Backing up a computer

mgookin · Mar 9, 2008

I get best pc performance by having one hard drive for the OS and another hard drive for all of my storage. As for My Documents, that is another Bill Gates scam. I don't use any of his folders. On my storage drive I have folders for everything. It keeps the OS drive dedicated to OPERATING the computer. It makes it much faster and efficient. And that second drive is great for virtual memory too; even better reason to do it.

With the low cost of hard drives these days, everyone should be doing it.

Then any time you want to wipe the OS drive and reinstall the operating system, there's really nothing to do. Just copy over any program files you want to keep, then format the operating system drive and reinstall the OS. Makes it like a brand new pc. The machine I use for e-mail is about 8 years old now and runs like new. It has a 100mhz fsb and 1gb of ram with WinXP Pro on a Intel Pentium IV, and I run autocad on it and it runs very fast. Never slows down. The only upgrade is a video card so I bought a good one.

Gyles · Mar 28, 2008

Quote from forex-forex:

I was looking through a book called "Google Hacks" and apparently you can setup your Gmail account to show up on the computer as a hard disk: " start/my computer/ hard disk drives/your_gmail " When you log out the "your_gmail" drive disappears.

You then can treat it as a hard disk and save stuff. I think the book is out of print now and I don't know the exact details of setting this up.

As per Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

âGoogle Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching (ISBN 0-596-00447-8) is a book of tips about Google, a popular Internet search engine, by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest. The book was published by O'Reilly in February 2003.

The second edition was published in December, 2004 (ISBN 0-596-00857-0).
There was also a third edition published (ISBN 0-596-52706-3).â

You can learn more of this book from the following projects:

As regarding the availability of this book, if you google âISBN:0596527063â, you shall get a list and the following looks good:

TraderSystem · Mar 28, 2008

Quote from mgookin:

I get best pc performance by having one hard drive for the OS and another hard drive for all of my storage. As for My Documents, that is another Bill Gates scam. I don't use any of his folders. On my storage drive I have folders for everything. It keeps the OS drive dedicated to OPERATING the computer. It makes it much faster and efficient. And that second drive is great for virtual memory too; even better reason to do it.

With the low cost of hard drives these days, everyone should be doing it.

..................

Do we really need to buy more than one hard disk; can we not simply divide a large hard disk into partitions? Then, we can install the OS on one partition and save the data on another partition. What do you say?

gnome · Mar 28, 2008

Quote from TraderSystem:

Do we really need to buy more than one hard disk; can we not simply divide a large hard disk into partitions? Then, we can install the OS on one partition and save the data on another partition. What do you say?

Actually, you do. If [let me rephrase... WHEN] your hard drive fails, partitions will do you no good.

At a MINIMUM... I think you should use Acronis True Image to make images of your system onto an external hard drive. That way, you can restore to your last image regardless of corruption or hard drive failure.

TraderSystem · Mar 31, 2008

Thanks gnome, that was a good point. So, if we use âAcronis True Imageâ, does it mean that we can restore from another HDD if main HDD fails?

gnome · Mar 31, 2008

Quote from TraderSystem:

Thanks gnome, that was a good point. So, if we use âAcronis True Imageâ, does it mean that we can restore from another HDD if main HDD fails?

Yes. With Acronis, you can make a "boot" disk.... which if you had a drive failure, you mount a new drive, run the boot disk, then "restore image" from your external hard drive. The whole process could take as little as 10 minutes.

You can't "restore" from just any hard drive... it has to be a "clone" or "image" from the machine which had the drive failure.

CPTrader · Mar 31, 2008

Quote from mgookin:

I get best pc performance by having one hard drive for the OS and another hard drive for all of my storage. As for My Documents, that is another Bill Gates scam. I don't use any of his folders. On my storage drive I have folders for everything. It keeps the OS drive dedicated to OPERATING the computer. It makes it much faster and efficient. And that second drive is great for virtual memory too; even better reason to do it.

With the low cost of hard drives these days, everyone should be doing it.

Then any time you want to wipe the OS drive and reinstall the operating system, there's really nothing to do. Just copy over any program files you want to keep, then format the operating system drive and reinstall the OS. Makes it like a brand new pc. The machine I use for e-mail is about 8 years old now and runs like new. It has a 100mhz fsb and 1gb of ram with WinXP Pro on a Intel Pentium IV, and I run autocad on it and it runs very fast. Never slows down. The only upgrade is a video card so I bought a good one.

On what drive do you install programs - the OS drive or the storage drive.

What wuld you do with a laptop - laptops have only one hard drive.

gnome · Mar 31, 2008

Quote from CPTrader:

On what drive do you install programs - the OS drive or the storage drive.

What wuld you do with a laptop - laptops have only one hard drive.

I don't separate my OS and Programs/Data drives...but I suppose you'd have to make an image of both, then restore 2 images.

With a laptop, best is to make an "image" onto external hard drive, and you can restore from that.

Oops.. didn't mean to jump the thread, but I'll just leave this unless somebody complains.

mgookin · Mar 31, 2008

My OS and all program files are on my C:/ drive. If your C:/ drive is 50gb, you will very likely never fill it as long as you keep storage off that drive.

All of my storage is on my D:/ drive. This has music, videos, pics, docs, everything anyone would save to a local disc. Going on 8 years it's today a 250gb drive with about 100gb free space.

Note: If you partition your C:/ drive, keep in mind you can't (or should not at least) get any Page File (Virtual Memory) on that disc because it's a contradiction to attempt to use the disc to run the system and also use it as virtual memory. This is why on my D:/ drive I have loads of Page File allocated. To put Page File on a drive right click My Computer/ Properties/ Advanced/ Performance Settings and set max recommended on a drive that is NOT your OS drive. It's like free RAM being added to the system.

My main PC is an old (circa 2000?) Dell Dimension 4500 with 100mhz fsb and a P-IV 2.0gb processor and 1gb of ram. With this old dino tuned the way I have it I run autocad smokin, outlook, photoshop, etc. Very intense programs (about the most intense on the market) and it never misses a beat.

I also have a smokin quad Core2 Extreme DDR3 system I built for trading, but that's not the subject of this thread.

Another thing I do for free perforamnce is go to Control Panel --> Add/ Remove Programs --> Add/ Remove Windows Components and uninstall all Bill Gates CRAP which I don't want/ use. You would be surprised what benefits you get from that. Then I also go to Start --> Run --> MSCONFIG --> Startup and uncheck everything and also unckeck "Load Startup Items" on the front page. You do not need anything running on your system. If you have an anti-virus on a per-system basis, then you may choose to keep that in the startup.

For a laptop with only one drive, I don't know how to advise you there. On my laptop I have my OS and program files and then a folder I use for temp stuff so that when I travel I take whatever I'm working on with me (without getting into my business to any extent greater then necessary) if I'm going to locale X and expect to be working on X then X goes on the laptop drive and when I get home I update the requisite folder on the main system. If my laptop were my only computer I don't know how I would manage such a matter unless maybe an external drive for storage.

I just always choose to keep OS/ Program files on a different drive then Storage.

Then to run disc cleanup and defrag on a regular basis is simple, quick and effective. I literally have discs with ZERO fragments, 4 fragments, etc. Keep it clean, tuned and organized and you'll enjoy a more favorable computing experience.

Capablanca · Apr 7, 2008

Quote from mgookin:
Note: If you partition your C:/ drive, keep in mind you can't (or should not at least) get any Page File (Virtual Memory) on that disc because it's a contradiction to attempt to use the disc to run the system and also use it as virtual memory. This is why on my D:/ drive I have loads of Page File allocated. To put Page File on a drive right click My Computer/ Properties/ Advanced/ Performance Settings and set max recommended on a drive that is NOT your OS drive. It's like free RAM being added to the system.

I'm just curious but why is it a contradiction to use the disc to run the system and also use it as virtual memory?