In article ,
John Rumm wrote:
You can give the kids a PC to do what they like with, knowing full well
you can return it to pristine "newness" any time you like with no effort.

That's always been the feature of RISC OS machines with the OS in ROM.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:13:15 +0100, Mike Barnes
wrote:

As odd as it may seem, there is a "right" answer for this. There are many
variations of "right", but basically:

a) OS onto one partition (eg windows C:\ , Linux / /var /usr etc)

b) User data onto a different partition

a may be further subdivided (OS/applications/swap) and b may be subdivided
(personal user data aka home directory versus "shared" data like films,
mp3s, photos which the whole family access).

I second all of that.

On this PC, group (a) is subdivided into three partitions: Windows/apps
(C: 17Gb), paging (P: 2Gb), and temp (T: 4Gb). Group (b) is divided into
two partitions: documents and other files that need to be backed up
frequently (D: 5Gb), and files that rarely or never need to be backed up
(copy of the old PC's hard disk, copy of Windows CD, copies of audio
CDs, etc) (N: 230Gb).

Partition Magic is good for settings things up and adjusting afterwards.

An even better solution is to more than one HD.

Do not ever install the OS onto a whole-disk-sized partition and then lose
your data in amongst the crap. If you do and have to re-install the OS, you
will weep.

Agreed. I like to segregate my data principally according to the backup
requirements. That way, I can put the backup strategy to the back of my
mind, and never be in any doubt about what's being backed up when.

Good backup solutions can be quite cheap. I back up C: and D: to a 40Gb
DAT tape. Drives and controllers are plentiful on eBay (I paid about
£25). Software (NTBACKUP) is free with Windows.

I've found a lot of DAT drives to be very unreliable.

Mark

On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 13:22:25 +0100, "vortex2"
wrote:


"Christopher Tidy" wrote in message
...
vortex2 wrote:
The one remaining question: how the heck do you backup a half terabyte
disc? Only 100 dvds I spose, or less after compression.

I've been investigating backups and I reckon that Network Attached
Storage is the solution. Something like this:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=245156

Actually I am thinking that if "My Pictures" and "My Music" were on a
disk like this then they could be viewed/listened to from another PC
easily

Now you really want Linux or UNIX. Windows networking sucks :-)).

Agreed. Sometimes it works often not. The problem with windows
networking is it's all a big kludge. If they stop trying to maintain
backwards compatibility it might be better.

That's curious, it works for me......

I formed the reverse impression trying to get my son's Linux PC to see my
Windows shared printer.

What are you using (Samba)?

Mark

Tim S wrote:
If necessary, use second disk as a decant area to re-layout partitions on
first disk, but with 40-60GB for the OS/programs, you are likely to be good
for a fair few years unless you install Matlab + Xilinx with every library
possible along with everything else going.

Xilinx is a company, I doubt it's employees would take kindly to being
squeezed onto a hard disk.

MBQ

Christopher Tidy wrote:
Vortex wrote:

The most important decision I have to make in the coming days is whether to
format the 500G as one huge partition or to have multiple partitions eg:
100G for OS and applications and 400G for My Documents/Pictures/Videos etc.

My 2 1/2 year old pc has a 250gb drive and i created 3 partitions.
Personally i still think it makes sense to seperate the os and apps
from data but Windows will fight your attempts to do it.

Having data on a seperate drive makes back ups easier and means it is
possible to create an image of your OS and apps for reinstallation if
necessary. Saying that i've not made a backup image for ages.

The third partition was for video recorded off the DTT card - i wanted
to keep that seperate so that i didn't run out of useful space and get
to the point where the PC wouldnt function.

If you get partition sizes wrong you can always use partition magic to
mess with them later.

wrote:


Tim S wrote:
If necessary, use second disk as a decant area to re-layout partitions on
first disk, but with 40-60GB for the OS/programs, you are likely to be
good for a fair few years unless you install Matlab + Xilinx with every
library possible along with everything else going.

Xilinx is a company, I doubt it's employees would take kindly to being
squeezed onto a hard disk.

MBQ

True - but it would be fun to try Serve them right for producing
such lumpy software ;-

Tim

Tim S wrote:

True - but it would be fun to try Serve them right for producing
such lumpy software ;-

Don't you just love the way the word Xilinx can make an engineer go
"arrrgggggghhh".... such marketing promise, and such pain in reality
most of the time! ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

Tim S wrote:

True - but it would be fun to try Serve them right for producing
such lumpy software ;-

Don't you just love the way the word Xilinx can make an engineer go
"arrrgggggghhh".... such marketing promise, and such pain in reality
most of the time! ;-)


Heh. Never mind you engineers, at least you think you want their product ;-

It's us systems folk who cry like virgins faced with the tentacle-monster
that this beast is.

Cheers

Tim

"Mike Barnes" wrote in message
...

I have two backups, but not for that reason. Realistically a crash will
not damage the original *and* the backup, so a second backup isn't
necessary for that reason.

You are mistaken.
It does happen.
I have had it happen to one of my backups.

But if your only backup is at your Mum's it's
inconvenient to make frequent backups. Therefore I have one local
backup, updated frequently, and one off-site backup, updated less often.

As long as the data is of low value its fine.

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:14:05 +0100, Mike Barnes
wrote:

In uk.d-i-y, Mark wrote:
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:13:15 +0100, Mike Barnes
wrote:

On this PC, group (a) is subdivided into three partitions: Windows/apps
(C: 17Gb), paging (P: 2Gb), and temp (T: 4Gb). Group (b) is divided into
two partitions: documents and other files that need to be backed up
frequently (D: 5Gb), and files that rarely or never need to be backed up
(copy of the old PC's hard disk, copy of Windows CD, copies of audio
CDs, etc) (N: 230Gb).

Partition Magic is good for settings things up and adjusting afterwards.

An even better solution is to more than one HD.

Are you suggesting five? That's what I'd need in order to avoid
partitioning.

No? I am suggesting using more than one disk and not bother
partitioning them. However, if you really want to, I won't stop you
;-)

Good backup solutions can be quite cheap. I back up C: and D: to a 40Gb
DAT tape. Drives and controllers are plentiful on eBay (I paid about
£25). Software (NTBACKUP) is free with Windows.

I've found a lot of DAT drives to be very unreliable.

I'm on my third DAT drive (no problems, just two voluntary upgrades for
increased capacity) and I've not had any problems. What would you
recommend instead?

Unfortunately I've never found a backup solution I am 100% happy with.
If you have had success with DAT drives then stick with them - maybe
I've just been unlucky.

Mark.

"Huge" wrote in message
...

My comment was in response to yours:

"Murphy says that the software will crash during the backup and that
both the original and the backup will be lost if you only have one."

What software *was* that

Anything produced by Microsoft.

It was unix and a tar archive.
I never did find out what happened as it was unattended at the time.