Need More Coffee

[granz]

[Chris Savage]

OMG! I remember when Windows came on floppies. The copies I had weren't standard 1.44MB floppies as shown. These were specially formatted to 1.68MB. Tedious! 

[JKnightandKARR]

OMG! I remember when Windows came on floppies. The copies I had weren't standard 1.44MB floppies as shown. These were specially formatted to 1.68MB. Tedious! 

THAT might be why I had issues making Win 3.1x disks...

[granz]

THAT might be why I had issues making Win 3.1x disks...

No, Win 3.x came on regular 1.44MB floppies. It was NT that had the specially formatted disks.

[JKnightandKARR]

THAT might be why I had issues making Win 3.1x disks...

No, Win 3.x came on regular 1.44MB floppies. It was NT that had the specially formatted disks.

Got ya.

[Chris Savage]

No, Win 3.x came on regular 1.44MB floppies. It was NT that had the specially formatted disks.

Windows 95 also came on the super high density disks as well. Thirteen of them, IIRC.

[granz]

No, Win 3.x came on regular 1.44MB floppies. It was NT that had the specially formatted disks.

Windows 95 also came on the super high density disks as well. Thirteen of them, IIRC.

I had forgotten about that. The reason that I remember Win 3.x being on standard-format HD disks was that I actually just copied all the files from image files onto regular floppies and was able to install Windows - you had to boot from DOS, and then install from the Windows install disks.

[granz]

OMG! I remember when Windows came on floppies. The copies I had weren't standard 1.44MB floppies as shown. These were specially formatted to 1.68MB. Tedious! 

In one of my jobs, I was a programmer but also a technician. The boss was considering converting our MS-DOS servers to Windows, and had purchased a copy of Win NT 3.x (3.1 IIRC) on 33 floppies. He asked me to run a trial so that we could see if it could meet our needs.

During the installation, I waited until about disk 7 or so, and pulled the plug on the computer. With previous OSs, recovering from that would entail, at least, beginning the installation again - sometimes it would require a low-level (remember MFM) format, followed by a DOS-level format. If it was really bad timing, that could have also destroyed the installation floppy disk.

When I removed the disk, and powered up the computer, it said something to the effect of "oh, by the way, you were installing Windows NT - do you want to continue? Please insert disk number 7." WOW! That thing was pretty impressive!

[Chris Savage]

When I removed the disk, and powered up the computer, it said something to the effect of "oh, by the way, you were installing Windows NT - do you want to continue? Please insert disk number 7." WOW! That thing was pretty impressive!

Fault recovery and stability was one of NT's biggest flexes.

[granz]

When I removed the disk, and powered up the computer, it said something to the effect of "oh, by the way, you were installing Windows NT - do you want to continue? Please insert disk number 7." WOW! That thing was pretty impressive!

Fault recovery and stability was one of NT's biggest flexes.

Yeah, and it was definitely stable - we switched over to Win NT for our three servers, and rarely had troubles.

Prior to that switch over, one of our DOS-based servers caught the Michelangelo virus and wiped out the hard drive. It took me an entire day to rebuild, and restore all the data on, the server.

One of the things that I loved about the DOS-based machines over the Windows-based machines was the backup systems. With MS-DOS backups, all you had to do to completely restore the system was to format the C: drive as bootable and then start the restore from the backup program. All of your software could fit on a single floppy disk (as long as your backup program (plus drivers) could fit on the disk. With Windows-based backups, you had to completely re-install Windows (up to 30+ disks  ) and then re-install your backup program (if it wasn't the included Windows backup,) then finally you could begin the restore.) Why not just do like DOS, and backup the entire system then there would be no need to waste several hours re-installing the entire OS? 

[Chris Savage]

One of the things that I loved about the DOS-based machines over the Windows-based machines was the backup systems. With MS-DOS backups, all you had to do to completely restore the system was to format the C: drive as bootable and then start the restore from the backup program. All of your software could fit on a single floppy disk (as long as your backup program (plus drivers) could fit on the disk. With Windows-based backups, you had to completely re-install Windows (up to 30+ disks  ) and then re-install your backup program (if it wasn't the included Windows backup,) then finally you could begin the restore.) Why not just do like DOS, and backup the entire system then there would be no need to waste several hours re-installing the entire OS? 

So, from Windows 95 through Windows XP, I used Norton Ghost to "image" my HD every week. Windows 7 essentially included their licensed "imaging" software, so since then I have been using that. For every HD in my various PCs, I have external USB backup drives that get stored in a fire safe. For the data drives, it's a 1:1 size HD. For the system drives (those with Windows installed), it's 2:1. The reason is that, while I image those drives to the external USB backup, I also copy the data files from the common areas into a separate "D Drive" backup folder.

This would include, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Music, Video, etc. That way, if the hardware changes and the system image can't really be used, I can actually start over with the O/S and install my apps separate, but I have all my data, including the data that many applications store in the Documents folder. I'm a little OCD and don't generally ever lose data anymore. If a system drive fails, I grab a new one, write the last image to it and install it. Since Windows 10 and / or UEFI BIOS, I usually end up having to use my recovery tools to get the drive to boot properly. Not exactly sure why that happens, but I have an idea, and I know how to get around it, as you may have seen in this thread.

[granz]

So, from Windows 95 through Windows XP, I used Norton Ghost to "image" my HD every week. Windows 7 essentially included their licensed "imaging" software, so since then I have been using that. For every HD in my various PCs, I have external USB backup drives that get stored in a fire safe. For the data drives, it's a 1:1 size HD. For the system drives (those with Windows installed), it's 2:1. The reason is that, while I image those drives to the external USB backup, I also copy the data files from the common areas into a separate "D Drive" backup folder.

Yeah, Ghost was a pretty good backup system. You have (had?) a pretty comprehensive backup system.

This would include, Downloads, Documents, Pictures, Music, Video, etc. That way, if the hardware changes and the system image can't really be used, I can actually start over with the O/S and install my apps separate, but I have all my data, including the data that many applications store in the Documents folder. I'm a little OCD and don't generally ever lose data anymore. If a system drive fails, I grab a new one, write the last image to it and install it. Since Windows 10 and / or UEFI BIOS, I usually end up having to use my recovery tools to get the drive to boot properly. Not exactly sure why that happens, but I have an idea, and I know how to get around it, as you may have seen in this thread.

One of the things that I really like about Linux over Windows is that I can install Linux on my Dell laptop (like I did) and then move the drive with the boot sectors to my new ThinkPad (like I did) and it boots right up (once I got the boot program working) and it doesn't care. Linux installs have the drivers for all the standard (and LOTS of non-standard) hardware with the OS - move the OS drive to a completely new system and Linux says "so what, I'll just use the hardware that is available now.  ) Move a Windows boot drive to a new system and it pukes all over the place.

[Chris Savage]

Yeah, Ghost was a pretty good backup system. You have (had?) a pretty comprehensive backup system.

Do you remember Norton Disk Defrag? Microsoft licensed that technology and integrated it into versions of Windows at some point. I thought someone had told me that in Windows 7 they did the same thing with the disk imaging software, but I never verified that one.

Okay, so I found the following quote via Google...

Yes, Microsoft licensed the defrag engine from Symantec's Norton Utilities. Specifically, Symantec's Speed Disk was licensed by Microsoft and incorporated into MS-DOS as DEFRAG.exe starting with MS-DOS 6.0. This means the defrag functionality in early versions of MS-DOS and Windows was built upon the technology initially developed by Symantec for Norton Utilities.

It's just not very clear with the disk imaging software.

Move a Windows boot drive to a new system and it pukes all over the place.

And this is why I backup my data files in addition to the image. If my motherboard were to fail and I couldn't get the exact same one, I have no doubt my restore image would fail.

[granz]

Yes, Microsoft licensed the defrag engine from Symantec's Norton Utilities. Specifically, Symantec's Speed Disk was licensed by Microsoft and incorporated into MS-DOS as DEFRAG.exe starting with MS-DOS 6.0. This means the defrag functionality in early versions of MS-DOS and Windows was built upon the technology initially developed by Symantec for Norton Utilities.

Yes, Microsoft was well known for taking other's ideas (sometimes outright stealing - i.e. STAC Electronics https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-24-fi-26671-story.html.) Even their entry into the Operating System arena was taking Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS) and renaming it to MS-DOS so that they could make the deal with IBM.

[Chris Savage]

Yes, Microsoft was well known for taking other's ideas

Let's not forget M$ Bing, which used to give identical search results to Google.    I guess you know the implication there.