Most people who know me know that I'm a really big computer geek.
Really big. Computer geek.
Me.
At one point I was running off three different computers. My desktop, which runs Windows XP. It's been more or less kind of a game, me and my relationship with WinXP. My old laptop, which runs Mac OS X. I spent some time reformatting the hard disc, doing things in Darwin that are just nifty, and crashing the system. I never really kept anything on there worth keeping. And finally, I had this little Gateway Laptop on which I ran MEPIS, a light running version of Linux ideal for older computers. Man, that thing was old, too. It had a total of 64MB of RAM and a Pentium II in it. When I first got it, it had a bootleg copy of WinXP on it. Anytime I touched that thing I felt myself aging. MEPIS was okay, too. I had DSL (Damn Small Linux) on it for a while, too, but didn't feel like working out the bugs and the wireless card.
Anyway, so this past week I've been priming up to put Enlightenment on my new laptop, my Compaq Presario. Nice piece of work, that is. It's got a 2.5 Ghtz processor, 2 Gigs of memory, 128MB Video Memory, and the thing smokes running even WinXP. Enlightenment I like for several reasons. It's light, not bogged down like KDE desktop or even the Windows interface. It's pretty. Man is it pretty. If you ever get a chance, check out some of the screen shots. And finally, it's pretty AND light, at the SAME time.
Even booting it off a 40X CD drive, Enlightenment smokes on my laptop. The only problem is I've got a broadcom wireless card and from what I've been reading it's hard to support natively. So, what I'm thinking is installing Ubuntu and also installing the Enlightenment Desktop. Long story, I'll skip how that works for now.
Onto the dumb.
Through this, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to back up my windows partitions, because I do want to keep windows. For now. Maybe forever. Maybe for a week. Who knows. So I'm looking around in my System Tools. There's no back up software. So I check online. I read a bit about (on the microsoft website) a backup utility that is on the WinXP install disk, which I don't have because they just don't give you that kind of stuff anymore, and think, "Well, since I don't have it, I should be able to download it because I have genuine software." *Pause here for a shiny teeth glean*
I find the package I need, download it, and go to install. My installer tells me the program I'm trying to install is for Vista.
Awesome.
I'd rather have large objects inserted into my anus with no lube than put Vista on my laptop. That being said, know that there's a lot more I'd rather do than have Vista on my laptop than just that. Now visualize...
Okay, back to. So I thought I'd copy all of my user files to my incredibly large external USB drive. I tried it, stupid me, I tried it. Popped up with "File in use" errors. I should know. I should know better. Even if you have nothing running, and I mean NOTHING up, you're still using a user file somewhere. So, download Ubuntu I did, started my computer from the disk, and copied over the files that way. (To catch some of you up who may not know, by starting from the CD ROM drive rather than my hard drive, it unmounted the drive, and all the files I needed copied were no longer in use. Pretty sweet, eh? My Mac taught me that.)
It was the most productively unproductive day ever. Last Friday, I think it was.
Now, for the really dumb part. I copied my files and thought also it would be a good idea to make a disk image of the recovery portion of my hard drive (which I'm doing right now with the help of PING Linux, stands for Partimage Is Not Ghost). You download it, burn an ISO CD, boot your computer up, and make an image of whatever drive you need. It occurred to me earlier that having the recovery portion of a drive on the same drive (even though it's partitioned) is the dumbest idea ever. So, making an image of it on an external drive is a good idea for anyone, anytime. That way, in case of total system failure and having to delete (or get a new hard drive), you can run your recovery disks (well, that's what I have anyway), which will reinstall the system software, drivers, etc, and then reinstate the recovery drive with the backed up image and be able to completely restore your computer to it's former state no matter what happens. I'm not sure who's bright idea this partitioning idea belongs to, but the dude needs to be shot.
Really big. Computer geek.
Me.
At one point I was running off three different computers. My desktop, which runs Windows XP. It's been more or less kind of a game, me and my relationship with WinXP. My old laptop, which runs Mac OS X. I spent some time reformatting the hard disc, doing things in Darwin that are just nifty, and crashing the system. I never really kept anything on there worth keeping. And finally, I had this little Gateway Laptop on which I ran MEPIS, a light running version of Linux ideal for older computers. Man, that thing was old, too. It had a total of 64MB of RAM and a Pentium II in it. When I first got it, it had a bootleg copy of WinXP on it. Anytime I touched that thing I felt myself aging. MEPIS was okay, too. I had DSL (Damn Small Linux) on it for a while, too, but didn't feel like working out the bugs and the wireless card.
Anyway, so this past week I've been priming up to put Enlightenment on my new laptop, my Compaq Presario. Nice piece of work, that is. It's got a 2.5 Ghtz processor, 2 Gigs of memory, 128MB Video Memory, and the thing smokes running even WinXP. Enlightenment I like for several reasons. It's light, not bogged down like KDE desktop or even the Windows interface. It's pretty. Man is it pretty. If you ever get a chance, check out some of the screen shots. And finally, it's pretty AND light, at the SAME time.
Even booting it off a 40X CD drive, Enlightenment smokes on my laptop. The only problem is I've got a broadcom wireless card and from what I've been reading it's hard to support natively. So, what I'm thinking is installing Ubuntu and also installing the Enlightenment Desktop. Long story, I'll skip how that works for now.
Onto the dumb.
Through this, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to back up my windows partitions, because I do want to keep windows. For now. Maybe forever. Maybe for a week. Who knows. So I'm looking around in my System Tools. There's no back up software. So I check online. I read a bit about (on the microsoft website) a backup utility that is on the WinXP install disk, which I don't have because they just don't give you that kind of stuff anymore, and think, "Well, since I don't have it, I should be able to download it because I have genuine software." *Pause here for a shiny teeth glean*
I find the package I need, download it, and go to install. My installer tells me the program I'm trying to install is for Vista.
Awesome.
I'd rather have large objects inserted into my anus with no lube than put Vista on my laptop. That being said, know that there's a lot more I'd rather do than have Vista on my laptop than just that. Now visualize...
Okay, back to. So I thought I'd copy all of my user files to my incredibly large external USB drive. I tried it, stupid me, I tried it. Popped up with "File in use" errors. I should know. I should know better. Even if you have nothing running, and I mean NOTHING up, you're still using a user file somewhere. So, download Ubuntu I did, started my computer from the disk, and copied over the files that way. (To catch some of you up who may not know, by starting from the CD ROM drive rather than my hard drive, it unmounted the drive, and all the files I needed copied were no longer in use. Pretty sweet, eh? My Mac taught me that.)
It was the most productively unproductive day ever. Last Friday, I think it was.
Now, for the really dumb part. I copied my files and thought also it would be a good idea to make a disk image of the recovery portion of my hard drive (which I'm doing right now with the help of PING Linux, stands for Partimage Is Not Ghost). You download it, burn an ISO CD, boot your computer up, and make an image of whatever drive you need. It occurred to me earlier that having the recovery portion of a drive on the same drive (even though it's partitioned) is the dumbest idea ever. So, making an image of it on an external drive is a good idea for anyone, anytime. That way, in case of total system failure and having to delete (or get a new hard drive), you can run your recovery disks (well, that's what I have anyway), which will reinstall the system software, drivers, etc, and then reinstate the recovery drive with the backed up image and be able to completely restore your computer to it's former state no matter what happens. I'm not sure who's bright idea this partitioning idea belongs to, but the dude needs to be shot.
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