> I don't think Alan and I are at war yet. ;-) I'm still too
hung over from
> that rum I had the other night to do battling of any kind.
I'm getting too
> old to indulge, me thinks.
>
> -hippyman
;-D
<inhale> I know what you mean. I'm 51 here. I don't think it's
so much that aging takes the 'fight' out of me, it's more like
aging puts more 'sense' in me. So I fight far less, but far more
effectively.
I too recently wiped out my hard drive and "lost everything". I
"felt your pain" when I was reading about your situation. My
tradgedy happened when I downloaded a "y2k" analysis app.
<inhale> When I executed the program I lost my "Dial Up
Networking" (at the time I didn't even know what DUN was, all I
knew was that I couldn't access the internet anymore or dial out
with my telephone app.) Things went rapidly downhill from there,
mostly due to my own rookie status I think.
I was reduced to nothing but Windows DOS and I knew 'nothing'
about dos. Got a DOS book; discovered how minimul my dos seemed
to be; could see all my important files (apps, customer files,
etc.) sitting right there on C drive; could only access A drive,
no access to my ZIP drive - so I couldn't save any files larger
than 1.44 megs, right. Well 99.9% of everything I wanted to save
was larger than 1.44M so you can guess the rest. After 2 weeks
of wrangling, on my own, with no help - I saved what I could to
floppies and reformatted the hard drive.
My two main pains were:
1.) Having to run around the internet and "re-download" all the
updates I'd acquired in the last 2 years.
2.) Having to contact online vendors and acquire new "keys" to
apps I'd purchased from them online and received floppies for
(reinstalling needed a new "key") and contacting online vendors
and "re-aquiring" downloaded apps that I'd purchased.
Well the crash was on Friday night Nov. 5; I was back up and
online (minimally) on Friday night Nov. 19 and only now on Dec.
11 can I say the fire's out and the smoke has cleared. I think
I'm still a 'rookie', but not quite the rookie I was. Funny
thing is though, I still haven't bothered learening anything
about how and what to "backup". I've read the basics, but is
that really good enough? Good enough for all the applications
that I input data to?
I think I read someone say (maybe you, hippyman) <inhale>
"partition the harddrive and keep Windows in one partition and
everything else in the other." I only understand that
'conceptually' not the technical aspects of it. Where can I find
out more about the impact of partitioning this way. Is there any
"freeware" partitioning apps? Can't partitioning be done from
DOS? And also more on the "art" of "backing up"? It IS an 'art'
isn't it?
I've got to say this is the coolest list I'm on. I don't
participate much, but it's incredible how often I use the
information that is requested on this list. My compliments Alan,
and all you other 'hard-core' "Searchers".
Happy Holidays,
Alan Guy
