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Best Restore Method
On Nov 21, 3:25*am, OldGuy wrote:
As far as I know, I do not have anything on my laptop that will do what I want. What several people have been suggesting is that you make an image copy, which various programs will do. Instead of an invisible or hidden partition you can use a readily visible partition. My standard lately is to partition every drive with 15 GB at each end, marked First and Last, with the rest of the drive partitioned and marked DATA. I install Windows onto the First partition, install SP3 and all of the updates from the Microsoft update site, and support items like Adobe reader, Flash, Shockwave Players, Java, etc. I like a little tiny red fast shutdown button in my quicklaunch... Once you get a MODEL system just the way you like it, you clone it to the Last partition for safe keeping. I use the free version of XXCLONE which even lets me multiboot to boot from the last partition. (It switches which one is C: but the First/Last label helps keep a user from getting confused.) Ideally you would also make a CLONE of your system partition to another drive or several drives as well. Perhaps even a USB external hard disk or a 32 GB USB Flash drive... To put it simply, IMAGE copiers or Partition CLONING would give you the sort of quick fix you described, IF you prepare things right. On my 3.4 GHz desktops XXCLONE takes about 20 minutes to clone an 8 GB Windows system partition. You can't clone TO the system you booted on so that's why booting on the Last partition is the first step for cloning the Last partition to the First partition. On a 200 GB HD I'd be tempted to rig it with two backup bootable partitions in addition to the first one, but that could add more confusion than it's worth. A clone to another drive would of course be preferable. Somewhere I saw that some business people who fly a lot regularly CLONE their drive right before each trip, in case an X-Ray machine wipes it or it gets damaged by dropping. They leave a clone drive image in a locked desk drawer or in an IT holding area before each trip. I hope that helps. |
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