[NSRCA-discussion] Marty

[Atwood, Mark]

Honestly?  The best choice is to just run Virtual machines.  They're MUCH easier to back up (they copy as a single file), much easier to restore (copy back previously mentioned single file) and they can run on a variety of OS's.  I'm running on a Mac with Virtuals for XP, Vista, and Linux.   No need to run bloated Anti virus software because if I get a virus, I just reload the virtual...takes about 5 min.

To keep things simple, I don't keep any data on the virtual, but store all of that on a shared space between the virtual OS and the native OS (Mac OS 10.5)

-Mark
PS - Preference for virtuals is VMWare.

-----Original Message-----
From: nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org [mailto:nsrca-discussion-bounces at lists.nsrca.org] On Behalf Of Martin X. Moleski, SJ
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 6:55 PM
To: General pattern discussion
Subject: Re: [NSRCA-discussion] Marty

J N Hiller wrote:

> I am backing up the 'C' drive regularly to a second hard drive. If the C
> drive fails will my computer start from the second drive?

It depends on how you're doing the backup.

You might have to edit the boot sector by hand--or even install
a bootloader--to make it a bootable disk.

If you start out on purpose to do so and use something like
Norton Ghost, you can transfer an image from a small drive
onto a larger drive and (as a general rule) have the larger
drive take the place of the smaller.

Even if the hardware is marked as bootable, you still need
to go into your BIOS and hope that it allows you to boot
from a USB drive (hard disk or thumb drive).

> Is the data on the
> second drive safe until it can be copied off to a new hard drive?

Yes, all things being equal.  Assuming a normal catastrophe
for your system drive, its death won't affect your data drive.

Vandalism is a different issue.

> Computers are truly a love-hate relationship.

I'm learning a lot as I go along.  :o)

			Marty


_______________________________________________
NSRCA-discussion mailing list
NSRCA-discussion at lists.nsrca.org
http://lists.nsrca.org/mailman/listinfo/nsrca-discussion