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#31
A long reply back to you
Hi Lady Fitzgerald (and anyone else who wishes to respond--equal opportunity posting here!)
You wrote so many different things about what I opened up for discussion here...
First question: (I tried to label each question with the word "question" to help you find them) Should I just copy my last post and this one and move it to a new thread so people can find questions about partitioning and those aspects of recovery if they do a search of Windows Seven Forum topics? Let me know.
Next, I'll copy and quote what you said and interrupt you along the way to send comments back... its the only way I'll not lose something important in what information you gave me here... Its all great! You have lots of brain cells working when you are tired... wonder how you are when you are awake???
No, you're functioning just fine... and tired you beat my brain cells in computer knowledge (all of you do) so my hat's off to you! (hope you don't pass away, at least for quite a while yet) ---I read with sadness your noting someone here dear to the Forum passed, I've not been here (it says) since January of 2014, so maybe I've missed out on remembering who Gary was when I was more active here, but my Condolences too to his family....
Definitely, as there is just not enough information out there about different set ups for using products made by different software companies---especially when I was combining together, Partition Commander, System Commander, Norton Ghost, plus a few otherws I forget from the company now called Avanquest (was VCOM). Again, these used to have phone support, but I think it ended or changed to Email or something else, so I ended using their products.....I get the feeling you don't quite understand how imaging and folder/file syncing are used together so let me try telling you how I use them on my notebooks.
Great! Just like my relative's laptop one 500GB HDDThe notebook I'm using right now had one 500GB drive in it.
Now that name has always confused me... I do not have it at all on my unpartitioned HDD, never had it on any other drive that I partitioned... but its something that Norton Ghost quietly creates (very small sliver in size on the pie diagram of the HDD---so I understand why your 1.46 GB is so large to you)----but I can not understand what it is for. If I assume from wikipedia etc it is to hold the system files... HDG Explains - What is the System Reserved Partition? saying its usually just 100MB in size. I think from XP world, is it the "MBR" sector of the HDD? Master Boot Record? or am I trying again to compare apples and eggs? (I know you used another item which I can't find right now while typing)...It has four partitions:
1. System Reserve, 1.46GB (Yes, that is freaking enormous. It got enlarged somehow when I cloned the original HDD to the SSD I replaced it with and I've been too preoccupied to bother with fixing it yet).
Again my brain is hurting as you're expanding its knowledge base quite a lot....2. C:, 99.9GB (47.2GB in use) It has only my OS (Win 7 Home Premium) and programs on it.
3. E:, 348GB (245GB in use) This is my data partition.
4. Q:, 15.3 GB This is the factory recovery partition. (Many people would advise saving it to another drive to free up the space but I don't really need the space and it's more convenient to have it on the computer since it (a Lenovo B590) has a button for activating the restore partition (I've used it only once on another Lenovo notebook but it was handy at the time).
Question: Why the skipping in Drive letters to Q? Was that automatic? Is it a factory installed partition (WD has something like this with programs on it, I zip off the programs, and reformat the drive ASAP (on the first phone call to WD so I do it right), just so I get the full space and not take it up with WD features that I do not use as I have others which are better (incuding my paid Acronis vs their freebie version that comes with many of their HDD like the green/black, etc you list in your system stats below so I know you know what they are)
Question: Is it something that is only used on Lenovo? Or might I need it on my SONY? Or if so, is there a way to get it without owning a Lenovo (I know it was IBM---I stopped buying/recommending using those when IBM transferred ownship, throwing me to the other companies instead)
????????????? (sorry I know the courtesy codes for this Forum say not to do that but here I go again: ????????????? This is my first and only (for the relative its their first computer!, for me my first Windows Laptop, everything else I've ever used is Desktop or larger, so this is like a toy).... with all new things that I don't know about.... How often does the keyboard get "messed up and wasn't recognizing character codes properly"?????? Now I use the existing keyboard on this laptop to type so does relative... owned it since 2010...was first out first install of Professional Windows for that particular computer store it was that new to them....(some have suggested it was done wrong, but you know what that means.... everything has to be emptied and all programs reinstalled paying for new product keys or finding the old ones and reinstalling and re setting all values so that the programs can read and use the saved items in the data! A huge job, I and no one else either, wants to do it.... so maybe that's the source of problems with this laptop....I use Macrium Reflect to image the System Reserve and C: partitions in one image. If my OS and/or programs get scrambled up, I can use an image to restore the System Reserve and C: partitions to the state the computer was in when the image was made (I did just that this morning when the keyboard got messed up and wasn't recognizing character codes properly; it was easier to restore than try to track down the problem). Images are currently just 23.3GB in size, small enough that I can keep several of them without any problems.
Question: But getting back to my original question......... how often does the built in keyboard fail???? like this? I've never heard of it! I've seen keys fall off, but that is mechanical, not electronically erroneous not using character codes properly as you mentioned..... (I read that and quit last night----went away to research it, dead ends, and that is why I didn't respond until today, sorry, that sentence blew my mind about what I know about computers....
Thanks for sharing your images are only 23.3 GB in size....
Question: Is that only your HDD Partition E ??(245 GB in use? )
Question: Does it backup with smart backup i.e. saving only the data filled sectors, or is that 23.3 GB everything from the 500 GB HDD blank spaces and boot record/system reserved included on that small size?
Question: More importantly for the way I treat backups.... is it possible to view that 23.3 GB backup in any way to see if the content matches the original HDD?? (I might have asked these twice somewhere else but asking again here since you mentioned the size of the backed up file)..
NOT weird at all! But remember I was saving using RAID in addition to backup.... So I would save right away to the master drive a small sized saved file by Norton, by incrementals so nothing would be slowed down (Only used Raptors if that makes it clear) and the 17 HDD's daisy chained outward would be automatically striped and saved when a value i.e. 10% change was reached on the Master drive. That way I actually liked it having a double save on the master drive, and doubly saving that across a network to other drives. In case any one failed, all had MBR's so I just grab the drive off the daisy chain and slam it into the hot slot and keep on computing as if nothing at all happened.... Guess that made me lazy about watching what I do, as I always had a backup to stick in there and I could wipe the bad drive and stick it back on the daisy chain and the RAID would adapt it on the next save (someone set it all up for me... I'm not THAT smart... I'm just relating my experience as a user, and so not having RAID or even a current backup on this laptop is worrisome to me every day.....I save the images to a folder on the E: drive. Normally, it isn't a good idea to keep backups on the drive being backed up but I find it convenient when I need to restore my OS/programs because then I don't need to dig out the backup drive. I keep only the first image I made when I first set up the computer and the last two or three images since then. The images get properly backed up when I backup the E: drive. You can just as easily save the images directly to your backup drive (which is what most people do; I'm weird, so sue me).
Now I hear you and other person here who suggested this too FFS FreeFileSync does look good as well to use. It has lots of features I would like to use too, BUT again , without a clear help place I can see myself doing "too much" "too fast" with it with no clear path or help and getting those screens that don't match the instructions here or on their website... then I'm in trouble and potentially destroying one or more drives (original and backup!) So that is the problem about using sync programs... Did I mention the lap top is THE backup for a number of other portable devices i.e. Apple products? They don't like I'm using a PC, but it is what it is as my old mac is too old for sync programs to work on it....so its more than just one device that gets lost when the laptop gets in trouble....Of course Apple set all of the backup processes going, and if I now play with the files/folders/partitions, maybe I'll lose the links or paths that these devices use...My backup drive is a 500GB 2.5" Western Digital Black in an Arctic USB 3.0 enclosure. I use FreeFileSync (FFS) in mirror mode to backup my E: partition to the backup drive. While my backup drive is bigger than the E: partition, it doesn't need to be; it could be the same size and still have enough room. What FFS does is compares the data on the E: partition with the data on the backup drive, then copies data from the E: drive to the backup drive and/or deletes data from the backup drive as necessary. The end result is the backup drive is essentially an exact copy of the E: partition with both having the same amount of space being used. Since only new, changed, and deleted files are being dealt with, backups are much faster than they would be if imaging was being used (of course, the first backup takes a while since all folders and files have to be copied over). FFS can also be used to transfer data back to the E: partition if its data should get FUBARed. Using a Folder/file syncing program is much more efficient than trying to use images.
So again I thought for you, (and others who read this far--thanks!) maybe you see that backup is more complicated here if I start partitioning when a device is attached and blindly attempts to find its home base/sync/backup location on the "C" drive and I've now (if I did partition it) does not find it as I've moved it off to a D E F etc Drive. So, it will no longer be able to find it....to sync with it and do its automatic backup process.
Unfortunately, since the Apple items are all out of their 3 year warranty, who in the world is going to "re" pathway (I have no idea what the word for this is so someone help me) 're sync'? 'repair' ? the sync process so when I attach the devices that use this laptop as their "backup hard drive"... they connect to it.. Also I guess to mess things up worse it is all somewhere connected to the "cloud" by Apple, though I don't use any of the features I keep upgrading the updates for the iCloud iTunes etc etc...
Maybe now you see how easily a simple question I asked at the beginning (Does anyone know of a good backup program other than Norton Ghost or SSR?) has changed into something hugely monstrous!---given all of the Apple/Mac items floating around in here----not to mention my unusual name XP VM USER---because I have more than XP on VM, I have two Mac OS as well---(using Oracle VM VirtualBox) all on that one "C" drive pathway.... sigh...
That is GREAT! I like the idea.... but the 500 GB got full very fast with all the data from the various programs (now you know there are more than one OS on here, others in Virtual Machines....but each has their own separate storage area and each has their own problems---but again its for the relative who is more familiar with using Macs than PC's so they can feel comfortable if they need to use a program they are used to using under Mac and no idea how the PC version operates..... (and PC would be additional cost after buying the Mac version of course!)Another feature of FFS is its ability to send deleted files to a versioning folder. That way, if I accidentally delete a file and don't catch it right away, I can always recover it from the versioning folder. Since I have plenty of extra room on the backup drive, I have plenty of room for a versioning folder on it. This is a new computer so the folder hasn't much in it yet, but, eventually, I will have to clean out the older files.
Whew! I get it now.... Thanks for taking the time to explain it better to me and others....it may seem a bit complicated at first but, once you grasp the concept, it's actually quite simple.
I'll post this now unless I think of more stuff and need to edit (but I don't like doing it in case someone read all my stuff and wondered what I edited or fixed up)