OT: restoring a computer MS way

[Leon]

3.0 by any chance?

[Doug Miller]

Puckdropper wrote in news:53888c2f$0$9567$c3e8da3$ [e-mail]:

Naaah. The 3.5" floppies held 1.44 MB, so backing up 150 GB that way would require 150GB / 1.44 MB = approximately 100,000 diskettes.

AOL mailed out way more than that.

At a transfer rate of 15KB/sec, about 10 megaseconds. Add a few seconds per diskette for swapping in and out, and you're in the neighborhood of four months.

1 character per bit times 150 GB is 1.2 TB to print, which would require about a thousand reams of paper. You're right, it would be faster -- at 20 pages/min, that would take less than nine days to print -- but I think I'd rather store the diskettes.

[krw]

It seemed they mailed me at least that many. ;-)

I guess the five days isn't so much. ;-)

[krw]

Not sure I understand. A restore isn't a clean install, though it could be done, I suppose. I'm not sure why you'd want to do this.

I've actually done restores, several times. Before I would trust the process I did it just to see if it worked. I've lost a few drives on my laptop and have always been able to reload. Well, with the exception of the new computer. The backup/restore software versions were incompatible. I lost some stuff so I now copy my data to a second disk, as well as doing the backup to the disk. Disks are cheap, particularly the slow external drives (all that's needed).

I keep copies on my computer (in a directory called "Installed") and that's backed up. The problem is keeping track of the license information. I don't do a good (enough) job of that. I generally have to search for it all. Some companies are really good about supplying the information when needed.

It takes me at least a week. I absolutely hate it, so keep the backups current (and more than one level).

Which is why I test the process occasionally.

[Leon]

Correct, a restore simply puts what was recorded, errors and all, back on to you computer. If we are talking restores from back ups. Before Symantics got a hold of "GoBack" that was a great program for restoring to an earlier point. Microsoft's version is still a crap shoot by comparison.

With GoBack in the earlier years I would restore vs. uninstall software that I wanted to try out. This was the small free types of software that was often buggy. And like you I quit ussing external drives some years back, Currently I have 2 SSD drives, one for primary, the smaller one was the primary, and a terabite HD

LOL Precicely, me too except the directory is "z installed programs" I put the z in there so that it is at the bottom of the sort list. I also have a "z not installed programs" folder for those programs that I have acquired through out the years but have seen no current need to install like a previous version of Sketchup.

The problem is keeping track of the license

Well that is the key for making a clean install of everything trouble free. I use Roboform, a program that has been around for ages. It takes care of passwords to web sites, is a form filler, and equally important it has a vault/SafeNotes for things like software keys, passwords, and registration info. I probably have the info necessary for 40 different programs stored in Roboform. Then just copy past the registration codes.

Six or seven years ago I was using Acronis and doing image back ups. I had the option of verifying each back up. The verification process failed every time. I'm still pretty sure I was getting a good image but you never know with a failure result. Over the period of several days Acronis and I finally resolved the problem. Ultimately they sent me software to test the memory in my computer. I had plenty however the latest memory modules, that I had added a year prior were not error correcting. I contacted Kingston and they swapped with me with only the difference in price. No more errors.

But having said all of that, I now believe most any little thing can throw off an image restore so I shy away from those these days.

[Leon]

Now just think about keeping all of those diskettes in order, and yes you would have them numbered. But who has not ever misfiled something, and have 100,000 similar looking disks to look through? LOL

[Doug Miller]

Leon wrote in news:XrGdnbFb- [e-mail]:

for

than

Better that, than a quarter-million sheets of paper... LOL

[woodchucker]

The MS backup is a hybrid. It has a system image for the base system , partitions and o/s.

The rest is a file system backup with revisions, you can restore files to any point in time (that you have a backup set for). The files protect your files, not programs, since the registry is part of the system image.

[Leon]

With Idrive cloud back up you can back up anything and it keeps 30 revised copies of each file.

[krw]

Yes, but a restore and a reinstall are completely different animals, that should done for completely different reasons.

No, I use external drives for backups. I have a couple of old 500GB drives and a newer 1TB drive that I use for my laptop. I'd go SSD but they're too small (and expensive for my tastes).

Well, um, I sorta forgot the "not" part. ;-)

[Leon]

Oh but the SSD's drives are so super fast. When I first had my current computer built it booted so fast that most of the Splash screen during the Windows boot up was gone. I had also upgraded to Win 7 and did not realize that there was much more to it. I was having about a 15 second boot time.;~) Now with about 20 programs, that I know of, boot takes about 30 seconds.

I use Quicken and the file I am working on goes back to 1992. At the time the filed covered 18 years of data. I also password protect my Quicken files. When I first put Quicken on the new computer I also put the data file on the SSD. The moment that I let go of the enter key after entering the password the register flashed up on the screen. With the data now on the regular data HD this takes 3 seconds

[krw]

I don't really care much about boot time. I reboot the system, maybe, every two or three months. It's usually when I don't notice Winblows wanting to do an update.

[none]

On Fri, 30 May 2014 09:26:32 -0500, Leon

Absolutely. 3.0 has been around long enough now that there's really no sense in buying a 2.0 flash drive unless the system you're using it on is all 2.0 and you haven't added a 3.0 card for your computer. Either that or you're severely broke. :)

The only sad part of all of this is that less than two years ago, I bought a 64gb flash drive for $160.