Re: Good cloning Vs. System Restore

[Bill Troop billtroop@xxxxxxxx]

I like the idea of hardware cloning but it seems to me inconvenient
compared to simply cloning via software and a fast port such as USB 3 or
Thunderbolt. It seems to me I achieve much the same result by creating
incremental disk images with ShadowProtect, and creating, from those
backups, a new bootable hard drive whenever I need to. Further points:
(a) it is becoming increasingly difficult to access hard drives on
laptops and (b) SSDs really do seem more reliable although I know they
have their own problems.


An additional point, this kind of continuous backup process does not
address the sneaky problems of OS Rot (Software Rot in Wikipedia). The
only way to do that is to create single-state backups that can be
accessed years later if necessary. The one safe, convenient and
relatively inexpensive way to do this is


http://www.mdisc.com/whereby nearly indestructible write-once DVD and Blu-Rays can be
created with a suitable DVD or blu-ray recorder.




At 04/12/2015 04:51, you wrote:

Rather than System Restore, I
have had a fabulous experience for the last two or three years with this
stand alone, inexpensive, drive cloner. You have to remove your drive
from your machine, which is pretty simple on my Lenovo Thinkpad, and you
have to clone it on to a drive that's at least as big, but after you
clone it, you have a byte for byte duplicate of your working drive, that
you can put into your machine and boot from as if nothing had
happened.


http://www.amazon.com/Aluratek-External-Portable-Duplicator-AHDDUB100/dp/B002FJJMAI/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449204418&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=aluratek+drive+cloner; eudora="autourl">
http://www.amazon.com/Aluratek-External-Portable-Duplicator-AHDDUB100/dp/B002FJJMAI/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449204418&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=aluratek+drive+cloner



My policy is to have two cloned drives, which I alternate between,
cloning my "real" drive every week or two. If you do have to
get back to your operating system of a week or two ago, you can and then
you need only update your data files for what's happened in the
intervening period.


--Harry


Seeing as various updates have
trashed several systems of mine or that I maintain, on more than a few
occasions, I'd have to say that Auto Update is a big risk one should
_not_ take.  And I have plenty of company, from what I read
online.  (This is on 7, both x86 and x64 varieties, but it was an
occasional problem on XP as well.)  I wait at least a few weeks
after an update is released, check the internet for reports, put short
descriptive info with any warnings into a  file for reference, and
only then selectively "audition" the new updates in small
batches at a time.  Woody's column at InfoWorld -- among others --
has verified a number of serious problems, and a couple times saved me
from unknowingly stepping off a cliff.  If / when things have really
gone South, I can have a non-functional computer, where practically
nothing works, or it goes into endless reboot loops, or other fun
stuff.  It *may be recoverable* from a Restore Point, if I can even
reach one, or from going into Safe Mode to rip an update out by the roots
. . .  or not.  The Win Recovery Console is a bad joke, in my
experience.  I never got familiar with the so-called "Repair
Install" procedure over the existing OS.  A few times I've had
to resort to wiping a drive and putting back an Acronis boot partition
image that was not nearly as recent as I would have liked, then building
it back to where it was when the system got nuked.  (A full
reinstall from scratch would be completely unacceptable and unthinkable
to me.)  My time is too valuable to have to pour a lot of it into
this crap !  So, NO, I'm going to minimize their chances of doing
this again.




   Jordan



From: Kari Eveli 
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, November 29, 2015 1:16 AM
Subject: Re: Windows 10 is creeping into your system, it is time to
make a decision!
John,


That works, but you would be better off installing GWX Control Panel
and
enabling auto updates. After all, you do not want to miss important
security updates.


Best regards,


Kari Eveli
LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland)
lexitec@xxxxxxxx


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29.11.2015, 3:15, John Paines (Redacted sender vf200 for DMARC)
wrote:






> BTW, I believe you can prevent the stealth downloads of Win10 by
> disabling automatic update.  Run update manually once a
month and
> select only crucial updates.  I have two systems, 7 and
8.1, and
> neither has been prompting an "upgrade", with auto
update disabled on
> both.