I currently have a Sony laptop. One of the things that annoyed me about it is that the recovery CDs force the system partition to use the NTFS file system. I wanted it to be a FAT partition, but every time I used the recovery CDs, they would reformat the partition. It was pretty annoying.
So, I decided to take the fresh installation of Windows, copy all of the data off of the partition, reformat it as FAT, and then copy all of the data back. I was hoping that would result in a fresh installation of Windows, on a partition with the file system of my choice.
Can you believe that it worked?
That gave me an idea. Every time I reinstalled Windows onto any of my computers, I would burn a copy of the files on that partition to a DVD. That way, if I ever needed to reinstall in the future, I could just copy the files from the DVD back onto the partition. It works really well, and it makes reinstallation really, really fast. My Windows partition got totally hosed on Friday, and I was able to perform a complete reinstall in about an hour (including the applications).
Copying files from a DVD to the hard drive is way faster than doing an installation from a Windows XP install disk. And it's definitely faster than using manufacturer's system restore CDs and then spending an hour uninstalling all of the crappy software that comes with it. Plus, you can change all of your preferences, and then burn a copy of the partition, so that you won't have to remember all of the preferences that you usually change around on your computer.
I, of course, use Linux to copy the files to and from the Windows partition. It's fast and cheap. Years ago, I used to use products like Norton Ghost, but recent versions of Ghost and other similar programs don't work as well as their older counterparts. I like the idea that I am using a backup solution that isn't dependent upon a software vendor that doesn't have my interests in mind.
<< Home