Waaaay too quiet anymore.. It seems to have been quite awhile since I have seen a post here.
Maybe things are fine now for most users? Or, conversely, maybe Windows 8 is just too baffling for anybody, 32 or 64 bit version? I've got a Win 8 tablet that I haven't figured out how to use yet; I can barely formulate the questions about it. Such as: can I, and how can I, back up this thing's SSD so that I can restore everything back, on - worst case - a completely messed up machine or on a replacement SSD, from a single backup file, without "unnecessary" contents such as the present data in the hibernation file and paging file? By means of booting from a recovery disk on DVD? Hibernation and paging on their own will fill an entire DVD in a backup set, if included. I regard that as a serious waste of time and of discs. It's a Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro 700T, and I do have a recovery program option of "Disk copy". Does that copy all disk partitions to a duplicate or backup, and, can the backup be a device that is used for something else, or only be a clone of the SSD? Is there a role for the "Windows 7 File Recovery" tool that apparently is another system image tool included in Windows 8? My plans for managing the large temporary files include disabling hibernation and setting quite a small size of paging file - I've been advised in previous Windows versions that some memory management won't work properly if there is no paging file at all - to get proportionally quite a lot of space back on the SSD, and, if necessary, overwriting empty file space on the disk with files containing megabytes of zeroes, then deleting those files, so that a disk backup taken without reference to file system formatting and unused space, will see the zeroes in the unused space, and compress right down, if compression is available. Oh yeah - and make /two/ DVD recovery disc sets /including/ the "Recovery Partition" that is on the SSD, and then erase and reclaim /that/. The "Computer Management" display tells me that there's a 11 GB "Recovery Partition" located next to my "C:", which is "Simple Basic", apparently /not/ NTFS and not any other named file system type, and with 100% free space. So I'm considering having a smaller C: volume and a new D: volume using that space and some of the current space of C:. This is the first GPT computer that I've owned; up to now, I've done backups with a Linux tool called "partimage" which mainly understands the previous type of disk partitioning, whose name I've temporarily forgotten: four partitions on the disk. And it's the second true Windows tablet, but the first one (Dell Latitude ST, Windows 7) has been not practically useable because it frequently freezes for 60 full seconds - I don't know why but it /may/ be because I partitioned it, or interfered with one of those special files in the wrong way. So, I want to make /very/ sure that whatever I do to the new machine, I can undo. Oh, by the way, its stylus works if it wants to. I'm writing this message on an HP TouchSmart TM2, which I'm not counting as a "tablet" because it's a heavy hunk of laptop, although it /does/ come with its own screen stylus. I hear that some people prefer to just reinstall Windows from nothing regularly - but I want to have a copy of the computer after I've configured all of the settings and installed all of the updates. I suppose that's going to include the forthcoming Windows 8.1 Service Pack 1, if that's the correct name, but currently Windows 8.0 is installed. I want to know more about that, too - do I need to get 8.1 and then 8.1 Service Pack 1 by download from the "Windows Store"? I know I don't want to do that more than once. Or, as it may be, once each. Then, backups of the configured system.
Hey there RC.. Yes I too check everyday but alas you are right it seems we are guilty of jumping out of our own perfectly good airplane! This was the place that helped me so much in learning and that is probably why I keep coming back.
Geez John !! I so seldom see anything from you out and around that I forget that you were a damn good lurker!
I only check it every couple of days, maybe not for a week sometimes. Doesn't seem a point. In one way, it's dead because we did our job. We helped get people transitioned to 64-bit Windows, helping folks over some of those early humps. (And there were some beauts!) But now, 64-bit is mainstream. And MS is gone from the newsgroups. Ah, well. Charlie.
Well, it's good to know we helped. And you know, you can always still ask here. There are a few of us who check it periodically. Though I admit, not hourly as I did in the early days of 64-bit. Charlie. http://blogs.msmvps.com/russel
