well, know that for my personal use I have found no more powerful and intuitively direct utility tools than the Windows/Linux softwares present on the Hirens Boot Disk linked above.
for the last month I've been experimenting with Linux and Windows7 installs on this new build.
I've used my old Dos 6.21 floppies, Partition Magic, Native Windows Disk Manager, this and that...trials and demos are simply frustrating.
GParted. if you haven't tried it...
I now copy, transplant, and nuke partitions as often as I open a text editor.
I mean I have a pristine unallocated SSD space that I drop Designed Partitions onto as needed. some Partitions are resident, some I consider portable.
like, one is Adobe Web Premium. as mentioned above it takes minutes to copy and paste into an unallocated space and I know I have top form fresh and prestine at every Partition paste event. Generated program data; pics, footage, waveforms, etc are resident on a separate drive accessible to any Partition I choose.
few people need this level of flexibility.
these days, problems are few and far between on a decent home user rig.
but for multi-media Studio production all these abilities are just tools to be used efficiently in getting a job done well.
my friends get True Image on my recommendation.
takes byte transfer time though...whatever your pipe and load = job time. backing up 80GB on a three year old machine? snore.
but they just want things to work without having to think about it so they can get on with their Facebook lives. a box program like TI, once properly set up, automates the backup/restore tasks with the push of a button. and I want to be able to reliably guide them to Nirvana when they wake me out of my warm bed. 'yeah, go to the Start button> click on True Image. no, use the left button... hit restore and go watch Californication or something..."
but these program$ tend to use a proprietary file structure and you must accept the addiction to frequent purchases and $updates$.
a partition is either there or it's not. if it is there, an accurate copy is a true mirror of every byte. cloning is cool. all my partitions are fail-safe{haha} cloned on an external hard-drive that lives in my closet. my working partitions reside where ever I need and put them for any given time. a large project is fully contained in it's own movable Partition.
working with Partitions is so much more efficient and there is little possibility of data corruption. just know that you may have to restore your MBR, which should be accurately archived and easily restorable anyway.
now.
I'm off to the Market.
I think I deserve some Raspberry Ginger Beer.
Jim
