WinXP Partition & Backup/Image - OS to its own: general questions.

[i3lueHorneT]

Alright, so I do up THIS THREAD on how to setup a partition, now I've gone off to read some other stuff and wholly confused myself. I've ended up with some miscellaneous questions about setting WinXP to its own partition:

1. 'My Documents' folder, separate of the OS partition: I don't understand, how is this done? Are people just referring to manually moving things over as part of a regular backup or is there some setting where you can choose where (which HDD) WinXP sets up user accounts and 'My Documents'? Most programs default to save works at 'My Documents' manually shuffling to another directory on a separate partition every time would be a chore so I must be missing something. I'm referring to the 'C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\My Documents' directory.
1a. What's so great about the My Docs folder anyway, isn't it just some generally accepted default place for Win applications to save your work in?
2. How does one 'backup' the OS? What is meant by this and what can be backed up? I've read people mentioning burning the OS partition off to a DVD weekly, how would you recover from this and wouldn't it disturb all installed software?
3. How does one 'image' the OS? (#2,etc) What the difference and software used?
4. How do I set this up now for an easy OS reinstall later?
5. I would want to install software one the same partition as the OS right, data on another?
6. How do things like audio and video drivers work once installed, I mean, how do I include then into an easy OS restore?
7. Generally should I be okay with splitting a 80GB drive 40/40 while keeping the OS and installed apps on one, and the other for data?

I think I keep confusing myself going back and forth on this, I just need to be directed through a decent rundown of how this all works.

I just recovered from a drive failure, currently I'm on a single WD 80GB 7200RPM 8MB drive (WD800JB) and I'm planning on picking up another drive, most likely a 250GB SATA Hitachi Deskstar (cheap and decent all around it seems). So I imagine I'll leave my WD 80GB drive to the OS, but I'm wondering how things like installed apps and video and sound drivers will/should work, I'd rather not go through setting up the machine now only to have to reinstall and re-setup everything once I have the second drive to work with. Outside of installing office applications, language learning and net software etc., I'll be putting music and video on the second drive.
/Thanks, much appreciated.


peace,

 

[Navid]

1- You can move the "My Documents" folder ,in XP, to another partition. This moves the "My Pictures" and "My Music" folders inside as well.
To do that, click "Start" then right click on "My Documents". Click on "Properties". Click on "Move". Now, select a new location on another partition.

1a- If you save all your data in one folder, you can always backup that folder. If some day something goes wrong, you have a backup of all your data. It is more convenient to have to backup only one folder as opposed to having to backup data from folders scattered all over the place.

2- See 3

3- Using a program like Ghost (from Symantec) or True Image (from Acronis) or Drive Image (from PowerQuest, which does not exist since it was taken over by Symantec 🙁) you can create an image of the OS partition and store it on another partition on another physical hard drive to diversify the OS, or on a DVD (or multiple depending on size).

4- I have Drive Image, which also lets me create a rescue disk. In a catastrophie, I use that disc to boot and run Drive Image in DOS and access the other hard drive and restore the image.

5- That is up to you. You can start another thread for that. I personally have all my programs installed on another partition. I do this so that my OS partition is kept small so that its images are kept small. As I said, it is up to you since there are pros and cons to that.

6- If you install all your drivers and favorite programs after a fresh OS install, you can then create an image. Then, after an image restore, all the drivers and programs will be restored too.

7- That is too detail. It is really up to you. I don't think there is only one right answer for that.

Edit:
Backing up your data is much more important than backing up (imaging) your OS. Having an image of your OS only saves you a few hours (OK a day) that it takes you to do a fresh install of the OS and your applications. So, if you do not have an image, you can always do a fresh install and get your OS back. So, having the image is convenient.

But, if you do not backup your data, there may not be any way to get them (pictures, music, movies) back. It is not a matter of convenience. It is a necessity!

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