Installing WindowsXP/2000/Vista or Windows7

 

Installing WindowsXP/2000/Vista or Windows7
The following are some suggestions for installing Windows as well as how to backup the OS, Data, and Programs
Overview: When possible, I prefer to install the Operating system and Programs on one partition and keep all the data on another.

The main reason is this is a much easier configuration to recover from when the operating system crashes.

Creating the Initial Partition
1. Create a relatively small partition of 20-40 gigs (depending on how many programs you expect to install) and install Windows into that smaller partition.

Creating An Additional Partition
1. From within XP or Windows2000, you can run DiskManagement to create and format additional partitions.
2. Keep your data on this second partition. I also like to keep the source files for my major programs here such as Office, Photoshop etc.
3. TweakUI from Microsoft will allow you to redirect your Favorites, My Documents and any other special folders to the second partition. This way in case of a crash, you will not lose anything.

Backup
1. To backup the second partition, I simply use a second hard drive.
2. It is a simple process to use XCOPY to copy the second partition to your backup drive.
3. An example would be:xcopy  d:\  h:\  /s  /y  /c  /d  /i  /r  /h

D: is the drive letter for the second partition
H: is the drive letter for the backup drive

/s – Copies subdirectories
/y – Does not prompt on overwrite
/c – Keeps going on an error
/d – Only copies new or changed files
/i – If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory.
/r – Copies Read Only Files
/h – Copies Hidden Files
4. So the first time through it will backup everything.Then due to the /d switch, the next time it will only copy new or changed files. This makes backups very fast and easy to restore.
5. If you are comfortable writing batch files, you can write one with those same commands and switches. Often I do this for customers, make one for each day of the week.e.g.
xcopy  d:\  h:\monday  /s  /y  /c  /d  /i  /r  /h
xcopy  d:\  h:\tuesday  /s  /y  /c  /d  /i  /r  /h
etc.
6. There are also third party programs that can do this for you as well. I’ve just never found anything quite as configurable though.

Disaster Recovery
1. This is the main area where the smaller OS partition comes into play
2. After installing the operating system, get all the updates and install whatever common programs you will always want to have.
3. Using a program like Acronis Drive Image, make an image of the OS partition and put it on the second partition.
4. The next time your backup runs, it will copy this image as well.
5. Now should Windows fails to start, you can simply boot with the Acronis True Image CD that gets created and do a restore of the operating system and base programs
6. Restoring takes only about 10 minutes and is the fastest way I know of to get my system back again after a crash.
7. I do the same basic procedure for all my client’s NT servers as well. I just keep the images on a separate hard drive. It has enabled me to restore a completely failed hard drive, operating system, data, and applications in under an hour.

 

 

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