Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekka  ... But I do know this. If you have all your programs running on C Drive say. You back that up to an external. Then pull that C drive out and shove a new one in with the back up on it, it doesn't work anyway. I know as I have tried it. |
That is because you are just copying the files over I presume. Windows needs the boot tracks to be in the first sectors on the hard drive, a general Windows copy command doesn't do this. It's fundamentally flawed in this, and many other areas.
OSX has had a built in cloning program called "Disk Utility" this allows you to make an image of any hard drive, even your boot drive, to a .dmg image file. I use this to backup my entire boot drive, applications, data, and settings. This image can then be restored on any hard drive and you can then boot from it, it's an identical, bit for bit, copy.
I restore this image of my boot drive to an external firewire hard drive and can boot any Macintosh into my complete setup. Of course this is only as recent as your last backup, sooo...
Anyway, with Leopard it is even easier now that it ships with "Time Machine" if left unattended it makes hourly backups of your entire hard drive, and this can be restored to a fresh drive in the event of drive failure. With "Time Capsule" you can do this wirelessly for all the Macs you own.
There are several Windows utilities that do a similar function, if in a less elegant and intuitive way, than on the standard Macintosh. Here is a link to one:
Drive Image Backup Software for Windows :: Image for Windows Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekka I have all my programs on C drive, all my files on D drive... I have found if you load a program to D drive which doesn't have the operating system then it doesn't work as good and sometimes at all... Programs are best loaded to the drive with the operating system on it. |
That is because Windows has stuck with the ancient CP/M limits on the naming of drives or devices. "C, D, E, ect... " I find this archaic, inflexible, 30 year old method of naming drives pathetic. I guess in Vista you can assign aliases now, but I'm really not sure.
I generally just give my drives their actual name and size. For example my Mini's boot drive is "Hitachi 200", On my PowerBook my hard drive is named "Hitachi 100" (both 7200 rpm drives with 16 MB cache). Not very original, but it works for me. Many Mac users give their hard drives cute names, I did that for a few years, but then got so many hard drives I ran out of cute names.
My wife's MacBook, while twice as fast in CPU speed, suffers from a small (
60 gig), slow hard drive and only 512K of RAM. My four year old PowerBook runs rings around it because of 2 gigs of memory and super fast hard drive. (
which I added last year as an upgrade).
On the Macintosh it doesn't matter where you put you applications. In general I try to put them on the fastest drive available. Also, because OSX puts applications in "packages" they can be dragged and dropped to wherever you want them. No reinstallation or reconfiguration needed. It just works. Similarly if you want to delete a program, just drag it to the Trash. To install a new program just drag it to wherever you want it. Marvelously simple, the way it ought to be. No drivers, installing hassles, no "DLL Hell" to sort out.
On my PowerMac Dual processor tower (
circa 1999) I have a total of five hard drives. Two are paired together with Raid 1, which maintains them as mirrored drives, both identical and ready to seamlessly take over in the event of drive failure. This has already happenedf to me, and the only way that you know anything's wrong is a message pops up informing you. You can go right on working without missing a beat.
Two other drives are paired together in a Raid 0 configuration. Both drives acting in tandem, doing interleaved reads and writes for maximum speed and response. This is where I put my games and applications. They load really fast and can bring in additional program modules which gives great response time for even bloated programs like Photoshop.
The fifth hard drive is a laptop drive that fits right on my hardware accelerated RAID card. All I keep on it is OSX to boot from in an emergencey. Very handy for trouble shooting problems, I guess, other than the one hard drive failure the tower has been trouble free, just like all the (
numerous) other Macintoshes I've ever owned.
I can't even imagine trying to manage this system if all the drives could only be assigned letters! It also has a DVD burner and a Zip drive, plus at times multiple firewire external drives, An alphabet soup of devices.
Lets see, were did I put that invoice? A?, B?, C?, D?, E?, F?, or was it G? That is so arbitrary, why didn't they use Q.W.E.R.T.Y or something easy to find?
You get what you pay for. In other news, I just bought a
STIHL saw today, my first chainsaw.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekka ... In a recent interview Google's Matt Cutts spelled it out, keep it simple! ...So if you experience a lock up, think about what you were doing.  |
"Keep it simple" it's what Macs do.
Aerial