Re: XyWrite on flash drive

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Matt Gumm wrote:
> If you use anything else besides C, you'll have
> to modify your XY startup files, and it gets to be a pain.
That's assuming (remember Flash's warning about that) that we all
run Xy from C: I don't. I'll swear Robert doesn't; I very much
doubt that Carl or Jordan does.
Actually, I have a rather weird setup on this laptop: my normal
disk structure is
c:\opsys and Windows-native apps (I'd like, like Robert, to put
them elsewhere, but don't know how: most are bound and determined
to go in c:\Program Files, fight you tooth and nail if you try to
put them elsewhere, and--in the case of Corel--duplicate
themselves there if you do).
d:\ DOS apps (and self-contained Windows ones like InfoZip)
e:\ data
and sometimes
f:\ downloads, drivers, and a copy of the Windows installation
disk, in case it goes missing.
This laptop came with the hard drive already partitioned into two
drives. But if you try to section off a bit of the second
partition (and Vista is so bloated that I hesitate to take
anything from C:), it mucks up a nice backup utility that Acer
included. (Vista Home doesn't include a way to make a drive image
of your C: drive; the Acer util does.)
I could reletter that drive to e: all right, but no d:. Then a
local store had a sale on those cards that one uses to get pix
off a digital camera. The laptop came with a built-in reader for
several types of them. So I got an 1G SD card (5 year warranty,
which is more than most hard drives give you; Sandisk), stuck it
in the slot (fits nicely; doesn't stick out the way a flash drive
would--just the few milimeters necessary to grasp it if you want
to remove it), relettered it to D:. and copied my standard Xy and
dBase5 setups to it. No need to change hard-coded drive
references, runs fine.
Note that the smallest Fat32 partition you can create under XP (I
think) or Vista s 8G--way too big for two or three apps that date
from the days of 10 Mb hard drives. But they fit nicely on a 1G
SD card.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx