Mickey Mouse said:
Helo again Anna,
Yes, I've installed XR2 a number of times over the years and although it's
always
given me trouble installing I usually succeed in the end. However, when
you have partitioned correctly and installed XR2
there is no learning curve. XR2 however appears to be unique to the
gigabyte mobos. Now though it's appears not be compatitble to all GByte
mobo's, hope I'm wrong there. XR2 I think has always been apart of the
chipset driver cd to be installed seperately. Even if not installed, it's
an F9 function option when the pc is booting. Many knowledgable people
seem to condenm this facility as you have probably gathered from some
responses that I have been given. I know using XR2
may have it's ups and/or downsides, but I find it at times a godsend
especially if your like me and always tinkering with new software with the
eventual probability that I'm going to install something I shouldn't
ending up with some kind conflict messing up my whole system. When my
system starts misbehaving badly I merely decide to reinstall my system and
software hitting F9 waiting an hour, while having a cuppa and it's done.
No recovery disks to find and install. My other HP machine has a similar
system, however it only seems to reinstall the system back to it's
original bought state which unfortunately also includes all that budled
trial software. In short XR2 is ideal for the novice not wishing to learn
Acronis or the suchlike.
And to answer one of your questions, yes I also tried Primary, Primay,
Unallocated, still to no avail.
Frankly, I've got lots of questions as to the correct way to partition a
HD. For example, a single HHD partitioned to C: and D:
Should it be partitioned to C: Primary D: Extended or C: Primary D:
Primary. I understand why C: is Primary (system), but why D: Primary,why
not
extended. You asked why, I must have my reasons. Well my only reason is
it works that way as it does as a Primary. You see, I don't know why but
I'd like to know. I have many similar questions but one is reluctant at
times to ask on the newsgroups for fear of sounding foolish although the
only foolish question is the one you don't ask I suppose.
Get back to you soon.
Mickey
P.s Another free utility I wouldn't be without is 'ERUNT', google it.
Mickey:
I should say at the outset that by & large I'm not generally enamored of
multi-partitioning a HDD when using a modern OS, i.e., post-Win9x/Me, such
as WinXP. It seems to me that one can effectively organize his/her HDD by
using folders to segregate this or that major program or division of work. I
do not feel that it's necessary nor desirable to multi-partition one's HDD
unless one has some very special need for doing so such as installing two
operating systems on one physical HDD (although let me be quick to add that
except where there is no other recourse left open to the user, i.e., he or
she is unable or unwilling to use separate hard drives, I'm not particularly
enthusiastic about installing multiple operating systems on a single HDD.)
The great advantage of having a single partition per physical HDD is its
simplicity. You never encounter the situation where the free space is in the
"wrong" partition nor is there ever a need to adjust partition size because
one's later need for more (or less) disk space has changed.
In my view there's really no advantage, security or performance, inherent in
multi-partitioning one's HDD. You can, of course, organize your HDD any way
you want, but you could just as easily have a single place called a "folder"
as have a single place called a "partition" in which to store your programs
& data. When all is said & done these multi-partitioning schemes have as
their basic objective a kind of assumed safety net. For the most part
there's the notion that separating the OS from programs & applications as
well as user-created data affords a significantly greater degree of security
in the event of some catastrophic event affecting the PC. In most cases,
based on my experience, it's a false sense of security.
But I really do not wish to enter into a discussion or argument re the pros
& cons of multi-partitioning. If one is comfortable with multi-partitioning
his or her HDD and feels he or she is deriving some benefit from so doing -
so be it.
In any event, with respect to the Primary/Extended partition issue, our SOP
has been where the HDD will contain no more than four partitions we set up
each of those partitions as Primary. If the user desires more than four
partitions (or believes at some later date he or she will need more than
four partitions), then we'll generally create three Primary partitions with
the fourth one an Extended partition so as to incorporate Logical drives
within the Extended partition (as you apparently did with your second
partition). It's really not significant in your case or for that matter in
most cases, since I assume you will be using that second (Logical drive)
partition as a repository for data and not intended as a bootable partition
(in which case you would need to create a Primary partition).
In conclusion...
I really think you should give serious consideration to establishing &
maintaining a comprehensive backup system - one that will back up the
*entire* contents of your day-to-day working HDD, including your OS, all
programs & applications, and of course your personal data. A backup system
which will utilize another HDD (internal or external) as the recipient of
the backed-up contents of the "source" HDD. So that if & when the time comes
when your system becomes dysfunctional because of a defective HDD or
unbootable because of a corrupted OS, you will have the wherewithal to
easily and rather quickly restore the system to a bootable, functional state
with *all* your data intact.
You can achieve this by using a disk-cloning or disk-imaging program as the
foundation of such a backup program.
I'm sure you've come across many posts on this subject with each poster
indicating his or her favorite program. Mine happens to be the Casper 5
program. If you want more info on this I'll be glad to post such.
In any event, do keep us posted re the Xpress Recovery2 program, especially
any communication you receive from Gigabyte. Coincidentally I'll be shortly
working on a system with a new Gigabyte motherboard - their GA-EP45-UD3R
model. So I'll "play around" with the XR2 program if I get a chance.
Anna
rimary
,