RE: Dumb question re back up

["Marc" marc@xxxxxxxx]

Try installing another drive and 'restoring' your backup to it. (or even
try setting your D: drive as primary master and startable and see if you
can boot from it - Disaster Recovery Testing) You may be very
disappointed. However you will have all your data and 'only' require
re-installation of the OS and apps.
An alternative backup method is to use imaging software like Symantec
Ghost (Graphical Host Operating System Transfer) They also supply a tool
called Ghost Explorer that allows you to 'browse' your image files and
extract single files and/or folders - it even allows you to add files to
an existing image!
In the event of a hard drive failure, you replace it and restore the
image file and presto - you are up and running within an hour.

Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Harry Binswanger
Sent: Wednesday, 9 October 2002 5:44 a.m.
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Dumb question re back up

Since we're all talking backup...

I'm thinking of upgrading from win98 to win98SE. (My win98 suddenly
locks
in to 100% processor usage and slows down--it needs at least a
re-install
and it's time for me to reach 1999-level technology.).

Which brings up the issue of preventing re-installing all my apps. I
backup
by copying every file from my Boot-and-Main-Drive (C:) over to a
physically
separate drive (D:). I use Xcopy32, from within Windows, and it copies
everything except the swap file and a few other in-use files.

My dumb question is: since all the files for all my apps are on D:, is
there any way to scrub C:, install say win98SE, then do some kind of
bulk
copying back from D: to re-install the apps? I guess I'm dreaming. I was

thinking about things like copying D:\Windows\System to
C:\Windows\System. But I take it that the idiocy of Windows includes
NOT
separating app-files from OS-files in any way that would allow this kind
of
restoring of apps.

Or is there hope?



Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx