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'Puter Guru needed

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Tinster

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My internet computer, today, has a non-functional
motherboard. Hard drive C is A-ok and has a D partition
for backups. Windows XP Media edition on the C drive.

I have a spare computer with Windows XP Home Office
edition on the C drive.

Questions:

1. If I install the XP Media edition into my spare 'puter
as a secondary hard drive, will the two different Windows
editions create a conflict?

2. If no conflict- will I be able to access the software
on the C drive of the now secondary drive? IE: email,
web bookmarks, Autocad, Photoshop, stored files, etc.

Thanks for the advice.

d
 
Questions:

1. If I install the XP Media edition into my spare 'puter
as a secondary hard drive, will the two different Windows
editions create a conflict?

<span style="color: #3366FF">No. Your spare computer will boot to the active partition of the current c drive on that computer</span>

2. If no conflict- will I be able to access the software
on the C drive of the now secondary drive? IE: email,
web bookmarks, Autocad, Photoshop, stored files, etc.

<span style="color: #3366FF">Yes you will be able to access software thru the program files folder on the slave drive. Caveat: some programs key their registrations thru motherboard/hard drive combos(solidworks is one of these)dont know about acad. All your data will still be there, mail will be there but when you try to access it it is most likely the machine will default to the active email folder on the c drive and not the one on the slave drive. You can get around this by digging into the slave drive and copying the email folders to the current email folder, beware that this process will overwrite the current email, since it is a spare computer this may not be an issue. Bookmarks will be in the browser folder</span>

Thanks for the advice.

d
<span style="color: #3366FF">Good Luck and if you need a hand digging into the email let us know. In order to find it you will have to enable hidden files and folders </span>



mark
 
Thanks Mark !

Some good news for sure. I'm pretty well backed up
on an external drive but the software is such a pain
to reinstall. Real happy I'll have access to it.

One final ? and I think I'm good to go.

I had a few active Triumph folders on the Desktop
of the drive that will now be my secondary. NOT
backed up. Desktop only. My bad- stuff from this
past week.

Any way I can find those folders once I move the drive?

BTW: Terrible, terrible news that CompUSA is shutting
down. Ours is 2 miles from home. Not a clue where we will
now get computer stuff.

thanks again,

d
 
yes you will be able to get to those desktop files. they will be under the slave drive- documents and settings- (username) desktop.

Once again you will have to enable viewing of hidden files and folders. Tools- folder options- views- check the box next to view hidden files and folders, click ok at the warning dialog, and then apply the changes.



mark
 
One thing to note about backing your files up on a partition. If you have a hardware failure on that hard drive, it doesn’t matter which partition your files are on, they could be lost. Backups should be done on a separate piece of hardware, I.E. a second drive, DVD, thumb drive, etc.
 
All of the above! Burn to CD/DVD's, external drive AND thumbs. Send a copy of the CD's to a trusted mainland dweller for safe keeping.
 
Thanks all-

Doc, I'm mostly a fanatic about losing data. My
work projects and personal photos are on 2 seperate
external, backup drives, one internal backup drive,
one partion on a C drive and one archive drive in
my drawer. Two seperate computers.

Losing the software on a C drive is major disaster
from a time standpoint. Most of my professional stuff
is one time only install. Ya have to call each software
manufacturer and beg them to give you a new "key"
to reinstall the stuff you paid a forture the first time.

I'm on my usually not web connected work computer right
now. Not real comforatble with that.

Now, back to working on the TR. NOT on jack stands. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/driving.gif

later,

again, thanks all.

d
 
Anybody use Norton (Symantec) Ghost?

It makes a *copy* of an entire drive, including the boot sector and all parts of the operating system. If you ever lose the original drive, you just boot from the "backup" drive. You don't have to reinstall any software at all. Or you can just move the backup drive to a different (similar) computer if the m/board of one gets toasted.

Then when (if) you replace the dead drive, you just use Ghost to copy from the backup drive to the new drive.

It's one way to prevent total meltdown from a HD failure. I use Ghost on my PC and SuperDuper on my Mac. In 20 years I've never had to re-install an operating system. <knock wood>

Tom
 
yup. "Ghost" is as easy as it gets.

For clients' servers (Linux, remember) I set up a RAID-5 array. NO downtime, one hot swap. But I consider those guys' wallets deep when it comes to server builds.
 
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