Tutorial (interm.): Maintaing healthy OSs via data isolation
This in my opinion is the best way to keep your computer operating system in top notch condition and nearly always have a computer free of spyware and any other undesirable crap. I try to tell as many people as I can about this tip because it has saved me countless hours of pain and strife. Although it may seem like a real pain in the arse to do initially trust me - it's time you'll get back many many times over. Also I may use allot of technical lingo here, but it's not that hard to do once you understand why you're doing each step.
Some definitions before we start (advanced readers can probably skip this):
OS or Operating System. The software that runs your computer and allows you to run other programs e.g.. Windows XP or Mac OS-X
Partition: This can be a little tricky to understand at first. It's basically a section of your hard drive that for all intents and purposes is seen by your operating system as a separate drive.
So for suppose you bought a new 160 GB hard drive, it'd show up as just one big chunk of 160 GB. What partitioning allows you to do is to for example chop that drive up into one 50GB partition and one 110GB partition of the single hard drive. Obviously not physically, logically, but the computer treats them exactly as if they were physically different drives.
Image: or Drive Image is an exact "snapshot" taken of one or more of your computer's entire disc drives or partitions. In this case we're creating an image of your program and OS partition onto your data partition.
NOTE: Although I am targeting this towards the PC platform (since that's what I know) I imagine a similar process would possible on any other platform.
The basic concept here is to logically (or even better physically - but that's another story) strictly separate your program files from your data files, and then back up an image of that perfect installation state for future restoration. There are several serious advantages to this approach. The most important being:
- Ease of reinstalltion of your operating system. A couple of clicks and 5 minute later you're ready to roll.
- This you to experiment with more exotic tweaks without worrying about losing your data.
- Easy duplication of settings onto another machine.
- Data corruption reduction. Since allot of the hard drive activity is caused by your page file being written to, by separating this from your data you significantly reduce the chance of something going bump in the night.
- No further backing up/ temporary moving of data is required before a future OS re installation.
- Performance. It's technical, but trust me it works.
- Physical File size reduction. Partitioned drives are more efficient at storing information.
- Easy virus/ trojan recovery. Have a trojan that just won't budge? Just reload your image. Done!
There are a couple of other reasons why you really should do this, but those are the main ones.
HOW TO DO IT RIGHT
- Print this out!!!!!
- Get a copy of Norton Ghost and Partition Magic somehow (the older versions retail cheaply and they do the job just as well). If you're starting with a fresh hard drive you could just as easily use FDISK.EXE which comes bundled with Windows to do the job if you're not afraid of DOS, but beware: you can do allot of damage with only one keystroke in this program. READ EVERYTHING IT SAYS CAREFULLY.
- BACKUP EVERYTHING IMPORTANT ONTO ANOTHER HARD DRIVE OR DVDs. THIS IS A POTENTIALLY HIGHLY DESTRUCTIVE PROCESS I'm a careful bloke, but I've still managed to wipe a few HDs in my day. Besides it's a good thing to do every now and then. Put it this way... would you rather spend 2 hours feeding discs into your machine whilst watching TV or the rest of your life wishing you still had that masterpiece. That said, you'll probably nod your head and continue on, happily knowing that in your far more informed view of the world it simply won't happen to you. Don't come crying to me. It will happen some day and I'll be laughing hysterically.
- Install partition magic on your current windows installation. Run partition magic and partition your hard drive into a primary boot partition ( C: ) for your programs and windows, and a secondary partition ( D: ) for your data and the image you're going to make of your OS and Program partition. Note that Partition Magic can non-destructively create and resize partitions. VERY HANDY. You can't do this with FDISK.
I recomend for most audio setups having at least a 15GB C:. Allocate the rest of the drive as you wish, but make sure your second drive has at the very minimum 15GB. This is so that we can at least store an image of your C: here.
- Now completely reinstall Windows and Norton Ghost. Download all Windows updates and install them. Make sure you don't fiddle with anything. This is critical because if you screw this up you could find that in 6 months time after much tweaking and effort you can't undo the changes you made earlier.
- OPTIONAL. Ghost this Windows installation the way it is. It should just fit onto one CD. This step is recomended because it's a plain vanilla version of Windows, and allows you to track down a problem if some thing's not working right since you know there's no other external influences.
- Now set everything up exactly the way you like it. Be super pedantic here, making sure it's perfect cause you'll be seeing this incarnation of Windows allot! Set up a filing system that will aid you in the future for example I have something like this in place
c:\audio\
c:\graphics\
c:\video\
Then under c:\audio\ i have
c:\audio\programs\
c:\audio\plugins\VST\
c:\audio\plugins\DX & Standalone\
c:\audio\plugins\RTAS\
then
c:\audio\programs\Cubase SX2\
etc...
Be strict with yourself here. What I can't have is something like this:
c:\stuff\temp\stuff from old pc\backup\new folder\temp2\music
Get it right first time, and it'll be right next time you reload your image. Make a mess now and you'll regret it later.
- Flesh out your D:'s structure. Make a folder called "d:\My Documents\" This will serve as your future "My Documents" folder currently stored by Windows in "C:\Documents and Settings\%user name%\". Right now right click on your "My Documents" folder and click: "Move". A Dialogue will come up asking you where to put it. Choose the folder you just created. It'll ask you if you want to copy the files to which you say yes of course. Now anything stored in "My Documents" won't be erased when we restore an image overwriting the C:. Try when possible to store all data in this folder - that's why it's there.
You can download a tool from MS which is really useful called Tweak UI. With this program you can move the locations of other system folders like your Favourites and Desktop to your new "My Documents" folder. Again this reduces disturbances in the way your computer is set up after a reinstall.
Furthermore you can change the place Outlook Express/ Mozilla Thunderbird stores their emails. Have a look around the net for that one - I'm getting tired of typing!
- Make a final image of this nice clean installation onto your D:, back it up onto DVD and you're done.
One tip before I go to sleep (It's 3:00 AM!) Nothing is stopping you from creating images as you go along. In fact it's definitely recomended. And don't delete your interim images until you're really sure that the new image is bug free and will do a better job than the last.
Good luck, and please feel free to ask me about anything I've written here.
Dan
