S
Solitary Soul
I've got an idea ...
First of all, all of my hard drives are in removable cartridges,
and I have a pair of receivers for those cartridges in the drive bays
of my computer, so I can very easily switch from one hard drive
to another in a matter of seconds.
Second of all, when I install an OS on a new drive, I install it
on a 4 GB primary partition, with everything else going into
logical partitions within my secondary partition. I create a 2 GB
logical partition (drive D), then specify that as my swap space for
virtual memory. Whenever I get the option to install stuff to someplace
other than the C: drive, I place it in the F: partition (also 4 GB).
IOW: Everything is pretty much compartmentalized, with all essential
system files going into either the C; or F: partitions.
Here's the idea ...
What if I got another hard drive, installed Windows 2000 Pro on it,
along with a backup utility and Partition Magic, and set it for "cable select"
so that it would auto-configure for Master-Slave. I'll refer to this
new drive as the "Disaster Recovery Hard Drive" (DRHD).
To create a full backup, I would shut down the system, remove my primary drive
from the top drive bay and place it in the second, slip the DRHD into
the top bay, boot up with the DRHD, run the backup utility, create a backup
of the primary hard drive (now accessed as a data drive - the OS is
dormant on that drive), with the backup volume going to a file on the DRHD.
I could then simply copy that file onto DVD+RW - or whatever.
The backup utility must have the ability to reference and backup
specific partitions. I've contacted Stomp about using Backup MyPC,
and they tell me that it would not work.
When it comes time to perform a disaster recovery, I would slip
a new hard drive into a cartridge, insert it into the second drive bay receiver,
partition and format it (with Partition Magic), then boot up with the DRHD,
and perform a recovery either from the DRHD
or the DVD+RW to which I copied the file.
Would this fully restore my system?
Would the new hard drive be bootable?
If not, what would I need to do to MAKE it bootable?
Thanks,
Solitary Soul
=======================
First of all, all of my hard drives are in removable cartridges,
and I have a pair of receivers for those cartridges in the drive bays
of my computer, so I can very easily switch from one hard drive
to another in a matter of seconds.
Second of all, when I install an OS on a new drive, I install it
on a 4 GB primary partition, with everything else going into
logical partitions within my secondary partition. I create a 2 GB
logical partition (drive D), then specify that as my swap space for
virtual memory. Whenever I get the option to install stuff to someplace
other than the C: drive, I place it in the F: partition (also 4 GB).
IOW: Everything is pretty much compartmentalized, with all essential
system files going into either the C; or F: partitions.
Here's the idea ...
What if I got another hard drive, installed Windows 2000 Pro on it,
along with a backup utility and Partition Magic, and set it for "cable select"
so that it would auto-configure for Master-Slave. I'll refer to this
new drive as the "Disaster Recovery Hard Drive" (DRHD).
To create a full backup, I would shut down the system, remove my primary drive
from the top drive bay and place it in the second, slip the DRHD into
the top bay, boot up with the DRHD, run the backup utility, create a backup
of the primary hard drive (now accessed as a data drive - the OS is
dormant on that drive), with the backup volume going to a file on the DRHD.
I could then simply copy that file onto DVD+RW - or whatever.
The backup utility must have the ability to reference and backup
specific partitions. I've contacted Stomp about using Backup MyPC,
and they tell me that it would not work.
When it comes time to perform a disaster recovery, I would slip
a new hard drive into a cartridge, insert it into the second drive bay receiver,
partition and format it (with Partition Magic), then boot up with the DRHD,
and perform a recovery either from the DRHD
or the DVD+RW to which I copied the file.
Would this fully restore my system?
Would the new hard drive be bootable?
If not, what would I need to do to MAKE it bootable?
Thanks,
Solitary Soul
=======================