[Ham-Computers] Imaging and archives 101

[jandlmiller at bellsouth.net]

Before Vista a friend bought a new Windows XP laptop.  I think it was Media Center, in between Home Edition and Professional but it doesn't make any difference for this discussion.  He was told it had a 100 GB hard drive.  When he got home he found  that it did, in fact, have a 100 GB HD but only 80 GB of which he could use as drive C:\.  The other 20 GB were reserved in Backup D:\ for, he was told by a factory technician, PC restore and Norton Ghost.  Rather than taking it back he kept it, thinking that 80 GB is plenty of space for his work.

As it happens, he is not a Norton person.  He is one who wishes that Symantec would stop using the Norton name, which he holds in some esteem from his early days in MS-DOS 5.  I have suggested he not stay aware nights waiting for this to happen.  Regardless, he removed Ghost from his Backup D:\.

Additionally, he had a bitter experience when a Seagate HD quit working a day or 
two after the warranty expired.  As it happens, he is not a Seagate person 
either.

He is wary of hard drive life cycle, and believes than planned obsolescence is 
alive and well in that industry.  If he were to get a letter grade on his 
preparation for doom day  it would be A-Plus.  His backup preparation is 
excellent and includes off-premise planning that costs him nothing.  He uses 
Eazy Backup 4 (ajsystems.com) to archive to other media.

He says he knows that the PC restore files in partition D:\ will do nothing more 
than restore his laptop to exactly what it was on the day it was delivered, and 
he would have to add all software and newer drivers he has added since delivery.  

He says he knows that as long as the existing drive is functional PC restore 
will do in 10 or 15 minutes what it would take an hour or more to do from the 
Backup CD that accompanied his laptop, and then it will take other hours to add 
all the other software and drivers.

He's preparing to zap D:\ and reformat to join the existing C:\  partition as his computer 
warranty is about to expire.

He wonders whether he should zap the D:\ partition.

I'd like to know what you would suggest.

John W0IKT