re: two hard drives!
Saturday, September 27, 2003 at 1:24 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by MLS
(2200 messages posted)
Let me suggest the following to keep you out of trouble in the future. First, do
get a second hard drive and set it up as a slave. Next, perform a clean install
of windows XP on your C drive. Michael Stevens and Paul Thurrott each have web sites
that give you everything you need to do for a clean install. Once XP is cleanly
installed, and assuming you are connected to the internet, activate XP and then download
all XP critical updates. Next, install a program such as Norton Ghost on your C
drive. During the setup the program gives you the opportunity to create a self-booting
floppy disk. Do it!. Once Ghost, or whatever program you choose is installed on
your C drive, run the backup program and tell it to make an image of your C drive
on your second hard drive. If you are using Ghost, the program will tell you that
it must restart in DOS to make the backup. That is OK as it is all automatic from
that point on. Once the C drive image is made and placed on the second drive (it
is a compressed image that is placed there...not one you can boot from), the program
will automatically restart and you will boot back into Windows. You now have a baseline
image of an up-to-date XP installation that you can use to restore your C drive if
it later gets messed up. Having done that, then go about installing your peripherals
and applications until you have your C drive fully populated and working as it should.
At that time I would make a second image of your C drive (keep your first as well)
so that you now have an image of your fully loaded C drive. You should now have
your C drive fully loaded and working properly, and you should have two images on
your second drive, one being the drive with just the fully functioning XP, and the
second one being the C drive with everything installed and working. From this point
on you have a couple of choices. One would be to obtain a program such as Iomega's
Auto Backup, which tracks in real-time all changes you make to your important files
(My Docs, Outlook, etc.). Programs like this work by first copying everything in
your then existing folders that you tell it to monitor, and then adding new copies
of files anytime one of the files in your monitored folders is changed. This has
a great advantage in that you can now always recover all of your important data by
going to your second drive and retrieving the files placed there by Auto Backup or
the like. Another approach might be to use a program like GoBack 3.0. GoBack keeps
track of every time that you C drive is written to, as well as the same for your
second hard drive. If you ever get into trouble, you can reboot, tell GoBack during
the boot process that you want to restore the computer to an earlier time, select
the time, and then sit back and wait for the process to complete. GoBack works just
like XP's System Restore, except that it is much more comprehensive and works (unlike
System Restore) when you really need it. For simplicity of use, GoBack is the easier
way to go (though you do have to jump through a couple minor hurdles if you later
want to make another image of your C drive so that it is fully up-to-date). Any
specific questions, feel free to email me directly at slonecker@earthlink.net.
On Saturday, September 27, 2003 at 12:50 pm, joanne salutric wrote:
>thanks again msl, i have a floppy disc and when i tried to use it the other day,
>when the "a" prompt comes up i don't know what to type. i'm a real novice! what
should
>i type? also i don't think it will work with ntfs files in xp. is this right?
>
>
- Written in response to:
- re: two hard drives! (joanne salutric: Saturday, September 27, 2003 at 12:50 pm)
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