Nov
4
Two hard drives
First, This isn’t a Blog about RAID. If you know what a RAID is and can set it up, go ahead. This is a much more simple application of redudant hard drives.
I recently clicked too quickly on something I wasn’t suppose to. Yep, a rootkit(RK) got into my rig with the annoying message on how to buy the “Super Duper Antivirus” to remove it-SCAM. Well, my antivirus system kept it from totally taking over but I ended up having to reinstall the operating system. This RK was mean, it took out my system restore points!
This may be a little late in coming, since we now have Carbonite -www.carbonite.com. and others. But here’s a simple process for the folks who have more than one hard drive or just need more space and are planning on buying one. It saved my data files and my email files!
I like to set my operating system on it’s own drive. You can now buy small drives for under $50. If you buy a really fast one, it shouldn’t hurt. I then store all my data on a separate drive. You store backups to this ‘DATA” drive as well.
Here’s the important part. Make sure to point the “My documents ,My pictures,My Music etc.” to similar folders on the new drive. You may have to “move” them. I’ll show you how to do it for the documents folder and you can do the rest.
Once you have a second hard drive installed, create the folders you need on the new drive. Next, you right click on your “Documents” folder. Note: you have to be on the actual folder that needs to be moved. It’s under Admin/user/… etc. You look at the bottom of the list and you get properties. Click on that. You get several Tabs, select the ‘shortcut” or “Location” tab. In the target section (Third one down) enter the new location on the new drive. You can also browse to the folder you want. Be sure the new folder location is on the “data” drive.
That’s not all, if you use Outlook make sure you get copies of your outlook.pst files and have them on the data drive as well. You can later import them or have outlook point to them to your new install.
The process above allowed for a complete operating system reinstall without any loss of data. I even used it to move from Vista 32-bit to Windows 7, 64-bit. Remember to get eveything you want to save for each user. I skipped my IE favorites but my wife wanted hers. It’s old school but it works. I like to clean install every couple of years just to keep the system running fast and get the deleted program and registry junk out.
Okay, one last hint. Listen to your hard drives. If you begin to hear a louder and louder noise when you access it, it is beginning to go out. Backup at your first opportunity. Note: The data drive usually last longer because the system isn’t accessing it constantly.
Good Luck and God Bless!