I suggest imaging as a backup procedure.  It takes a compressed picture of
your hard drive and saves it as a single file.  It is used most extensively
in corporate environments where they have a standard desktop and hardware
platform.  If you gotta pump 10, 20, or more systems out a day that all need
to have the same software installed, you just create an image of one that is
already set up, and put that image on the new systems to be installed.  Very
efficient.

For home use purposes, it's a fail-safe.  Before you go formatting and
reinstalling, you create an image.  If something gets messed up on your
system when you rebuild it, and you need to get back up and running quickly,
you just throw the original image back on the drive and your back in
business.  It only needs to be done once before the install, and if
everything goes good and you have a stable system, you can delete the image
(it can hog a lot of your hard drive space).

It's just something I would do cause I'm the cautious type.

Kyle Elmblade
Distinct Computer Solutions
Sales - Upgrades - Training - Consulting
[log in to unmask]
"A closed mouth gathers no foot"

From: "Jeff Allen" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2001 6:11 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Formatting 1 of 2 Drives


> Thanks for the information Kyle. I guess my thought behind the formatting
of
> the drive is to clean out all the unused DLL's and all the junk that is
> there and taking up space, but not being used. Can you explain this
imaging
> program to me a bit. I have never heard of such a thing. It takes an image
> of your C drive and puts it on the D? When you say an image, do you mean
it
> copies exactly what you have on your C drive to the D? If so, how often
> should you run this. Drive contents are continuously changing. Thanks for
> your help.
>
> Jeff
>
>

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