"Delta" and Stuff (Maintenence & Backups)

Good Morning All,

Hi LotusAstra - nice write up on what you do and why. The idea you and others have on what you put on "C" drive is good. Keep it smaller and more manageable. On the larger sized drives you certainly have the room to break up various catergories of data by putting the data chunks on various drives that you can make up by using one of the third party programs available.

Hi photolady - The Delta Crew info resides somewhere in the early Delta archives. Just cain't rightly remember where this morning. The sun is not even up yet here. :D :D Your method of how you back up, handle your security, and maintenence is nice. The idea of running in DOS or Safemode while doing certain of these tasks had not occurred to me. Interesting.

Anyone else do this and why?

Hi Kallikru, Hope you find time to catch up so we might be enlightened by some of your in depth knowledge of "stuff" you have. Sure glad you showed up. :) :)

I think we might let this part of finding out what people do for tasks on their computers go a bit longer so as to gather a bit more input. There has been some interesting talk.

If you, the reader, have not posted or have a question be sure to jump right in. We need all inputs as it helps all of us get better at this "stuff".

Later. :) :)

Goose...you had better start admitting somethings....a picture is worth a 1000 words....

I'm a Bit L8 but here @ last........Nice to see the Delta Thread up n running again....Before I begin......Everyone here has been a Great Help to me in the Past n Recent, THANKS ALL, have learnt quite a bit (albiet, i'm a slow learner)...Where Has DRMDJ gone, not seen him around for a long time!....
OK then------Hard Disk C:40Gbt> is Partitioned into Two.(1) is 14.7Gbt (lost 7 for some reason) & has my WinXP Pro + programs on it..

(2) E: is now Empty as from today, has 22 n half GBt on it..<this is for Odds n Sodds till they get Moved or Deleted.....

Hard Disk D: is a 20Gbt & is on an PCI ATA100 as a Master on it's own...<has got Downloaded Files, Gifs, CD Covers, n all sorts of litle files.....

Hard Disk F: is an 80Gbt non partitioned...<Has All my Music Files(MP3s) And Tones of Photos as JPGs & Tiffs.......These are Saved to CDR periodicly, (but not done 500 recent photos yet)...40Gbt Full...

I Do Not Ghost or Back-Up any Drive except what I save to CDR...reason: If n When worse comes to worse, I like to Put All my programs +OS on Fresh cause I might not Re-Install some progys.....
I DO NOT do Any Micro Updates EXECPT the Recent Virus Patches, to be on Safe Side....I did ALL the "Black Vipers Tweaks" n System Runs Great for It..(Highly Recomend anyone with XP Pro to use it).
I use Adaware, SpyBot, SpywareBlaster, Nortons 2003 Utilities, Nortons Internet Security (run an online scan twice a week as backup) Nortons Anti-Virus....Updates once a week....

CleanUp + defrag of C:Drive once a week n the others if n when they need it.....I Do NOT use NTFS, I use FAT32 on ALL my Drives...Why do I do that You Ask!!......I used my New 80Gbt Maxtor with NTFS n it went back to RAW after a week, plus some of my old progys would not work........
was a slight prob with the drive so exchanged it......Downloaded "MAXBLAST" from Maxtor n I recomend this to anyone who has a Maxtor Drive....It's Easy Peasy to Follow n Use for Formating etc.,....Downloaded a progy called "Paranoia 2002" n it gave ME Paranoia as i find it very complicated....Anyone Recomend it, if so how does it work!!....
That Will Do for Now Folks..........Keep Up the Good Work...
regards, Dennis...

Quote:

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I Do NOT use NTFS, I use FAT32 on ALL my Drives...Why do I do that You Ask!!......I used my New 80Gbt Maxtor with NTFS n it went back to RAW after a week, plus some of my old progys would not work........

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I would say that was a problem with the hard drive. And I've never heard of any program that cared about what file system it was stored on. I think you should reconsider that decision, NTFS is a far more robust file system, and will allow you to access many more features of Win2K or XP.

NTFS vs FAT, which is right for you?

Oh and lot's of handy stuff in regards to tweaking comes from Axcel216

Hi All, Loks like we were a bit slow today - if everyones as busy as I was three is good.

Hi scarecrowdr, As a matter of fact DrMDJ is alive and very much kicking. He is aware of this thread. Just finish talking with him. He will be around - never fear. A good write up you did also. Black Viper site is good. But why no updates?

Supersparks, could you expand on NTFS and how you use it and a little more on the personal reasons why? We said early on all we use we use differently. And we are seeing some big differences. But the results seem to be good whatever method is used.

Nix, AXEL216 has a tremendous amount of material. Lots to digest there. :

GREAT THREAD GUYS (and LADIES)!

I've been reading with great interest and taking notes. I think I've posted and received helpful advice from almost all of you at one point or another (Train, Ridgerunner, SuperSparks, Photolady, and others) MANY thanks!

Well, I just built my 5th PC this year (this one for my folks) and I learn a little more with each build. I'll pass along a couple things I do now to help the "less geeky". For my friends & family that I build for, I create a folder called Maintenance and hang it off the Start Menu (so it's really convenient) and put them in order so they don't have to remember too much. They don't have huge HDDs, but I create 3 partitions. C drive is the OS, D drive is the Apps (programs), and E drive is Data. They're all setup like this so when they call me, I can tell them where to look. I also like a separate drive for Data (MP3s, Pictures, Word docs, etc) so they can easily be burned to a CD.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll save my fingers the wear and tear.

briefly:
these are some of the utilities I occasionally run for specific tasks:
Icon Lock - great for saving your Icon locations, in case your desktop gets corrupted (I hate when that happens!)
Belarc Advisor - a great tool for documenting your "current state"
Bootvis - optimizes your startup
Probe - (specific to ASUS mobo) for monitoring temps, etc.

COA2 - Change of Address2 - great tool for move a program folder and re-pointing the registry (good for moving stuff from your Program File (on the OS drive) to your App drive.
FOSI - for finding BIG files/folders (this will tell you where your HDD space goes)

these are the utilities I run for actual maintenance:
EndItAll – I think RidgeRunner turned me on to this, for shutting everything down
Ad-Aware – for doing away with those pesky Ads
Spybot – for removing spyware
HDValet – another RidgeRunner recommendation, for cleaning up temp space and others
Cookie Jar – sorting good cookies (and keeping them) from bad (and blocking them)
RegCleaner – to make the Registry all pretty and orderly
RegScrubberXP – to make the Registry prettier and orderlyer (??)

And finally:
Mehul’s Backup – for selectively backing up my data files to another drive

I also run Norton SystemWorks 2003 for Anti-Virus and a quick Check-Up
And ZoneAlarm keeps the bad guys out.

The really cool thing is, (with the exception of Norton) these are all free/shareware utilities!!!
:D

Here's another thousand words.

This is my system, a dual-boot (I'm looking forward to that delta) with 2 - 80gig HDDs partitioned as follows:
(I name the drives so I can remember them)

OK, I have 2 questions too.

1. As I said, I maintain all of my Data files on a separate drive and back it up, but I don't know what to copy from my "Documents and Settings" folder and where&what to backup for Outlook 2002.

2. Can someone explain Ghosting to me a little more? When I ghost my OS drive, does it copy/image everything? If I've been running this setup since Feb., it's probably too late to ghost it (?) I don't to re-create my OS later from this ghost with all of the old registry garbage that has accumulated since then, do I?

Thanks!

Ghosting (here not only restricted to the program called Ghost) can mean you create an exact replica of the drive(s) in question on your media of choice (HD, CD, DVD, Tape) for the purpose of later being able to restore this replica in case of an emergency - often this is a process you initiate by way of floppydisks made necessary by the fact that you cannot restore a system drive from within that same system you're trying to restore...naturally :D .

But not only system drives can be ghosted - you can ghost whatever you choose to....parts of - or all of - a drive or several drives - individual folders or subfolders.

Another use of ghosting is to create exact images of a freshly installed system, to roll out to other similarly configured systems and thereby save time for individual installations....and how boring that would be... ;) . Imagine if HP or Dell had to employ people just to sit and install WinXP on each machine they assemble....nope, they simply smack a standard (ghost) image onto the harddrive of the newly assembled machine - or rather, the image was placed on the harddrive before it was ever installed in the system.

Symantec's Ghost and PowerQuest's DriveImage are good examples of ghosting SW.

Ghosting a system like your's now will of course take all the junk with it that you've collected since installing the system, so it''s probably not a bad idea to do some housecleaning before you ghost it. Otherwise you will take with you the "garbage" in the registry. It's an exact replica...

Quote:

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Originally posted by MPTech
OK, I have 2 questions too.

I don't to re-create my OS later from this ghost with all of the old registry garbage that has accumulated since then, do I?

Thanks!

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Normally you would want to avoid that. BUT, I learned that it pays to have those image files anyway. As something could happen that you absolutely have to have is in it. So, you use the image view for the program and go get it. And yes, you can restore just one item.
Flexibility is one of the reasons that I use both Ghost and Drive Image.

Sometimes I like to install an OS from scratch just to stop me getting rusty.

Or just for the hell of it.

Installation Progress Bars - I like to Watch.

Who else gets enjoyment out of watching defrag running ?

Come on now.

Ok, so maybe I should get a life.

Yes....sometimes I spend hours here just running the cursor over the text to watch it turn red....:D

Good Morning All,

Nix, I really enjoy watching the defrag screen pick up speed and start flshing through the windows. :D

Bistro - How do you do that. I can't get the red. Shheessshh!! :D :D :D

Nuff of that, but these guys. :)

Hi MPTech, Thanks for posting in this thread. Yes the images are worth how many words? :D But alot yes. Interesting about the Maintenence Folder off the Start Up Menu. Had not thought of that. Your apps selection is good for those who like free.

One question though. How much problems have those computers had with the procedures you put together. And is there any things you don't like about how they do "stuff"? You have three in the list I am not familiar with and will take a look at - Icon Lock, COA2, and Mehuls Backup. With so many many utility programs out there I usually wait until someone comes up with one they like. There just isn't enough time to check them all.

Kallikru did a nice job of explaining the subject of ghosting briefly and Train added to.

Ghosting is an important part of being able to back your drives up. As Train pointed out you can retrieve any file if you fully ghost your system by whatever third party software you use. And if a virus or some other thing crashed your computer, you are back up and running in minutes as opposed to days for manually reinstalling all of what you had. (I know from experience, oh how well I know, and some of you know just how much but we really don't need to go into that dismal subject at the moment do we? :D:D )

Think of this, ghosting can help with backing up as well as security and maintenence. Saving time. It is all tied to gether.

We are off to a really good start and keep your "stuff" coming. Let's see we are seeing what people are doing and getting some explanation on the why and how. For people to do this they certainly have to know "how to". :)

My reasons for preferring NTFS (it sounds like a school essay :D ).

Some useful features of Win2000 & XP are only available in conjunction with the NTFS file system:

File compression - you can use this individually on files & folders or you can set an entire drive or partition to compress anything that is saved on it. The compression / decompression is entirely transparent to the user, you just save/open the files in the normal way and Windows does it all. The compression isn't quite up to the level of a .zip file, but it's still pretty good.

File encryption - as above it can be used individually or on entire volumes just as with compression. The only caveat with the Encrypting File System is that you need to create a Recovery Agent Certificate top enable the Administrator to decrypt any files if Windows has to be re-installed (a new security identifier is created each time). The certificate is created by default in Windows 2000, but not in XP - a fact that MS neglected to make clear. I found that out the hard way :(

File and folder sharing - in Win2000 & XP Pro permissions can be explicitly set as to exactly who can access files and folders and who can't. This feature is completely hobbled in XP Home unfortunately.

The NTFS file system is more efficient than FAT - for a start the default cluster size is 4KB regardless of the size of the partition. Also very small files will be stored directly in the Master File Table itself, and so won't use a cluster at all.

And perhaps most important of all NTFS is far more robust when it comes to data security. It's a journalled file system and can often recover from data corruption, unlike FAT.

To sum up I can't see any advantage to FAT over NTFS. I do have one small FAT32 partition on each PC, just in case I want to mess about in DOS, other than that it's NTFS all the way as far as I'm concerned.

Here's another good article:

http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/ntfs.htm