So we should be able to restore that, and I specifically verified that the 8760w Lounge will be intact.

It is worth noting that for the threads already on this archive, you can save your own local copy as an MHT file using Internet Explorer, Opera 12, Vivaldi, and I believe Chrome as well nowadays, although unfortunately not with Firefox.  These archives can be re-opened with any of those browsers.  Printing to PDF via the Print menu is also possible.  I'd recommend this option for any thread you really want to have forever, such as your laptop's Owners Lounge or Ultimate Upgrade Guide.

[Samir]

44 minutes ago, slnotebook said:

How were you able to print all 169 pages of the thread to PDF, when there's no way to view the thread as a single page?

I had to print 169 pages of posts to pdf, many of these 'pages' were actually 5-6 pages each.  I guess I could even merge them all into one pdf file--I never thought of that.  It won't be as good as the single lounge thread though, which I will probably also print to pdf for my own record. 

I've found that pdf seems to be the best format for archiving stuff.  I've been working with converting about 40 years of operating business records to pdf for the last 10 years or so and aside from the very minor version changes, generally almost any pdf can be read by anything.  The 'version game' on a lot of the other formats really puts me off since retrieval in a decade or so will be a nightmare.

I'm working on the m6800 owners thread right now...only 46 pages of posts to go, lol.

[Samir]

26 minutes ago, Sandy Bridge said:

The second HP Business Class run has finished, and I'm pleased to say that none of the threads conked out this time, and not a single error was printed in the logs (although of course some external images from years ago are no longer up).  So we should be able to restore that, and I specifically verified that the 8760w Lounge will be intact.

This forum needs a like button! 😄  When will this new run be live?

Edited January 30, 2022 by Samir
need to know! lol!

[Aaron44126]

1 hour ago, Samir said:

This forum needs a like button! 😄  When will this new run be live?

I'll have another batch going up on Monday.  Right now the focus is just on pulling down as much as we can, it's sort of hard for me to keep up with what is coming in.

(...And there's a "thumbs up" button in the corner of every post :-P)

[Samir]

1 hour ago, Aaron44126 said:

I'll have another batch going up on Monday.  Right now the focus is just on pulling down as much as we can, it's sort of hard for me to keep up with what is coming in.

(...And there's a "thumbs up" button in the corner of every post :-P)

Makes sense.  I'd even say Monday can wait since the big push is to get everything before the place goes offline.

So strange...nothing on my screen of the sort.  I'm on the default theme too.

I finished my pdfs of the M6800 owners thread, and now I'm off to find any other M6800 threads of interest.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Samir
finished m6800

[Blacky]

Excellent!

[Blacky]

This topic also needs to get archived

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/hardware-components-and-aftermarket-upgrades.27/

[Samir]

7 minutes ago, Blacky said:

This topic also needs to get archived

http://forum.notebookreview.com/forums/hardware-components-and-aftermarket-upgrades.27/

That's a good forum for sure.  I'm going to save some pdfs for the 8760w and m6800 and some of my others if I have time.

[John Ratsey]

This is an impressive accomplishment. I wouldn't know where to start.

John