On Jan 28, 12:55 pm, Moshe Goldfarb <brick.n.st...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:32:11 +0100, Hadron wrote:
> > "Can mount partitions on the disk ... amazing".
> The average computer user doesn't even have a clue what a partition is let
> alone has the need to mount them.
Which is why most users lose almost all of their personal data when
Windows goes belly up and won't reboot. Whether it's because some
virus whacked it, or because they installed some corrupted video
driver in an automated update.
> This looks like another useless to most users Linux
> application/distribution.
Windows has the ability to mount multiple partitions, but it does not
have the ability to shrink an existing partition so that user files
can be placed on a separete partition that won't get corrupted when
the PC gets completely hosed. Of course, it wouldn't matter anyway,
because XP will try and clobber all of the partitions when it is
reinstalled anyway.
I think you can install Windows 2000 without clobbering the existing
partitions, and just install it in a partition that has been created
exclusively for the Windows system software.
Of course, even if you do re-install Windows, you also have to
reinstall all of the applications because the registry is gone and you
don't know where the applications, if installed on another partition,
might have stored temporary files. In a week or so, the end user
might get his computer back to "normal", assuming he can find all of
the CDs for the software he had installed before.
With Linux distributions, the distribution has most of the most
popular software ready to be re-installed, if it's necessary to
reinstall, or to clone the configuration to another PC. There's even a
tool that lets you capture all of the installation parameters, so that
you can configure a new pc by booting a CD and telling it which
configuration file to use, and have it automatically install and
configure all of the software and hardware. The next reboot will
assure that all modules, drivers, and applications are loaded and
ready to go.
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