Is my C partition and F partition combined?

It is, of course, not "neccessary" - but you will learn something. At your tender age one should always learn as much as possible as fast as possible. Even at my age, I still try to do that.

whs said:

It is, of course, not "neccessary" - but you will learn something. At your tender age one should always learn as much as possible as fast as possible. Even at my age, I still try to do that.

Heh heh, tender age. That made me laugh.

Anyways, back to the matter at hand, if my brother is willing to help me then I'll do a full-blown test doing as you said in your instructions. I do not want to do it without his assistance and I will mess something up doing it alone.

Thank you.
I'm going to bed now, goodnight. Will be back tomorrow. :)

notsograymatter,

I agree with most of what you said, except item #3. There is no point in copy/pasting data to another drive, when you can simply set the path of your libraries to that drive in the first place.

As far as I'm concerned. The backup image of C: is only for the purpose of restoring the OS, because everything else is either on another drive or partition. For that reason, a backup image has nothing to do with laziness, it is simply a way to avoid the tedium and time wasted repeating the initial setup.

EDIT: I should have included the time involved in reinstalling some programs, because unless I feel that they might contribute to fragmentation of C: too much, I often install them on C:, because if there were installed elsewhere, they would still have to be reinstalled in this situation to have them registered with the OS. Therefore having them within the image saves more time.

notsograymatter said:

If you have two partitions on the same drive and the drive isn't corrupted but the OS is, you can still access the data on the second partition. However, in order to do so you would need to do one of the following things:

• 
  
  • Boot from a Live CD
  • Connect the HD to another computer via:
    Removing the drive and physically placing it in another PC.
    Using a SATA to USB transfer cable and/or SATA USB Docking station

I suggest reinstalling the OS to access your files on data partition. If you also have files on the irreparable OS you need to retrieve, then use free Partition Wizard CD to shrink the damaged OS, install Win7 in the shrink space or to a new HD, browse into the old OS to retrieve files to copy over to data partition, then use PW to delete old OS and expand new Win7 into the space. I call this "drilling a rescue shaft."

seekermeister said:

notsograymatter,

I agree with most of what you said, except item #3. There is no point in copy/pasting data to another drive, when you can simply set the path of your libraries to that drive in the first place.

Except to back up files to a secondary, as opposed to an external - same difference.

Here is Brink's tut to change User file locations as am not sure it's been posted here yet: User Folders - Change Default Location

Wow, this is a lot of good information! Thank you everyone.

notsograymatter said:

Ok, most of this has been posted, but there's been some "confusion" with some things so I'll mention it all.

#4 - Computer Password Protection

• There is no real reason to remove your password from your account on your computer. This is especially true if you are logged into an Administrator account like most people. Not only does it make your computer more susceptible to attacks, but it also makes it much easier for someone to physically access your computer. (I.E. Wife/Co-Worker/Children/Roommate/ETC)

--Al

I actually only have one question at the moment. I already removed the password. I figured it's not really that important to have since I can trust my family to not touch my computer.

But you also said, "Not only does it make your computer more susceptible to attacks", etc, etc. So, my computer should be password protected to not only keep it safe from family members/friends/etc but also to keep me safe from attacks such as viruses and stuff?

gregrocker said:

I suggest reinstalling the OS to access your files on data partition. If you also have files on the irreparable OS you need to retrieve, then use free Partition Wizard CD to shrink the damaged OS, install Win7 in the shrink space or to a new HD, browse into the old OS to retrieve files to copy over to data partition, then use PW to delete old OS and expand new Win7 into the space. I call this "drilling a rescue shaft."

It sounds complicated but a good idea. Maybe my brother knows how to do that.

Thank you everyone for the information!

But you also said, "Not only does it make your computer more susceptible to attacks", etc, etc. So, my computer should be password protected to not only keep it safe from family members/friends/etc but also to keep me safe from attacks such as viruses and stuff?

I would not worry about it. I have never used a password in my life and all my systems are alive. If something happens, go back to the last image.

whs said:

But you also said, "Not only does it make your computer more susceptible to attacks", etc, etc. So, my computer should be password protected to not only keep it safe from family members/friends/etc but also to keep me safe from attacks such as viruses and stuff?

I would not worry about it. I have never used a password in my life and all my systems are alive. If something happens, go back to the last image.

Okay, thank you very much for putting my mind at peace!

I have always passworded my computers, even though no one normally has access to them accept me. The one time that I didn't was with a computer that I had when I had a stroke and got evicted from my home, and wasn't allowed to remove the computer. My personal belongings were left in the house when it was resold, supposedly to be stored until I later removed them. When I was finally able to try to do so, and I met with the new owner, he claimed that house was broke into, and the computer, TV and window AC/heat were stolen. It might not have prevented the PC from being stolen anyway, but if it had been passworded, maybe the new owners (who I believe were the thieves) wouldn't have been so tempted to take it. The moral of this is that someone that you don't expect, may access your computer if it is easy.

seekermeister said:

I have always passworded my computers, even though no one normally has access to them accept me. The one time that I didn't was with a computer that I had when I had a stroke and got evicted from my home, and wasn't allowed to remove the computer. My personal belongings were left in the house when it was resold, supposedly to be stored until I later removed them. When I was finally able to try to do so, and I met with the new owner, he claimed that house was broke into, and the computer, TV and window AC/heat were stolen. It might not have prevented the PC from being stolen anyway, but if it had been passworded, maybe the new owners (who I believe were the thieves) wouldn't have been so tempted to take it. The moral of this is that someone that you don't expect, may access your computer if it is easy.

You live in a bad area. Move to the other side of the tracks - LOL.