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Old August 17th 05, 05:10 PM
E_Net_Rider
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Backups seem to be a somewhat confusing problem.
Much of it might stem from my first experiences of trying to use MSBackup
W95
followed by Colorado Bu for the tape drive, which seems was W3.1, not 32bit
and somewhat proprietary as to medium and throw in Seagate which allowed a
larger medium on the same drive. This was closer to W98 MSBackup, yet
differences. Toss in a number of attempts to back up to CD's with different
packages and learn that multi-session burns may not be compatible across
different burners or software packages.
Yes I'm very confused.
If I understand your strategy, you use DriveImage to back up individual
partitions, all being FAT32.
Is that a requirement? Do you run multiple OS?
I have noted that the USB drive will get loaded as if a regular IDE drive,
that is it shows up in explorer with other partitions of the main drive
shifted. Hence, I must remember to remove it before rebooting. Somewhat a
pain, and I haven't found a way around this. Yet, oddly the USB2 port seems
to be a separate dedicated jack on the machine.
Yet since it appears to be loading in dos, or at least that low level, I
have to wonder if there is a way to copy it back to the main drive without
loading the OS?
Is that the method you are using? Do you know if it works for ME with its
very limited DOS? XP? I hate to have to buy tons of software I already own
in some form simply because MS deems it old.
Sort of sounds like you are removing the drive from its USB housing and then
hooking up on its IDE connector???
Reminds me of another trick that might be possible. Using the copy function
in the new drive utilities. The way the one for WD works is that you could
copy to larger or smaller partitions as long as there is room for the data
on that partition. Also has a neat trick in that you can set up the new
drive for FAT32 and copy from a FAT16 drive. This I know works, at least in
the versions that came on the floppies. I'm not sure that I've used the CD
version for that.
This would give an up to date copy of your main drive although it might
require fooling with hooking and unhooking. But then it brings up whether
you are copying something questionable over a good? So are you doing
incremental backups?
I'm thinking that an active drive is doing automatic refreshs of data on the
drive. Possibly a function of the IDE internal drive electronics.
Does anyone have an idea how long the data on the disk will remain good on a
powered down drive? Since this is a rewritable medium I wouldn't expect it
to last as long as a CDR, or maybe even a CDRW. But then maybe enough
difference in the technology.

Since I don't know anything of DriveImage, except it was touted a good
product and much cheaper before Norton bought it (Symantec), I hope you
continue to have good luck with it. Whether I try it or not will be based
upon it's prospects for the future, XP may be in my future whether I like it
or not. And if it not only gives the total restore you claim, although I
didn't clearly understand your procedure, but whether it offers some
incremental.
That is, once I'm sure I've gotten a solid, mostly installed other packages
as well, running system, I can make such a total install image. Maybe even
make incrementals during the install because of the tremendous amount of
time involved in reaching that point without having trouble. (ME has that
restore feature which can be very useful).
From that point, I'd like to do a major backup, maybe monthly, and retain
the previous backup just in case. Of course routine incrementals at least
weekly covering any new installs or uninstalls and hopefully, if necessary a
separate program just placing a data backup, daily at least, somewhere that
might be saved off system or to a separate partition etc. And the more
automatic the better. The daily of data I might handle internally by sending
them to the other computer.
My rambling is evidence of the confusion. Is anything really bullet proof?
Norman


"Lil' Dave" wrote in message
...
Get rid of the current partition, don't reformat it.
Your backup may be bad too.
USB2 will not work at high speed unless in the proper OS environment.

Real
mode msdos is not one of them.
For partition backups, am continuing to use DriveImage 2002 for all FAT32
partitions on this PC. Its very hard to find nowadays. Will not allow
highspeed USB operation though in the recovery, uses msdos environment.

Am
using a ide adapter, and hard drive connected to that for recovery source.
Basically foolproof.

"E_Net_Rider" wrote in message
...
I would like to have some idea of what hit me.
A few mornings back, I find the computer with the vmm32.vxd missing

message.
Now that I think about it, something must have forced it to reboot as

well.
To complicate matters, this was an upgraded machine, and the upgrade

disk
going to SE is the one that only works on 98. That is the machine has to

be
up and running to install it. And the machine has no floppy and I never

got
around to making a bootable CD. I manage to get into DOS and get into

the
windows directory. There are only three folders and most of the files

are
missing.

Are the other partitions of the 80 GB HDD accessible in DOS? Maybe it

was
me?
And now the question of the updated files for the larger HDD come to

mind
as
well. Because I decided to proceed with installing Gold and as soon as
completed run the SE upgrade CD. But the scandisk reported numerous

errors
on C. Other partitions OK. It reported a folder named BAER which aroused

my
curiosity as I have never had any program, etc. associated with that

name
on
my machine, to the best of my knowledge of course.

Any help is greatly appreciated because I really want to avoid this mess
again. Current result is that everything will have to be reinstalled.
Machine is currently running and everything remains on the other

partitions,
so most of my data is obviously OK. But on the C drive I have a ton of

DIR
folders and almost 300 filexxxx.chk files. Registry was obviously lost,
hence the total reinstall. And after much sifting, I will likely find

most
of the other data in those DIR's.

After too many failed tape recovery systems, I had decided to dabble

with
external USB HDD. Thoughts on this are welcome as well and BTW this

isn't
going to well either. Can't break 15MB/s on USB2. And it came with

GHOST,
which I have yet installed. I had picked up a copy of Partition Magic 8

at
the same time. At least one of these I tried to install and it failed,
crashed. I thought I uninstalled, but later found folders/files,

associated
with some security company that Norton may use as part of antipiracy. I

got
rid of what I was aware in that area, but now wonder if there was some
remnant left that timed out at the 30 day not registered and could have

went
haywire. What search I've done indicates dibeng.dll or was it dib32.dll

need
replacing, causation for the vmm32.vxd error, but the files exist in the
created DIR's, possibly indicating as well that everything just got
scrambled.

Definitely need to Get Around to It, and make that bullet proof back up

that
will act as a recovery.

Norman