Rank: Newbie
Groups: Member
Joined: 3/4/2008
Posts: 5
Location: D'Aguilar QLD
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If you have a problem and need to reinstall windows, then you need to collect all your relevant data.. send it to a different drive or burn it.. tedious stuff and something always seems to get left behind. You can save yourself a lot of pain next time you reinstall windows. First you still need to do the tedious thing and save the data you want to keep...but this is the last time you should need to do this!
If you have a network, the easiest way is to store it is on another PC on the network. Otherwise, a spare drive or DVDs would have to do... once you have collected everything you want to keep, and triple-checked to see if you forgot anything, you are ready to reinstall.
When reinstalling windows you will at some point need to delete the old partition which contains windows, so that you can start fresh.
When you delete the old windows partition, create 2 partitions to replace it.. C(Windows) and D(Data). I recommend you use at least 25GB for the windows partition (50GB if you have the space and you plan on installing a lot of software!)and the rest of your drive can be reserved for data.
If you have a large hard drive and want to leave yourself some flexibility for later (you may want to toy with dual booting into linux or something?) then you could at the same time leave a volume of unused space until you need it. In my case for instance I left an unused space of 50GB, which I later used to instal Linux into. I now dual boot into linux or Windows, and both Linux and Windows are using the 'D' drive for data! My computer therefore has 3 partitions, Windows ('C' 50GB), Data ('D' 300GB) and a seperate partition of 50GB for Linux. Note that Windows cannot see the Linux partition, but Linux can see both 'C' and 'D' partitions. This means that both Windows and Linux can see drive 'D' and they can share the drive for data.
Format the C partition and install windows onto it.
Log on to windows, go to My Computer and right click on your virtual drive D.. the data partition, which will be named 'new volume'.
Select 'format' and format the drive. Use the NTFS option.
Open the start menu and right click on My Documents. On the properties page, redirect the shortcut to D:\Documents and Settings\*username*\My Documents.
Now do all the normal stuff you do when installing windows.. drivers, favorite software etc.
When you install software, install it to drive C. Data should be saved to drive D.
All of your start menu shortcuts, My Documents, Music, Pictures etc will now direct you to drive D. Save all of your old data back into its appropriate position in this drive. Most things will save to drive D by default now as well but its always wise to check where you are putting something BEFORE you hit save anyway lol...
What you have now done is separated windows from your precious stuff. Now if windows gets a virus, it stays in bed and away from you. If it needs reinstalling.. then just do it. Wipe drive C and reinstall into there. When you log on, once again change the My Documents shortcut to drive D.. which is all still just as you left it. You will of course still need to put back your software and drivers, but all of your data is safe and you didn't need to move 1Kb of it.
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Rank: Administration
Groups: Administration
Joined: 12/17/2007
Posts: 76
Location: North of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
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This sounds great! I always do the partition thing but never thought of directing my documents there.. Quote:Open the start menu and right click on My Documents. On the properties page, redirect the shortcut to D:\Documents and Settings\*username*\My Documents.
When you have changed the shortcut to my documents do the usual programs follow this path too? For example, will Micosoft word save to the default c: my documents or to the new d: my documents.
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Rank: Newbie
Groups: Member
Joined: 3/4/2008
Posts: 5
Location: D'Aguilar QLD
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Anything that defaults to My Documents will still go to My Documents. Microsoft Word as an example does not state which drive it is using by default.. it just says My Documents. If it does this then the shortcuts will work and it will go to drive D. Of course as My Pictures and My Music are subfolders of My Documents, this will also apply to them. Photoshop will default to My Pictures for instance and the file will arrive in drive D also.. You still need to take a quick glance at where you are saving something, just in case, but you will find most applications will now default data to My Documents, My pictures or My Music, without mentioning a drive. In all of these cases, they will save the file to your new folders in drive D.
Some applications will want to save into their own folders by default. Since most of these will set up their own folders in My Documents anyway, this is not an issue, as they will still finish up in drive D.
Some applications will want to save into their own folder in drive C by default. If you change their target to somewhere in your new drive D, however, then the next time you use the application its likely that the application will remember where you last saved a file and will try to save to there, so you have effectively created a new default!
Again.. its just good practice to always LOOK BEFORE YOU SAVE anyway!!!! I have lost files countless times by not checking before I hit save, forcing me to run a search through 500GB of files to find a 3kb file I saved to the wrong place..
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Rank: Newbie
Groups: Member
Joined: 9/28/2008
Posts: 6
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My computer engineer installed windows 98 on C and Windows XP on D. He told me that if any time windows XP (I usually use this one) corrupt than I can use Windows 98 as well. This one is really cool idea as this one will save my time.
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