Re: How workable is Vista?




Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:55:24 +0000, Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:

My business model has me using a separate hard disk for each client
and just racking it in when I work. This absolutely guarantees that a
system crash or hard disk failure will not impact any other client's
work. Microsoft's operating systems, up through perhaps Win2000,
supported this -- I don't need to call Microsoft to get a new ID every
time I set up a new hard disk for a new client -- but the rest do not,
so I use them... sparingly. But I do have a few purchased machines
where I do keep WinXP loaded, where I'm forced to use tools that will
no longer run on the older OS. (Though I also keep a large number of
older tools from Microchip and so on, as well.)

If you set up a standard starting disk with, say, XP (and of course
all your favorite apps) on it, register your cpy of XP, get all the
updates, run "Windows Genuine Advantage" and then use XXCOPY (XXCOPY,
not XCOPY) to clone it multiple times, all the cloned disks will boot
and run just fine.

Hmm. Didn't know about that. Keep in mind that I do NOT run with any
other disk in the system, so there is no single "boot disk" that is
kept in the machine. There is only the one disk, itself.

That's the configuration I have been using, and it works fine.

One thing to keep in mind is that, while the resulting cloned disks
work fine as the only disk in the system, you need a different
setup to *make* the clones. Firstly, obviously you have to have
two hard drives to clone one to another. With XXCopy, they can
be on the same machine or on two machines connected with ethernet.
Secondly, you can't boot from the target hard drive, because it
will be competely erased and all data replaced with a clone of the
source drive. Thirdly, you can't boot from the target hard drive,
because Windos won't let XXCopy access some system files. My
solution was to partition my hard drives into two partitions
-- Data and OS -- and to install a copy of XP on each. Thus
I boot to C: on my two computers to clone D: over the network,
then I boot to D: on my two computers to clone C: over the
network.

Then it is not a solution for me. I won't permit ANY access at all --
even entirely accidental via some crash. The drives must be
completely bootable.

Why do you imagine that the drives are not completely bootable
(they are competely normal hard drives and boot like any other
hard drive) or that there can be any access between them (after
you are done making the clones, one will be in a drawer powered
down while the other is running on the PC.) And, of course, the
actual customer data goes on after the clones are made, so no
interaction or cross-access there either.

Oh, well. You almost made me happy. :)

I don't see why you aren't happy.

.

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