Scratch Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark
  • Start date Start date
M

Mark

My school uses what I believe are called "scratch drives"
I can save stuff to the c: drive, but when I log on again, everything
I've saved is gone, unless I save it to my network drive.
I'd like to do something similar with my own computer. I go through a
lot of software, sometimes only using it once or twice, or maybe for a
single semester. I can uninstall it or delete it when I'm done, but
all these programs and files seem to leave some residue behind
(modifying your registry and what not). I'd like an easy way to
completely restore my c: drive whenever I want. I tried doing a
system restore before, but I don't think that deletes any excess
files, only reverts the old ones, which caused problems.

Does anyone know how I might do this?
 
Mark said:
My school uses what I believe are called "scratch drives"
I can save stuff to the c: drive, but when I log on again, everything
I've saved is gone, unless I save it to my network drive.
I'd like to do something similar with my own computer. I go through a
lot of software, sometimes only using it once or twice, or maybe for a
single semester. I can uninstall it or delete it when I'm done, but
all these programs and files seem to leave some residue behind
(modifying your registry and what not). I'd like an easy way to
completely restore my c: drive whenever I want. I tried doing a
system restore before, but I don't think that deletes any excess
files, only reverts the old ones, which caused problems.

Does anyone know how I might do this?
Click to expand...

The school is probably using something like Faronics' DeepFreeze, a
program that restores the computer to its clean state at a set time
every evening. DeepFreeze is overkill for you, but imaging would fit the
bill perfectly. Buy an external hard drive and a good imaging program -
I prefer Acronis True Image but there are others - and get the computer
set up just the way you want. Then image it and store the image on the
external hard drive. When you want to get a nice, clean machine again
just restore the image.


Malke
 
The school is probably using something like Faronics' DeepFreeze, a
program that restores the computer to its clean state at a set time
every evening. DeepFreeze is overkill for you, but imaging would fit the
bill perfectly. Buy an external hard drive and a good imaging program -
I prefer Acronis True Image but there are others - and get the computer
set up just the way you want. Then image it and store the image on the
external hard drive. When you want to get a nice, clean machine again
just restore the image.

Malke
Click to expand...

Thanks Malke! I've got a couple hard drives already, so I'll give this
program a shot.

Mark
 
Mark said:
My school uses what I believe are called "scratch drives"
I can save stuff to the c: drive, but when I log on again, everything
I've saved is gone, unless I save it to my network drive.
I'd like to do something similar with my own computer. I go through a
lot of software, sometimes only using it once or twice, or maybe for a
single semester. I can uninstall it or delete it when I'm done, but
all these programs and files seem to leave some residue behind
(modifying your registry and what not). I'd like an easy way to
completely restore my c: drive whenever I want. I tried doing a
system restore before, but I don't think that deletes any excess
files, only reverts the old ones, which caused problems.

Does anyone know how I might do this?
Click to expand...
Why not ask the IT people at school how they do it?

Here's how I do it.
Get a BIG hard drive.
partition it with about 10GB ad C: and the rest as d:
Put the essential stuff on C and all the Big files, maps,
books, databases on D. My C backup will easily fit
compressed on a DVD.
Using ghost or acronis or any other imaging program,
you can image the C partition and save it on D.
You can have as many configurations as you have space.

Then go download MS VirtualPC. You can have as many
virtual machines in any configuration of OS that you want.
This is great because it's really easy to back up a step
when that shareware didn't work out. You can even have multiple
scratch configurations based on a single base scratch system
configuration. You can run them simultaneously until you run out of ram.

Then get a plug-in drive cartridge so you can swap hard drives
and have as many physical drive configurations as you want.
You need to do this cause virtualPC doesn't emulate most of
the stuff you want on the USB port.
mike
 
My school uses what I believe are called "scratch drives"
I can save stuff to the c: drive, but when I log on again, everything
I've saved is gone, unless I save it to my network drive.
I'd like to do something similar with my own computer. I go through a
lot of software, sometimes only using it once or twice, or maybe for a
single semester. I can uninstall it or delete it when I'm done, but
all these programs and files seem to leave some residue behind
(modifying your registry and what not). I'd like an easy way to
completely restore my c: drive whenever I want. I tried doing a
system restore before, but I don't think that deletes any excess
files, only reverts the old ones, which caused problems.

Does anyone know how I might do this?
Click to expand...

Imaging software; Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image.

--

Regards,

Twayne

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www.openoffice.org

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