On Sat, 05 Apr 2014 12:56:42 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 5 Apr 2014 08:48:16 -0700 (PDT), trader_4
wrote:

Another really dumb thing that's going on, at least with HP,
is that when you use the recovery disks, you wind up wiping
out the entire drive and any and all partitions. You would think
they would give you the option of doing a recovery to just the
main system partition and optionally leave any other partitions
alone. That way if the system is getting screwed up, but it's
still running, you could copy stuff you want to save to the other
partition, then do the recovery. Even worse, it's not clear which
way it actually works. I saw threads where people got conflicting
answers from HP. Some were being told that you could leave existing
partitions on there and they would be OK. I had to do this a few months
ago and found out that it does indeed delete all partitions, but I
was prepared for it. Other than that, it worked really well. Had it
restored in less than a half hour.

I would not have a PC with just one drive in it. The idea is you have
a fairly small C: drive with nothing but software on it and ALL of
your work space, data files or whatever is on the D: drive. You can
simply copy that drive to your backup and restore it with drag and
drop. Then you image your C: to back that up after you have changed
all of your program destination directories.. Even if you did use the
restore disks, you still have not lost any data.

The dumbest thing I have ever seem is people using "My Documents" for
anything. That is buried in windoze and the first thing you lose even
if you just delete the windows directory and just reinstall it.
"My Documents is NOT burried in the windows directory. Never has
been. It is in the "documents and settings" directory in Pre Win7, and
in the "users" directory in 7 and up.

If you use a "restore" disk, you use your documents if they are
anywhere on the "C" partition, or anywhere on the "C" drive if the
original install is a single operating partition.

If you use an "install" disk you can re-install without affecting the
data if you do a "repair install" with XP and previous. In "most"
cases the repair install won't even require re-installation of most
software.

If you do a "full install" it will overwrite anything in the boot
partition, but leave everything in an "extended partition" (such as a
"D" drive or data partition on a large single hard drive) untouched.

Always good to have a backup anyway.