Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Mission Accomplished!

On June 23 I wrote "I am planning to replace the 80GB drive with the 250GB drive. To do this I will need to make an exact copy of my current C drive on the external 250GB drive. For this I will use Norton Ghost. After making the copy, I’ll physically replace the 80GB drive with the 250GB drive and hope I can then reboot my machine from the new internal 250GB drive. I will hold onto the 80GB drive, probably inserting it into the enclosure now housing the 250GB drive. The 80GB drive will be a good place to carry another backup copy of MY DOCUMENTS (all of my data)."

Two days ago I completed this task, though not exactly the way I had planned. Not surprisingly, Norton Ghost did not do the job for me. I have become accustomed to being disappointed with Symantec products over the years, and Norton Ghost didn't let me down! It did not perform as advertised, and after two days on a Norton Ghost  forum where the best Norton Ghost minds tried their best to help me, I decided to download and try Acronis True Image Home Version 11.0. This program was hyped as one which would do exactly what I wanted to do, and was available on a 15 day free trial. It did the job very quickly (15 minutes) and smoothly and had an intuitive user interface, one even I could understand (unlike Norton Ghost).

So now I have my 250GB drive as my internal system drive and my 1TB drive as my external drive for backups and for my ever-increasing libraries of videos, music, and photos.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Windows XP Departs: Good Riddance or Sad Farewell?

June 30 has come and gone, and so, for the most part, has Windows XP. You can read the pros and cons of this departure in this PCWorld article.

Windows XP Departs: Good Riddance or Sad Farewell?