On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:34:31 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Not really. That copy wouldn't have your programs installed. If you
feel you might WANT to install XP on that drive, leave space.

In the situation you describe, you'd go out, buy a new drive and
install XP and your programs. An afternoon's work. It's not as if
you're doing this for a living and down-time costs money, after all
:-)

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 14:02:11 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Hard drives are remarkably cheap and getting even cheaper
(per GB) every week. You would be replacing your failed
primary/secondary drive, no?

Good point. ..but it usually takes a day or two to obtain a new drive
by mail order. A day or two of down-time could be a disaster..

Why? Who's the big client breathing down your neck? :=)

So install XP on the other drive, carry on working and copy data onto
the new drive when it arrives.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:29:25 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Heck, you could get a small drive that would only hold your OS and programs
until a replacement is available, it doesn't have to be a 200GB drive.

Bruce,
This sounds like a great idea. Thank you for that!

This small one would take as long to arrive as the bigger one, surely?

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:30:30 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 15:29:25 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Heck, you could get a small drive that would only hold your OS and programs
until a replacement is available, it doesn't have to be a 200GB drive.

Bruce,
This sounds like a great idea. Thank you for that!

This small one would take as long to arrive as the bigger one, surely?

L, I think Bruce means I could buy a drive now to have in store for
use in emergency, already loaded with Win XP.

Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:27:32 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:34:31 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Not really. That copy wouldn't have your programs installed. If you
feel you might WANT to install XP on that drive, leave space.

In the situation you describe, you'd go out, buy a new drive and
install XP and your programs. An afternoon's work. It's not as if
you're doing this for a living and down-time costs money, after all
:-)

My time is worth just as much money, whether I'm fixing my business
computer or my DAW. See what I mean?

Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:27:32 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 12:34:31 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files on the other
drive. But suppose that drive is almost full.. Then I would have no
room to install XP on that drive. So doesn't it therefore make good
sense to aleady have a copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

Not really. That copy wouldn't have your programs installed. If you
feel you might WANT to install XP on that drive, leave space.

In the situation you describe, you'd go out, buy a new drive and
install XP and your programs. An afternoon's work. It's not as if
you're doing this for a living and down-time costs money, after all
:-)

I'll tell you something though... I have loaded WIn XP onto both hard
drives and it is proving a bit of a pain. When you boot up, the bios
promts you top select which OS you want to start:
Windows Xp or... Windows XP... It doesn't indicate which drive each
one is on. Si I'm thinking of deleting the version of Win XP that's
on my secondary HD. Not sure how straightforward that is to do...

Ally

"Laurence Payne" wrote in
message
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 08:01:40 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

When you say "working files", are you referring to the actual audio
recordings - or something else?

Both the actual recordings and any working files that are used to
produce them.

Meaning just what? I know of no audio recorder/sequencer that
doesn't load the control file into memory and keep it there. Do you?

Audition writes to the temp file on disk incessantly while it is recording.
When you save the track files, there is a file-file copy from the temp file
to the track files. It reads and writes to disk, often as fast as the disc
will run, while editing in edit view. MT view's nondestructive editing
minimizes pounding on the hard drive, but you still end up playing back the
track files concurrently. The only file that I know of that is reasonably
small and doesn't get pounded is the .ses file.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:03:25 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

I'll tell you something though... I have loaded WIn XP onto both hard
drives and it is proving a bit of a pain. When you boot up, the bios
promts you top select which OS you want to start:
Windows Xp or... Windows XP... It doesn't indicate which drive each
one is on. Si I'm thinking of deleting the version of Win XP that's
on my secondary HD. Not sure how straightforward that is to do...

Edit boot.ini in the root directory of your primary drive. You can
give the two boots meaningful names.


If you want to lose the second installation (and you might as well),
just delete the Windows folder from that drive. Might as well delete
everything - there's nothing else there yet, is there? You'll still
get the choice, until you edit boot.ini.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 21:58:06 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

In the situation you describe, you'd go out, buy a new drive and
install XP and your programs. An afternoon's work. It's not as if
you're doing this for a living and down-time costs money, after all
:-)

My time is worth just as much money, whether I'm fixing my business
computer or my DAW. See what I mean?

No, I don't :-) Hobby time isn't chargeable.

Anyway, you'll have to spend time setting up a second copy of Windows
whether you do it now or later. I suggest you do it later, when (if)
needed. You're still very much on the learning curve. Make your
mistakes now on one Windows installation, not identical mistakes on
two copies :-)

"Ally" wrote in message
...
Anyone suggest an easy way to assess which of two drives is fastest?
(Of course, experience would tell, but so far All I have on each drive
is a copy of XP)

I've always used "HDtach". A freeware version is available. There are many
other good test programs too like Sisoft Sandra which will give you a speed
rating for each drive. Do a search on Tucows or similar web sites for many
other HD test utilities.

TonyP.

"Richard Crowley" wrote in message
...
It can work, but it can be less than bullet-proof. It will cost you
more
than a GB of disk space in most cases.

Less than 1% of my 120gb drive... sounds worth it...

Me too.

If something happens that you can't boot from C:, your
chances of booting from an alternative hard drive seeem
1% IME. Not worth it.

If its a windows problem and not hardware, then the chances of simply
swapping the boot drive in Bios, and booting from the other copy of windows
should be greater than 99%.

If you are really worried about disaster recovery (as we
all should be), make sure you have your data files backed
up. Why bother with operating system and program files
which can be easily reloaded?

"Easily" is usually a days work in reconfiguring many programs if you have
to start from scratch.

TonyP.

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:26:08 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 21:58:06 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

In the situation you describe, you'd go out, buy a new drive and
install XP and your programs. An afternoon's work. It's not as if
you're doing this for a living and down-time costs money, after all
:-)

My time is worth just as much money, whether I'm fixing my business
computer or my DAW. See what I mean?

No, I don't :-) Hobby time isn't chargeable.

It is for me! Time I spend on my hobby is time spent not earning
money! :-)

Anyway, you'll have to spend time setting up a second copy of Windows
whether you do it now or later. I suggest you do it later, when (if)
needed. You're still very much on the learning curve. Make your
mistakes now on one Windows installation, not identical mistakes on
two copies :-)

Well, there's some sense in that, I have to admit.

ALly

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:23:28 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:03:25 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

I'll tell you something though... I have loaded WIn XP onto both hard
drives and it is proving a bit of a pain. When you boot up, the bios
promts you top select which OS you want to start:
Windows Xp or... Windows XP... It doesn't indicate which drive each
one is on. Si I'm thinking of deleting the version of Win XP that's
on my secondary HD. Not sure how straightforward that is to do...

Edit boot.ini in the root directory of your primary drive. You can
give the two boots meaningful names.

L, thanks for the tip. How do I acess that file. It sems to be a
hidden file. I searched for it and it didn't show up.

If you want to lose the second installation (and you might as well),
just delete the Windows folder from that drive. Might as well delete
everything - there's nothing else there yet, is there? You'll still
get the choice, until you edit boot.ini.

It still strikes me as a handy thing to have. Like someone said, if
the primaty drive fails to boot up due to corruption of a file or
such, it might be possible to repair it with Scandisc after booting
from the other drive, yes?

Ally

"TonyP" wrote
"Easily" is usually a days work in reconfiguring many
programs if you have to start from scratch.

Then back up your config files. Never seemed that much
of a deal to me. Perhaps I just run generic configurations
that are easily re-created.

"Ally" wrote ...
Good point. ..but it usually takes a day or two to obtain a new drive
by mail order. A day or two of down-time could be a disaster..

If your downtme is really worth that much, then a hot standby
spare hard drive is easily justified.

"Ally" wrote ...
Thanks for clarifying some of those points. If you have the
inclination, please comment on my reply to you other response
where I explain my perceived logic for having the biggest
drive as the primary.

If I can find it.

Anyone suggest an easy way to assess which of two drives
is fastest? (Of course, experience would tell, but so far All
I have on each drive is a copy of XP)

What are you doing that requires that kind of speed? I do
almost more video than audio nowadays and even for video,
(DV @ 250Mb/min) its not a particularly important issue.

"Ally" wrote ...
Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files
on the other drive. But suppose that drive is almost full..
Then I would have no room to install XP on that drive.
So doesn't it therefore make good sense to aleady have a
copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

No offense, but I don't think you have enough experience to
predict that is even a workable scheme. I've been building
computers since well before the IBM PC or Apple(1) and
producing and editing audio and video even longer. Your
scheme doesn't sound practical to me, particularly in the
absense of any actual use-experience or revelation of what
software app(s) you intend to use.

If your remaining drive is that tight, you won't have enough
room (for temp files, etc.) to do any practial work on it anyway.
Are you actually in business doing audio editing that downtime
is so dear? If so, you might want to reconsider your business
plan.

Laurence Payne wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:18:44 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

Unless you want to maintain a dual-boot system, I see no point. The
stand-by Windows won't have your programs, your setup. You might as
well do a fresh install. Just keep Windows and program files on one
partition, separate from data, so this procedure is convenient.

Laurence Payne wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:18:44 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Someone else suggested having a copy of XP on each drive, so tha if
one drive dies, I can still boot from the other. That idea appeals to
me. Any comments on that?

Unless you want to maintain a dual-boot system, I see no point. The
stand-by Windows won't have your programs, your setup. You might as
well do a fresh install. Just keep Windows and program files on one
partition, separate from data, so this procedure is convenient.

This could be a valid scenario for partioning the second drive, and
installing all apps also to that OS/Apps partition routinely, 'just in
case'.

geoff

Laurence Payne wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 11:58:07 GMT, (Ally) wrote:


Actually, there are still XP boot floppies, a set of 6 to be exact.

But why would anyone want to boot from floppies?

When things go wrong.

I use boot floppies so rarely these days (who said XP is flakier than Win9x
?!!!) that if I do, I invariably find the floopies have gone 'stale' and no
longer work. Why stick in 6 floppies when 1 CD will do ?

geoff

Ally wrote:


I'll tell you something though... I have loaded WIn XP onto both hard
drives and it is proving a bit of a pain. When you boot up, the bios
promts you top select which OS you want to start:
Windows Xp or... Windows XP... It doesn't indicate which drive each
one is on. Si I'm thinking of deleting the version of Win XP that's
on my secondary HD. Not sure how straightforward that is to do...

That's not the BIOS , it's NT/XP's NTLDR.EXE. You can edit BOOT.INI to
give each install 'freindly' name, select the default, and reduce the wait'
time to something sensible like 5 sec.

geoff

Ally wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:23:28 +0100, Laurence Payne
wrote:

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:03:25 GMT, (Ally)
wrote:

I'll tell you something though... I have loaded WIn XP onto both
hard drives and it is proving a bit of a pain. When you boot up,
the bios promts you top select which OS you want to start:
Windows Xp or... Windows XP... It doesn't indicate which drive
each one is on. Si I'm thinking of deleting the version of Win XP
that's on my secondary HD. Not sure how straightforward that is to
do...

Edit boot.ini in the root directory of your primary drive. You can
give the two boots meaningful names.

L, thanks for the tip. How do I acess that file. It sems to be a
hidden file. I searched for it and it didn't show up.


I routinely set Win Explorer defaults to allow access to system files, and
NOT to hide filename extensions. ( In Explorer | Tools | Folder Options ) .
The obstructive defaults are to prevent novices from trashing their systems
!

geoff

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:57:42 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Thanks for clarifying some of those points. If you have the
inclination, please comment on my reply to you other response
where I explain my perceived logic for having the biggest
drive as the primary.

If I can find it.

Anyone suggest an easy way to assess which of two drives
is fastest? (Of course, experience would tell, but so far All
I have on each drive is a copy of XP)

What are you doing that requires that kind of speed? I do
almost more video than audio nowadays and even for video,
(DV @ 250Mb/min) its not a particularly important issue.

It's just that I was advised to use the fastest drive to house the
working sound files. But the issue is now a non-issue: the two drives
seem to be virtually the same speed, going by the time each one took
to open it's local instance of WinXP.

Cheers,
Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:51:57 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"TonyP" wrote
"Easily" is usually a days work in reconfiguring many
programs if you have to start from scratch.

Then back up your config files. Never seemed that much
of a deal to me. Perhaps I just run generic configurations
that are easily re-created.

Can you recommend an easy + practical way to do that?
(for someone like me who's not too technical)

Thanks,
Ally

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:08:10 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Mow, suppose my primary drive goes west one day...

Then I still have a copy of all my precious audio files
on the other drive. But suppose that drive is almost full..
Then I would have no room to install XP on that drive.
So doesn't it therefore make good sense to aleady have a
copy of XP on that final remaining drive?
(opinions strongly invited!)

No offense, but I don't think you have enough experience to
predict that is even a workable scheme. I've been building
computers since well before the IBM PC or Apple(1) and
producing and editing audio and video even longer. Your
scheme doesn't sound practical to me, particularly in the
absense of any actual use-experience or revelation of what
software app(s) you intend to use.

If your remaining drive is that tight, you won't have enough
room (for temp files, etc.) to do any practial work on it anyway.
Are you actually in business doing audio editing that downtime
is so dear? If so, you might want to reconsider your business
plan.

OK... would you advise me to delete the emergency copy of XP on my
secondary drive? If so, how do I do that - just delete the Windows
folder?

Thanks
Ally

"Ally" wrote ...
OK... would you advise me to delete the emergency copy of XP on my
secondary drive? If so, how do I do that - just delete the Windows
folder?

Didn't you say that you hadn't installed any layered apps yet?
I'd start over and re-format the second drive (takes only a
few seconds to do a "quick format" that just clears out the
directories.) And then wipe the primary drive and re-install
a single copy of the OS so that you know you have a clean
and stable platform on which to build everything else. KISS
has always worked well for me. There will be plenty of
complications without worrying about residual effects of
having phantom dual-boot stuff laying about.

"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:51:57 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"TonyP" wrote
"Easily" is usually a days work in reconfiguring many
programs if you have to start from scratch.

Then back up your config files. Never seemed that much
of a deal to me. Perhaps I just run generic configurations
that are easily re-created.

Can you recommend an easy + practical way to do that?
(for someone like me who's not too technical)

I use CDRWs to back up my data regularly (every few weeks).
And then every year I do a "spring cleaning" and re-format
my C: drive and re-install a clean copy of the OS. At that
point I can look back at the year and identify the applications
that I actually *use* and re-install those. MS Windows is
notorious for collecting junk along the way and this is a
foolproof way of keeping it running mean and lean. It takes
only a couple of hours to re-install the OS and layered apps,
cheap enough for the benefits IMHO.

"Geoff Wood" wrote ...
I routinely set Win Explorer defaults to allow access to system files, and
NOT to hide filename extensions. ( In Explorer | Tools | Folder Options )
..

Amen, brother. Hiding file extentions is a primary method
of propogating viruses and other malware. I don't see how
people can run with such blinders on?

The obstructive defaults are to prevent novices from
trashing their systems

It seems like it ends up having the opposite effect IME.

"Ally" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 22:57:42 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

"Ally" wrote ...
Thanks for clarifying some of those points. If you have the
inclination, please comment on my reply to you other response
where I explain my perceived logic for having the biggest
drive as the primary.

If I can find it.

Anyone suggest an easy way to assess which of two drives
is fastest? (Of course, experience would tell, but so far All
I have on each drive is a copy of XP)

What are you doing that requires that kind of speed? I do
almost more video than audio nowadays and even for video,
(DV @ 250Mb/min) its not a particularly important issue.

It's just that I was advised to use the fastest drive to house the
working sound files. But the issue is now a non-issue: the two drives
seem to be virtually the same speed, going by the time each one took
to open it's local instance of WinXP.

On "clean & empty" drives, this isn't really a very
definitive test. There *are* free utilities out there that
actually exercise the drives with simulated real-
world reading and writing. Including read/write very
large files (as you would be doing for audio or video).
Your drives may very well be identical in speed, but
the "boot test" isn't particuarly reliable.

(snippage)

Is there any point in partitioning my drives into a number of smaller
'virtual drives?

Thanks for any guidance...

Ally

Hi Ally,

The only drawback to having just one large partition on a drive is that
the block size is larger than that of a smaller partition. This means
that if you have a block size of say... 16K then that is the smallest
amount of disk space a file will use, even if the file is only 1K. You
can see this when you look at the properties of a file where it says
file size - nnnn , and then, space used on disk - nnnn . The file is
always somewhat smaller than the amount of disk its using. It's not
really a big deal when your doing audio and video, because the files
tend to be much larger, and use the disk space efficiently. None of this
matters when the OS uses block suballocation, but I'm not sure if XP
does that off the top of my head.
Have fun!
Paul

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Ally" wrote ...
OK... would you advise me to delete the emergency copy of XP on my
secondary drive? If so, how do I do that - just delete the Windows
folder?

Didn't you say that you hadn't installed any layered apps yet?
I'd start over and re-format the second drive (takes only a
few seconds to do a "quick format" that just clears out the
directories.) And then wipe the primary drive and re-install
a single copy of the OS so that you know you have a clean
and stable platform on which to build everything else. KISS
has always worked well for me. There will be plenty of
complications without worrying about residual effects of
having phantom dual-boot stuff laying about.

Not necessary. Mutliple NT/2K/XP installs to separate volumes carry no
baggage, and are completely independant apart from their entries in BOOT.INI
..

geoff

Richard Crowley wrote:
There will be plenty of complications without worrying about
residual effects of having phantom dual-boot stuff laying about.

"Geoff Wood" wrote ...
Not necessary. Mutliple NT/2K/XP installs to separate volumes
carry no baggage, and are completely independant apart from their
entries in BOOT.INI

Exaxtly my point. Editing BOOT.INI even with the GUI
interface (if you can find it!) is not something I would feel
comfortable recommending to the average computer user.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 04:36:35 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

Edit boot.ini in the root directory of your primary drive. You can
give the two boots meaningful names.

L, thanks for the tip. How do I acess that file. It sems to be a
hidden file. I searched for it and it didn't show up.

Tools/Folder Options/View.

You need to see Hidden files, System files - Hell, see everything!

Also turn off that pernicious "Hide Extensions for Known File Types".
It's an open invitation to malicious files. If it's an EXE, you need
to KNOW it's an EXE.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 18:51:40 +1200, "Geoff Wood"
-nospam wrote:

Unless you want to maintain a dual-boot system, I see no point. The
stand-by Windows won't have your programs, your setup. You might as
well do a fresh install. Just keep Windows and program files on one
partition, separate from data, so this procedure is convenient.

This could be a valid scenario for partioning the second drive, and
installing all apps also to that OS/Apps partition routinely, 'just in
case'.

I'd say it was an argument for the opposite. Keep a clean Windows
installation. Otherwise you're likely to end up with two broken ones.

But I really wouldn't bother.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:01:12 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

It's just that I was advised to use the fastest drive to house the
working sound files. But the issue is now a non-issue: the two drives
seem to be virtually the same speed, going by the time each one took
to open it's local instance of WinXP.

That's not a particularly meaningful test. But as both your drives
are new, I wouldn't worry too much over one being a fraction faster.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:08:54 GMT, (Ally) wrote:

OK... would you advise me to delete the emergency copy of XP on my
secondary drive? If so, how do I do that - just delete the Windows
folder?

If you want. Or leave it be - it's doing no harm to anyone.

My advice is, stop fussing, load up your software and make some music.
I want to hear your first efforts a week today. Got it? :-)


Actually, that's the only way to make music. Give yourself a finite
length of time and a definite goal. Work with the tools you've got.
They'll do for now.. By next weekend, let's hear 3 songs (or 3 of
whatever sort of music you're into). They'll probably be crap. But
finish them, and let's have a listen - if you haven't got web space,
it's easily available.

You'll be learning your tools. And the next 3 will be better. (BTW,
those are due the week after).

If you try to wriggle out of this assignment, I'm going to seriously
lose interest in helping you.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:36:25 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

Exaxtly my point. Editing BOOT.INI even with the GUI
interface (if you can find it!) is not something I would feel
comfortable recommending to the average computer user.

Try it. Windows XP won't LET you save an edited version until you've
renamed your current BOOT.INI, thus creating a backup.

Laurence Payne wrote:

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004 20:36:25 -0700, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

Exaxtly my point. Editing BOOT.INI even with the GUI
interface (if you can find it!) is not something I would feel
comfortable recommending to the average computer user.

Try it. Windows XP won't LET you save an edited version until you've
renamed your current BOOT.INI, thus creating a backup.

There is a text mode command called attrib .... O;-) ... changing what
OS to boot as default can be done from a subpage of the System settings
and is easiest done there.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

Sportster4Eva wrote:

tend to be much larger, and use the disk space efficiently.
None of this matters when the OS uses block suballocation,
but I'm not sure if XP does that off the top of my head.

Being an NT it uses NTFS. Just format with default block size and you
will get 4 kilobyte blocks. You should generally not use larger blocks
because that size also is the size of the memory allocation blocks. You
should generally not use larger blocks because 4 kilobyte blocks are the
only ones that work with file compression as a property of the file
system. You should generally not use larger blocks because 4 kilobyte
blocks are the only ones that work with the file system defrag util.

Some raid setups may constitute a "different case" because the striped
ones (with and without parity) generally are fastest if the stripe size
fits the size of the most frequently occuring request. Generally however
the largest stripe size is some 256 kilobytes, way less than an
audiofile anyway, I still assume that the reasoning above suggest
against using a larger than default blocksize. I am aware of one
exception only: large databasefiles that have their own internal
structure anyway, 256 kilobyte disk blocks and stripesize may be very
well chosen, if possible, for such.

My knowledge is incomplete but I have never seen a difference in the
speed wherewith Cool Edit 2000 reads a file on a fat partition that
correlated with differences in block size.

Paul


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

Ally wrote:

OK... would you advise me to delete the emergency copy of XP
on my secondary drive? If so, how do I do that - just delete
the Windows folder?

Having a "spare NT" can be relevant, but it really really ought to have
its own partition. It can be wise to have a small C drive in FAT32, say
a couple of GB's as system partition (that's where the computer boots)
and to put the boot partition (that's where the OS boots) on the D
drive. You could then set a 3 GB partition innermost ("last") on a drive
a side for putting a spare OS on if needed.

All of this is advanced stuff and just complicate things, and there
is some merit to Laurence's suggestion: get running, make music, be
happy.

The backup software that comes with W2k and XP is very good and it will
back up to a file on a harddisk, said harddisk can be external.

Thanks
Ally


Kind regards

Peter Larsen

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