Off topic: a Cautionary Tale

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

I thought I should say a few words of warning, so that others might
profit by my recent misfortune. I have long and often hymned the virtues
of partitioning one's hard drive, and I would not unsay a word. It is the
only logical way (IMHO) of organizing one's storage, and a sovereign
prophylactic against _software_ problems: terminal bitrot, malware
infestations, et hoc genus omne nefandum. But, lest anyone misunderstand,
it is not worth a plug nickel if your hard drive goes south from a crash,
a short, or any other _hardware_ disaster. The only protection against
that is backup, _backup_, BACKUP. Verb. sap. sat.

I may, however, have found a really usefule piece of software. Acornis
TrueImage, like Norton Ghost, will make an image file of a partition and
burn it to a CD or DVD. What it also apparently does is let one resize
the partition on restoring. That looks as if one could buy a standard,
name-brand PC, burn the disk image to CD or DVD, then run FDISK to
partition, and restore from the CD. Nifty if true. (But I''m not about to
resize my partitions to find out.)

Patricia M. Godfrey
PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx