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Basic computer queries

If you are looking for a way to back up and then restore your PC then I will suggest Macrium Reflect.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

I have used it twice now to restore my new laptop on to a new drive. The first drive failed but I had a back up. I sent the old drive to the manufacture who sent me the same POS drive. I restored my image to the drive and it worked good. I did not want to use that brand name so I bought a new drive the brand I wanted. I then backed up my drive and restored it again. Everything has been working fine.

I now am making periodic back up images to restore at a later date on another drive if I need to.

The down side is the image file is very large so I have to store it on its own external USB drive.

The compression ratio seems to be close to 50%

The last image I created is 59 GB in size. I think the used space on the drive was about 100 GB.
 
The power question is an old one and there are lots of opinions, for my main system I use the built in power management, it is often overlooked but it really is very handy. Look in the Vista Control Panel for "Power Optons, and you can select a basic power scheme that is close to what you want then just tweak it to suite your situation, then Windows will tak care of everything for you after that. On my own system I have the monitor black after 20 min, the hard drrive after 45 and the system hibernates after 1 hour. There are lots of options, I use some of the advanced settings like Wake On Lan so I can wake the system up if I am on the road and want to "Call Home", but most people don't need that stuff.

Regarding the backup of your OS, please let us know what system it is, many systems have a diagonistic partition that contains the full OS and allows you to create the disks, with Acer for example you touch F6 during boot up to get that partiton then you see the options in a menu, normally the files on that partition are not visable at all when you are running Windows as the partition is hidden. I know Toshiba does something the same for their systems, and you should be able to find the instructions in one of the system guides or on the Mfg support site.
 
Hey Pete

Try these web pages on the HP/Compaq help web (or Google/Yahoo/Bing web search for the page titles.)

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs: Looking for Recovery Discs?
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07143


Creating the Recovery Disc Set in Windows Vista (link in page above)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00882383


I can't explain why manufacturers do this. Some claim its licensing. At one time on a Dell Mini 10 if you ordered Ubuntu Linux you could have 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive. If you got XP you could only get 1GB of memory and only 160GB hard drive. After I looked at that a couple times I got dizzy and fell over -- so I stopped thinking about it. On new Mini 10s you can get Win 7 with the larger hard drive and more memory, but still not for XP.

I don't try to make sense out of this any more. :jump:
 
Thanks Java2srv :jump:

That's the info I was looking for :applause:

For the others who followed this post , here's what's happened ......

Most HP and Compaq desktop PCs that ship with Windows Vista and XP do not come with recovery discs. Instead, they use a partition on the hard drive. Using a hard drive partition provides a convenient, more stable recovery solution. To access a hard drive recovery, turn on the computer and repeatedly press F11 until a recovery window opens.

Thanks again to all who replied :salute:

Pete.



java2srv said:
Hey Pete

Try these web pages on the HP/Compaq help web (or Google/Yahoo/Bing web search for the page titles.)

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs: Looking for Recovery Discs?
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&cc=us&docname=bph07143


Creating the Recovery Disc Set in Windows Vista (link in page above)
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&docname=c00882383


I can't explain why manufacturers do this. Some claim its licensing. At one time on a Dell Mini 10 if you ordered Ubuntu Linux you could have 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard drive. If you got XP you could only get 1GB of memory and only 160GB hard drive. After I looked at that a couple times I got dizzy and fell over -- so I stopped thinking about it. On new Mini 10s you can get Win 7 with the larger hard drive and more memory, but still not for XP.

I don't try to make sense out of this any more. :jump:
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