My work laptop final succumbed to windows rot this morning. The tech is re-imaging a new drive with my company's standard windows 2000 image. I'm not exactly looking forward to re-installing my applications but there is a certain relief in being able to start over with a fresh system after defering a re-image for as long as possible.

Does anyone have any suggestions or website links for a check list of where to find all the files that I want to make sure I copy over to the new hard drive?

Also have you found any particular hard drive strategy works better than others. I plan to have Windows and the default applications on the C:\partition. Any applications that I install will be installed on the D:\partition under Business for work apps and Personal for anything else. I'll likely put the swap file on the D: partition also. I also swap in a removable hard drive when doing backups or ripping music. So I'm considering installing all personal apps to the removable drive.

Once I'm finished with the application installation, I'll take an image for the next time this occurs which should be in about a year based on previous experience.

Any suggestions that would make this process easier would be most appreciated. Thanks!

Alvin

Also have you found any particular hard drive strategy works better than others

Yep. One big partition. It's just not worth fighting with Windows over where stuff goes.

I agree.

I disagree. I also use the c:\OS, d:\applications strategy. Have been for years. It's *so* much easier and faster to reinstall a system when you only need to reformat the OS partition. Ok, so maybe this isn't such a big deal with some OS'es, but with windows it is. I have to reinstall it AT LEAST once every six months, so this strategy sure pays off.

Yep. One big partition. It's just not worth fighting with Windows over where stuff goes.

Just for another viewpoint, I think there is a lot of merit to having at least 3 partitions. One should be your C: Windows partition, big enough to hold Windows, along with anything that you're FORCED into putting under C:\PROGRA~1 (because of lazy install programs and the like.) Another should be your programs partition, where you can hopefully install all your apps, save for shared DLL's. The rest of your partitions should be for your documents, movies, and whatever else.

Why separate partitions? Well first off, having the Windows partition separate enables you to reformat your Windows drive when necessary, reinstall the OS, and then just re-run the installer for those apps that have enough registry and DLL dependencies as to not work after a reinstall. For me, between a third and a half of my programs can survive an OS recycle without needing to be reinstalled, and for those that can't, at least you've got your existing files on another drive that didn't get wiped away when you reinstalled Windows (yes, I know you can choose to keep everything outside of C:\WINNT and C:DOCUME~1, but it's always good to format your Windows partition when possible.)

The other thing is if you're writing a lot of apps and documents to your Windows drive, it's going to get fragmented, whereas if you're writing to other drives, your Windows drive stays (in theory) nice and clean. Finally, keeping docs seperate from both your Windows crap and your applications is a good idea, since if you want to recycle your entire system, you don't need to dig through application install directories for your files, you just format your Windows and application drives and go. Microsoft does try to assume you live in C:\DOCUME~1, but that can be changed via a registry setting.

Another thing I do is keep a separate drive for my really large files (movies and the like) with a high allocation unit size for better performance. That, along with not having other types of files interspersed (assuming you're defragmenting on a regular basis) really helps. If two or more of your partitions are on the same physical drive, there's some science behind which should go where (for best performance), but I forgot how that works, and am not entirely sold that it makes a tangible difference.

Oh, and if you don't like the idea of having to browse to different drives for everything, you can hang any drive off of a "mount point" in the Disk Administrator management console.

Don't you have to reregister the programs on the D: drive in the registry of the newly installed OS?

On the other hand, I consider a reformat to also be a time to get rid of all the dumb programs I've installed that I've either been too lazy to uninstall, or in some cases, weren't uninstalled correctly. I happen to enjoy reinstalling my programs. And I absolutely never store any data files in their program folder like so many default to. I can't stand that.

What I think we can all agree is essential is that it's a good idea to keep a seperate file storage area. I've had one for years now and couldn't imagine reformatting without it. I don't like partitioning one disk, since I didn't start that way and partitioning after all my files are on the drive doesn't sit well with me. I love having additional drives for storage.

Don't you have to reregister the programs on the D: drive in the registry of the newly installed OS?

Yes, but since I also keep a copy of the installation images of my applications on the D drive, installations go much faster. I don't use that many programs, so this is do-able for me. I also keep my downloads directory there, so drivers and upgrades are easily accessible too.

Oh, yeah. I usually just keep a directory on the C: drive full of installers, delete everything else, then reinstall.

it's a good idea to keep a seperate file storage area

I just keep my data on an OS that doesn't require regular reinstalls.

I just keep my data on an OS that doesn't require regular reinstalls.

Preach it, brother. There's two PCs on my desk: on one I've recompiled the system compiler, the system C library, the windowing system, and the desktop environment several times this year and it's got an uptime of 200 days. On the other I've got an uptime of 2 days because I needed to upgrade its ASN.1 parser and that somehow required a reboot.

Peter

I just keep my data on an OS that doesn't require regular reinstalls.

Yep, me too. And it's not just the regular reinstalls issue. Well, actually it is, but Bitt's post comes across a bit harsher (Unix fanboy-wise) than I'd prefer.

I keep almost all of my data on my Linux box, where backing it up is easier, as is getting to it when I'm away from my desktop PC.

But frankly, I've given up on the whole separate applications/data partitions thing. I do occasionally use subst to keep stuff separate. But I don't think that hard partitioning is the right answer.

And I don't buy Tony's point about fragmentation, either -- Windows comes with a perfectly functional defrag program.

But that's just IMO.

Unix fanboy

Hey! I resemble that remark!

And I don't buy Tony's point about fragmentation, either -- Windows comes with a perfectly functional defrag program.

Fair enough, and maybe I'm offering up the wrong explanation with the fragmentation issue. It may have more to do with extra parallelism that can be had when multiple physical drives are involved (which is how my partitions are set up) so I'm getting sort of a "poor man's RAID striping" effect. Whatever it is, my experience has shown that, regardless of the speed of the drives involved, I've had better results with multiple "specialized" partitions. YMMV, as always.

multiple physical drives are involved

Yeah, on multiple spindles, separating the OS, the apps and the data is a good idea. I just don't think it's worth it on a single spindle.

Unfortunately, the standard image that the tech loads has C: and a D: partition to make support easier. I wish it was multiple spindles it would make this type of thing alot easier.

While I'm sure Windows rot is at part responsible for what's occurring, I have to accept responsibility too. I'm a firm believer that somewhere the silver bullet software package exists but I just haven't loaded it yet.

On a funny note, my French hasn't got much better since being in Paris, but while the tech was working on my computer, I learned a new phrase that (if my google translation is correct) indicates according to him 1) my computer is female and 2) is made of [censored]. I don't think he was amused by my renegade software installs.

I'll likely set it up as you and Archeon suggest. One question, how do you set the allocation unit size on a drive?

Thanks,

Alvin

I'll likely set it up as you and Archeon suggest. One question, how do you set the allocation unit size on a drive?

When you go to format it, it'll have some options like FAT/NTFS, Quick Format, etc. One of them should be "Default Allocation Unit Size" or similar which defaults to 2k IIRC. For a drive which has a modest number of large files (rather than a large number of smaller files) a 64k allocation unit (cluster) size will offer better performance, and no noticable loss of space. (Clusters are kept small on drives with smaller files so you don't end up wasting a 64k block for only 1k of data... Not an issue with larger files.)

There's two PCs on my desk: on one I've recompiled the system compiler, the system C library, the windowing system, and the desktop environment several times this year and it's got an uptime of 200 days. On the other I've got an uptime of 2 days because I needed to upgrade its ASN.1 parser and that somehow required a reboot.

You looking at my desk?

You looking at my desk?

Ditto, my linux box's year and a half record uptime was recently broken when we had power work in the building. It wasn't on maintained power and I'd have to switch it off to transfer it to a UPS. Bugger, 20-odd days and counting now.

Our student radio web site is run on a windows box with tells you its uptime every time you ftp into it. I've never seen it up for more than a week, now that's shocking (pardon the pun).

I store everything document wise in my documents this means when I flatten the windows box i simply transfer the documents and settings folder and the machine has everything, favorites, emails, etc (minus the applications)

I just keep my data on an OS that doesn't require regular reinstalls

I've come to the point where I'm convinced that people are just doing some messed up stuff to their computers. I've definitely been on this installation of my OS since I put this computer together over a year and a half ago, and that's because I was switching OS hard disks. I know 1.5 years isn't a terribly long time and nothing to brag about, but I see no signs that this install is going down the tubes any time soon.

I'd be interested in seeing how often people reformat Win2K installs. Before I put my roommate's box together, he formatted and installed Win98 about every 5 months at least. Since then he hasn't reinstalled once.

Win2k does seem a lot better.

Win2k was a big step forward. With NT4 I was possible to have a very stable system that ran for ages without a reboot or a crash, but only if you installed very little software on it.

My main desktop machine at home had Win2k installed on it when it arrived (can't remember when that was, it was when Win2k was released, so I guess about 4-5 years ago). About 2 years in it did start suffering from a bit of Windows rot, with odd things like the desktop icons reverting to 16 colours.

I've resisted the urge to reinstall the OS though and it is still soldiering on, though it looks like it has now been usurped by my nice new laptop running XPPro (the old PII300Mhz can't really compete with my PentiumM 1.4Ghz).

If I can work out how to turn the hard disks of the Win2k box into Virtual PC disk images then then hardware will be recycled as my Debian test box (so I can get ready to replace my RedHat 7.1 server also runnning on identical Dell hardware).

P.S. I know Tony and a few others hate WinXP, but if you are running an even vaguely recent laptop it is a must have upgrade to NT4, Win98 or Win2k. WinXP is faster than any of those OSes on the same hardware (assuming you have a half decent amount of memory, like 256Mb) and it makes it so, so much faster to boot, suspend, hibernate and wake-up.

My old laptop ran 2k and I never managed to make it suspend or hibernate with it coming back up unuseable which would then require a reboot. My new laptop has XP Pro and those features worked first time and still give me a usable system afterwards. About the only positive thing I can say about windows xp!

After reading the laptop/XP comments I'm starting to regret getting W2k on the Dell D600 I just ordered for my boss. Hrm. I've not got any XP installs for my users yet. My thinking is that the non-homogenaiety (sp?) would just confuse things - for me and them.

-Zeke

My old laptop ran 2k and I never managed to make it suspend or hibernate with it coming back up unuseable which would then require a reboot. My new laptop has XP Pro and those features worked first time and still give me a usable system afterwards.

That exactly matches with my experience using an Nec Versa LX. The wonderful thing is that it has a sticker on it proudly stating "Designed for Window NT 4.0"...

I only had to buy my new Dell D600 laptop to replace the Nec because I ruined the keyboard and trackpad with a glass of champagne (don't ask). Put 512MB of ram into a PII366 Nec laptop and it is fast enough for most of the things I do. That said I'm enjoying the extra speed of 1.4Ghz and 1GB ram in Photoshop

My Nec is going to be turned into a "digital photoframe", I'll permanently disable the processor fan, rip most of the casing off, add some more heatsinks, replace the hard disk with compact flash and build a nice wood frame/box for it. Just need to decide whether it will run WinXP/2k or Linux (probably Windows, so I can write the photo display code in .Net).

My main problem with WinXP is just that they changed the UI unnecessarily. Even if you change all the settings back so it look vaguely the same as Win2k there are still lots of things "in the wrong place".

I can see why Microsoft's marketing department drives them to tinker pointlessly in this way, but it is a pain in the arse. It is a shame, because otherwise WinXP is a good solid OS.

P.S. I wish they would allow you to turn on fast user switching under domains, that is the main reason now why I don't run a Windows domain at home, losing fast user switching would be a pain.

When you do fast user switching, do the programs of the user that gets logged out continue running or do they get suspended?

For example, let's say userA is downloading something. You switch to user2; does that download continue?

Keeps going in the background

Yes, effectively what is happening is that the first user to log on gets a normal console session and subsequent users are basically using terminal server without knowing it to connect to a new non-console session.

I know you can configure it back to 'Windows Classic' mode, but for someone else's machine, I just don't have the time to deal with things like that. IT isn't my main job, so the less time I spend on it the happier I am.

Maybe next year I'll allow XP in my office.

-Zeke