123c5436212f
tech



Hello David - 

--8<--cut 

CA>>>> You always refer to "new machines". Do you not realize
CA>>>> that new machines do _not_ outnumber machines in the
CA>>>> installed base of computers out there in use today? 

DD>>> Yes, I forget that you live in the boonies. 

CA>> Worse than that, I am now back in the Detroit area in
CA>> Michigan where we kill the weak and eat them. ;-) 

DD> All because they use older computers? 

It's a story too often told that I will leave to others with
more interest in the telling of it.

DD>>> Machines have been available without floppy drives for
DD>>> more than 4 years now... 

CA>> Machines _without_ hardware are now the bleeding edge.
CA>> Interesting. 

DD> I'm not the one using the expression "bleeding edge". Do
DD> you still use a machine with a 5.25" floppy drive? 

DD> The machine I'm sitting at does not have a floppy drive. It
DD> is not the first of it's type to do so, it is three or four
DD> generations of disketteless machine. 

I admit to having noticed floppies are not easy to find for
purchase and cost as much or more than CDs. 

DD>>> [re Partition Magic] 

DD>>>>> what do you do with your machines there?) 

CA>>>> I use BootitNG to manage my multiboot, image backups,
CA>>>> and any requirements to repartition or resize existing
CA>>>> partitions. What do you use? 

DD>>> I don't have mutliboot machines, I tend to have one OS
DD>>> per machine. 

CA>> Chicken? 

DD> I can use two OSs simultaneously if I have them on
DD> different hardware. 

Actually I agree with your logic on doing it this way. I too
prefer one OS per machine unless I am just curious and trying
to see what a new OS really can do such as OBERON or a
mini-Linux etc. 

DD>>> I don't make image backups, I just copy my data
DD>>> directories 

DD>>>> I find with MS based machines that 

DD>>> if the OS dies, it has been decomposing for a while, and
DD>>> restoring an image backup is putting back a faulty system. 

CA>> So basically if anything goes wrong you do a complete
CA>> reinstall and lose any/all tweaks configuration changes
CA>> etc. that you had added since the last (most recent)
CA>> install? Also interesting. 

DD> Pretty much - if the OS has crapped itself, it has crapped
DD> itself. It doesn't take that long to install and OS these
DD> days. 

I do a great deal of tweaking and reconfiguration myself and
would rather not have to do it repeatedly. :-) 

DD> Saying all that, the only time we've installed an OS here
DD> at home is when we've upgraded - we don't kill OSs. 

Then tweaking is probably not of much interest to you. If you
tweak things break eventually. 

DD>>> I haven't felt the need to resize partition in an awful
DD>>> long time... 

CA>> Let me guess, you have one HUGE partition with everything
CA>> on it? 

CA> > LOL 

DD> On Linux I usually have a swap partition,and then the rest
DD> as one partition. 

DD> OS-X is the same. 

DD> On the Windows machines, it is all one partition. 

DD> I usually set up 2003 servers set up with a boot partition
DD> and a data partition. The one we have at home is set up
DD> with the boot partition on one drive and the data partition
DD> on a second. 

DD> I've found that having multiple partitions tend to lead to
DD> running out of space on one or other of them while others
DD> never get anywhere near filled - thus wasting space. 

That used to happen to me until I learned to plan ahead. ;-) 

CA>> You certainly do march to your own drummer David Drummond. 

DD> Are you telling me that on a Windows workstation you have
DD> multiple partitions? 

DD> Why? 

I needed to make image copies was my _main_ reason. BootitNG
installs on it's own 8 meg partition and at the time I thought
I preferred W98SE to W2K. Once I stabilized W2K and tweaked it
a bit I realized I didn't want W98SE. It worked out OK though
as I can boot to a real DOS on my 'W98SE' partition now. One is
FAT32, the other NTFSv5, not sure what BootitNG uses for it's
little 8 meg partition. I needed to image copy from one
partition to the other anyhow and then burn those images to
CDs. My earlier CD writer had no hardware buffering and was not
'burn-proof' making direct image burns impossible. 

>
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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