[RTTY] Backup / partitioning recommendations

[Bill Turner]

ORIGINAL MESSAGE:

At 07:33 AM 5/25/2006, Jim Reisert AD1C wrote:
<snip>
>Then you only *really* need to back up the E:\ drive.  Operating system and
>applications can be re-installed from original media, but your user data is
>irreplaceable.
<snip>
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

Absolutely true, but the time it takes to completely reinstall 
Windows with all its updates and all your applications plus all their 
updates may surprise you. I have had to do this a time or two before 
I discovered imaging, and it is an all-day or even multi-day 
procedure, mainly because of all the user-defined settings for your 
applications. Think about all the time you once spent configuring 
just MMTTY, for example.

A complete re-imaging takes only about ten minutes or less on a 
system my size and restores everything *exactly*. No contest, IMO.

And, heaven forbid, if I did want to reinstall Windows from scratch, 
I have an image of that, too. Installing Windows from the original CD 
is about a 30-45 minute procedure plus several hours downloading the 
latest updates from Microsoft (I'm on dial-up), but from an image it 
takes about three minutes.

Jim's system will work, but all the IT professionals I've spoken to 
about it recommend imaging.

73, Bill W6WRT