Re: [ARSCLIST] creating access cd's

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

Don Cox wrote:

> A physically different drive, not just another partition on the same
> drive as C:
>
> It is IMO best also to keep programs on a separate partition, not in C:
> - but this can be on the same physical drive.
>
> One of the biggest nuisances in Windows is that you cannot simply back
> up C: in any simple way. Being used to the Amigas, where you can simply
> copy all the files on the system partition to a CD, I find this
> tiresome. 

In ancient days, a fully defragmented drive was necessary to avoid 
buffer underrun. The easy way to accomplish that was to dedicate a 
partition to CD creation; whether it shared space on a physical drive 
was irrelevant.

Many (most?) Windows programs have components on the boot drive 
regardless of where the rest of it is located; frequently, they are the 
ones most heavily accessed. Given a reasonable amount of RAM, separating 
applications from operating system with different partitions no longer 
has much payoff.

Since Windows 95, the OS has maintained some files open with exclusive 
control whenever it is running. That's one reason the boot disc cannot 
be ideally defragmented from within Windows and that optimizing folders, 
CHKDSK for the boot partition and other operations are done during boot. 
A simple file backup sufficed for DOS except for making the disc 
bootable. That demanded that some files begin in specific sectors; a 
file restore including those files would move them from the only 
locations permitting the disc to boot.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/