If you want to partition your hard drive to store images that is perfectly fine, that's the way most people do it.
Here is a very good partitioning tool: powerquest.com
The reason I use 2 hard drives, is that I feel more secure knowing my data is spread over 2 physical drives. My current hard drive size is C: 10MB and D: 20MB. My new Dell is going to be C: 20MB and D: 80 MB. It's very unlikely two hard drives are going to fail at the same time. And if the system is stolen, I still have critical data backed up onto removable media: Zip or CDR/CDRW. Message 15361970
Use whatever back up method that you feel comfortable with. But, restoring and image returns your computer to "pre-incident" condition in minutes. Actually that's what I am going to be doing today. Friday I bought Video Blaster Moviemaker, and a USB hub, my old Dell only has two USB ports. Installed the software, hardware and updates, and now my system is very unstable. After about an hour or two, I will start getting illegal functions in all of sorts or programs. It has to be either, the new USB hub, Moviemaker drivers, or the bundled software that came with it. So when the system starts giving me illegal functions every couple seconds, I don't have to sweat, I just restore and image that was took before the other stuff was installed.
Oh, and don't forget, you have to unplug any new hardware and return the computer to pre-incident condition before restoring an image. So I will be unplugging the USB hub that Moviemaker is plugged into, and plugging in my digital camera cable into that USB port on my computer, because that is the system configuration for that image I will be restoring. |