On 2 Oct 2006 at 14:10, A-NO-NE Music wrote: > David W. Fenton / 2006/10/02 / 01:49 PM wrote: > > >It was still the primary boot hard drive that was doing the booting > >-- there was no magic that allowed you to boot from any device just > >because you had OS/2. You had to have the boot manager configured to > >boot from the particular device. > > I don't really want to sound we are debating meaningless Mac vs > Wintel, but Mac can boot off anywhere by just pressing Opt key on boot > which lists all the possible boot volumes. That alone, crisis control > on Mac is much easier and faster than PC without even talking about > registry.
That's a hardware-based capability, not OS-specific. The device you're booting off of has to be bootable, and the problem you're having is producing a bootable CD. I don't know how that's done on Windows -- the CD software I have on my old PC won't allow it, but the PC dates from 1999 and is running Win2K, so while it has the hardware capability, the software provided doesn't make any provision for creating a bootable CD. It's possible to do (if you Google on "create bootable CD Windows" you get lots of results), but none of the instructions I found boot to the GUI. It would be horridly slow if it did, but I guess would allow running any Windows app, which for backup programs that haven't made provision for being run when the GUI isn't available would be essential. But a backup program designed for Windows that did that is pretty badly designed, seems to me, given the fact that it's designed for Windows. > I am just curious. > When I go to location recording job including my own performance, I > always carry 2.5" emergency drive. If and when my Powerbook flips due > to HD trouble or something, I just attach 2.5" drive, boot it off, and > finish recording. This has happened once, actually. If I have time > before the show, I can even run Utility to repair the problem, or > restore the internal volume itself from the emergency drive in time. > > On PC, how do you control crisis like this? Many newer PCs allow boot from a USB drive. All you'd need is a bootable image on that drive. Any image software that can create a bootable image should be able to copy the image of your hard drive to a USB drive, and then it would be bootable. It does require 3rd-party software, though, as Windows has no utilities from copying drive images to other drives. Someone else recommended Acronis TrueImage, and I can say that I've used it and find it OK (though I'm not delighted with it). The Maxtor OneTouch drives come with software that allows you to make the drive bootable, if I'm remembering correctly, but it only works for the Maxtor drive it's installed on. Seems to me that your problems are with expecting Windows to work exactly like Mac, instead of with some lack of capability on the PC to do what the Mac does. It's possible, yes -- just not via the same methods as you'd use on a Mac. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
