More on backup solutions and PowerQuest products
Thanks for the links, Zeuspaul. You just clued me on this user's site. It's a nice resource.
Glad you found your initial forrays into these products worth the effort!
"I could not backup directly to my external drive as it is not configured to run in DOS. To get around that I used Partion Magic to make a 2 GB partition on my C drive ( 4.5 GB C drive + new 2GB partition D Drive). I then backed up the C drive to the D drive and then copied the backup file to my external drive after I booted back to Win95. I found it a painless process and worth the effort. ( assuming restoration process is as painless)"
This is the kind of reason why I don't like to have just one big partition in any given system. It's so fast and easy to backup one partition to another in dos, then move back to NT and shuttle the image files to wherever I want in the background.
(I haven't yet tried using dos network drivers to save images to another machine, but I may do so soon. This would be one way to get much of the ease and speed (on a 100tx network) of the partition to partition option.)
"Drive Image has an option to copy one drive to another without compression. Spots, my impression is that an NT drive would copy to another drive and then boot although it was not specifically stated as such."
As Spots may have discerned by now, copying NT boot partitions is no big deal, provided that they are are put in the same drive and partition order so that the boot.ini references, etc. match up. (actually, I've seen it work even when this wasn't true, but I have no desire to tempt fate this way.)
"I paid $55.xx at Comp USA. In addition there is a $15 rebate. Fry's had the older version (1.x) for $29 with two newer versions (2.x) hiding behind the old boxes. They wanted $68 for the software."
Mail order pricing is around $55 for DI 2.0 and PM 3, each before the included $15 rebate. I have good luck finding such listings in www.uvision.com, which often covers items pricewatch doesn't.
You're right about the many alternatives it affords. In particular, one can have several different NT configurations designed for different purposes, all accessing some or all of the same apps. For instance, Winfax is a bit NT resource hog--I like to have an NT partition that doesn't use it. Plus it's excellent for debugging, especially when you can very easily install, save, and restore progressively more advanced but error-prone versions of a particular configuration.
Good luck with it. I'll look forward to reading how it goes for you, Spots and other SIers. |
