Posted: 7/2/2008 2:24:31 PM EDT
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Got the blue screen of death and decided to do a system restore back to factory settings. Lost everything on my computer in the process. Lesson learned: Neatly file my downloaded programs into their own folders and try to keep things straight on the "C" drive. This sucks. Eh, starting with a clean slate I guess. I downloaded some cool programs, Revo Uninstaller, CC Cleaner, Eusing Registry Cleaner and got rid of Norton and installed AVG. Sucks, I lost all my music and videos and pics. Oh well. |
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You can find 500 gig external drives for around $100 on sale. Acronis True Image Home costs about $40. For less than $150, you can have a backup solution that works great even if you DON'T restore from the image. You can simply mount the image as a drive--all your files are there. |
Why didn't you reboot with "last known good configuration"? Or slave it to a new HD and run a file recovery program? |
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Stop being MS sheep: Get something that doesn't suck If you're a pussy, get something else that doesn't suck. If you're manly, get the best non-sucky OS. Seriously, why do you keep paying for absolute shite? If your pistols were that bad you'd be posting links to avoid that crap. |
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I have two thumb drives that I keep all vital programs/files on. It makes starting over VERY simple. 2 hours max and my system is just like new. The bloatware that comes with systems these days is crap. So I just bought a clean version of Vista and called it a day. |
put all your files on a slave drive, only the OS goes on the master drive. backup the slave to an external drive about once a month. ETA: and run Debian 
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Well: 1) I usually don't pay for it and I actually have the skills to build/maintain an XP machine. (which really isn't THAT hard, if you don't screw around where you should know better.) 2) Ubuntu's great, but try to play Half-life 2 on it. I know WoW works, but is a pain. Don't even TRY to tell me Wing Commander: Prophecy will run on it. 3) A LOT of industry-standard software still is Windows-only. Yes, there's alternatives out there, but most of them are inferior or buggy. 4) I dual-booted my laptop at work with Ubuntu for a few months, to prove it could be done. I found I could do everything I could do in XP in Ubuntu. A lot of stuff worked better in XP, however, and the Ubuntu partition fell into disuse. I didn't bother to put it on my current laptop. 5) Business still runs on Windows. I wouldn't WANT to support most of my users on Linux. It would be a constant migraine. It's FAR easier to lock them down with policies, which makes it a LOT harder for your users to screw up the works. 6) XP isn't as bad as most people would have you think. If people didn't screw around, pirate music/movies, and load every damn stupid screen saver and theme (usually poorly written), there would be FAR less problems. 7) Apple only archives its stability through strict hardware control and limited options. Linux doesn't work with near as much hardware as Windows does. If either supported the same vast options that Windows does, their reliability would suffer as well. |
I have 5 external Hard Drives, and I run a raid system with mirror backup. I don't lose anything anymore. Micro$oft can lick my pooper now.  (I've learned my lesson. You can have a system running for a year or two, then wammo, turn it on and you get the blue screen of death-big middle Microsoft finger........ never again.)
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Meh. I wiped and reloaded today, running like a top. Usually an issue with some game or adware my wife loads when I am not looking. "Honey, the DVD player stopped working right after I played that "enhanced" Eminem CD, what do you think is wrong?" Restore didn't do poop. Most of the extraneous crap was her's anyway. |
I can't think of a reason why you wouldn't backup any of those three systems, either. In any case, no matter what OS/GUI, if you want reliability you should plan for disaster. |
Users don't have access to "the works" in unix-like environments--they can only screw up their own files, AFAIK.
Chicken/egg problem. Hardware vendors develop drivers for more common OSes first (or only). The more common OSes can then claim they have more hardware support... |
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Partition your drives. Separate your OS from your personal data. Run multiple drives. Separate your OS from your personal data and redundancy. Run RAID. Separate your OS from your personal data and redundancy. Last but not least, run an OS that doesn't give Blue Screens of Death. |
VMware Server + Linux will solve everything but gaming. For that you will have to keep Windows around for. |
True. Regardless, these days it is getting difficult to find hardware unsupported by Linux (at the very least through some sort of proprietary binary blob). And yes, Unix-like systems are generally easier to deal with when deploying to clueless users - generally much more secure (from dumbassery, in particular) out of the box as long as you aren't handing out root passwords, no real viral infection/spyware issue to worry about when your employees are browsing pornography on company time, and a well-configured desktop environment will provide enough functionality to be useful without giving anyone enough rope to hang themselves unless they're really trying hard. Linux still isn't for everyone, though, and if somebody is perfectly content running Windows, there's no real need to evangelize like some folks in the thread. |
Windows > * when it comes to gaming. Which is why I dual boot. Gentoo and Windows XP. Windows definitely does have its advantages. |