Re: Hard Drive Replacement

nesredep egrob wrote:

On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:01:02 -0400, John John <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


nesredep egrob wrote:


On Wed, 26 Dec 2007 09:06:40 -0400, John John <audetweld@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



See in-line replies.

Devalzadvok8 wrote:



My problem is somewhat similar to Norm's. I have two hard drives, the first ,currently, an 80 Gig IDE 'C' drive that also has 'D' and 'E' partitions. All my system software, Windows, etc. is on my 'C' drive. All my data files are on my 'D' partition. All my application programs are on my 'E' partition.

There is practically no advantage to having the applications on a separate partition.


Oh dear me - should not have written that.

There is a massive improvement if you are clever enough to use Acronis for
backups.

I do use Acronis and what massive improvements does having the programs on a separate drive make? What does this have to do with anything? Installing programs on a different drive makes absolutely no difference whatsoever in performance, none, zero, zilch! What massive improvements are you talking about? Do you mean that when you do a backup or create an image it will take about four minutes more time to do a larger OS image? And what about the programs drive? Don't you have to image that too? So now instead of having everything on one image you have to create two different images every time you want to back things up and if you want to restore you have to restore two images, I can't see what good that does.

John


Most people have an idea where the fault in the disk lies. Just like a TV, even
my apprentices would not start messing with the linetimebase if the sound was
missing and the picture was OK.

Likewise if some program is missing but the system seems to work I would be sad
to have to troll through the whole computer and reset the lot.
Remember even after a couple of days your backup is that much behind present
time and having system and programs together makes for the whole lot being a
given time behind what the computer was like today.

Each to his own of course but should my system go, I would prefer not to have to
also have the programs set back to the last time I did the backup.
Programs are often changed or updated for a better one - system is often left
just as it was when installed, therefore why have the lot bundled together.

Excuse me but I beg to differ. First of all we are talking about an 18GB SCSI drive, not a big 300+ GB drive. As for the system not being changed often, or left just as it was when installed then I suppose you never tweak the operating system to your likings, not to mention that you don't do any security updates, even if only a few times a year.

As for the programs changing often, then by the very nature of modern applications all but the smallest of them write to many different places in the registry so if you change these often and do a restore of an old OS image then much of your programs are going to be missing registry entries and they won't work properly. If the programs develop errors and you then think that you can fix them by restoring an image of the "Programs" partition only then you are not restoring any registry entries associated with the programs, because, as we all know, there are no registry files in the programs folder, the registry files are in the System32 folder. You also forget that some programs put some dll's and other support files in some of the Operating System's folders.

If a single program fails then one of the most common and easy fix is to reinstall the application, that restores the program files and the associated registry entries. If all your programs fail then the problem is deeper and you may have to reinstall or restore the Operating System. Restoring the programs folder without restoring the associated registry entries fixes nothing and restoring an old OS image that doesn't contain up to date registry information for the applications won't fix anything either. In short, the Operating System files, the Registry and the Applications need to be sync together.

People don't restore images all that often, for most problems it is easier to find the problem and do a targeted fix. When thing really go south then people pull out the images and start doing restores, doing restores of "out of sync" components will leave you with a fine mess. No one should expect to restore one or both of the operating system side or the applications side of the system with files that are severely out of date with each other and expect the restore to work properly. When you back these up you have to back them up together and keep them synchronized to each other if you want to have reliable backups. You can't say: "I changed a lot of programs so I am going to backup only the programs folder for disaster recovery", you have to back up the Operating System along with the programs files if you want reliable backups that can get you back up and running quickly.

The strategy that you propose requires users to create two images or backups every time that they do their system backups, one for the operating system and another one for the programs. It is difficult enough to get some people to do one (System) backup on a regular basis, let alone having them do two of them. In the event of a disaster recovery your strategy also requires users to do two separate restore operations, one for the operating system and one for the programs, thus practically doubling the effort and time required to bring the system back up, maybe not a big deal on a home computer but a hassle nonetheless, in a corporate environment an absolute no-no, the quicker the system can be brought back up to working state the better. Add mismatched or severely out of date/out of sync system and programs backup sets to the pressure of bringing downed systems back up and you have nothing short of self inflicted misery!

As you say, "to each his own", but I cannot see the logic in the backup method that you propose and it is definitely not one that I would use. I maintain that there is little to no useful purpose to having the operating system and the program files on separate partitions. The backup scenario that you propose does not give weight to the argument in favour of separate partitions, to the contrary it reinforces the reasons to have them on a single partition.

John
.

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