Survey: Separating Programs and Data into Separate Partitions

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by PastTense, Jun 27, 2013.

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  1. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    NSW, Australia
    This is a frightening post.

    http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1377887285/0#0

    Maybe he had his data backed up in native format and maybe he didn't. I have my OS partition backed up in proprietary format (an image) but the data partition is backed up in native format. Personal data is the more important than apps.
     
  2. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    I don't get it.. Why don't they (acronis, ghost, macrium, and others) make their image files more robust? It's not rocket science. And WinZIP and WinRAR do something to at least allow you to access the other material should part of the archive be damaged.

    ****.. For all I know someone could have imaged their entire disk, and somehow got a flipped bit in the archive. And it would be a cryin'shame if this flipped bit belonged to a Windows TEMP file. Poof! The backup fails checksum and it's all gone to hell. All for nothing. The other 99.9% of the VALUABLE data, being intact, would not be able to be accessed..

    So why they work that way? Competition? Speed? Size of image? Benchmarks? I can't imagine adding a bit of separation and compartmentalization for each file would be a hassle. It'd be a great thing! Wouldn't it?

    NOW: In light of the corrupted ghost file situation.. It's a perfect reason to be wary of Windows updates. I'd much rather manually check for updates on my own time, at my leisure, as opposed to getting "caught" when I'm working with critical files or need to power-down my system immediately.

    Another thing, why is GHOST EXPLORER writing to image files? If the explorer utility goes poof, nothing should be changing. It should be in a read-only mode till you give the OK. I've seen things happen like this a hundred-thousand times before. And I don't like it.
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2013
  3. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    I backup my system in three parts.

    1- I image the main OS and APP disk. This takes 10 or 15 minutes. I cycle through a few images and thus always have something available should disaster strike. Sure an older image isn't as up-to-date, and using one would mean I'd have to do some updates and patches probably. But still better than having one image and having it crap out.

    2- I use a file-sync program to grab all my user data. I like doing it this way for speed, ease-of-access, and of course reliability.

    (a)It's like one big-ass differential operation - saving and updating only info that has changed. Thus this style of backup takes only a few moments.

    (b)My user-data backups are easy to access and they act as a consolidation point for everything. A mass garbage dump. I can just use the Windows File Explorer to pick out a selected file if I want to recover or roll something back.

    (c)Each file being done separately and independently means that a flipped bit or any minor corruption won't render the entire backup useless. Just the affected file, which (I hope) could be repaired or recovered somehow.

    3- While not really an "official" part of my backup plan, I do keep all my source material, DLC, original, and recovery discs in a semi-organized fashion so that if I need to repair or rebuild (in part or whole) the OS or a wayward application I can do so without going on a treasure hunt for the right executables and install files. It's all there, somewhere.

    This could potentially help if my most recent backup can't be restored from, but an older one can. I'd just need to do some manual updating and patching.
     
  4. agoretsky

    agoretsky Eset Staff Account

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    Location:
    California
    Hello,

    Here is how I originally started partitioning my disk(s):

    C: - operating system ("C:\WINDOWS\")
    D: - applications ("D:\Program Files\", "D:\Program Files (x86)\")
    E: - data ("E:\My Documents\")
    F: - downloaded software and disk images ("F:\DISKS\")
    G: - games ("G:\GAMES\")
    M: - mobile (external) drive for backups

    I started doing this in the DOS/Windows 3.0 era. The idea behind this was to put files for specific functions on individual hard disk drives so that in the event of a problem (drive crash, file system corruption, etc.) the other drives/disk volumes would remain intact. Recovery would then be a matter of replacing the drive and reloading its contents.

    As capacities began to increase and hard disk drives became more reliable, I began to consolidate storage, using faster SCSI drives for OS and apps, and slower ATA drives for data, downloads and games.

    Today, I'm just using two internal drives, a SSD and a HDD drive, configured as follows:

    C: - operating system ("C:\WINDOWS\") and applications ("C:\Program Files\", "C:\Program Files (x86)\") [SSD]
    E: - data ("E:\My Documents\")
    F: - downloaded software and disk images ("F:\DISKS\")
    G: - games ("G:\GAMES\")
    M: - mobile (external) drive for backups

    This configuration seems to work well for me, and allows me to easily backup and sync files between various computers (E, F and G synced to M, M synced with whichever computer I am currently using).

    Regards,

    Aryeh Goretsky
     
  5. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Location:
    Milan and Seoul
    I follow the same approach.
     
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