Now, really the retardedness isn't my computer's fault because I've been fooling around with so much beta software and tweaking my registry so much that I'm surprised the disk can still spin. So maybe my experimentation is like lead poisoning and causing the retardation. In any event, I've finally gotten a chance to cool down and right after submitting a book review to The Journal of Commercial Biotechnology (and backing up like crazy), I restarted my Dell 600m and held down CTRL + F11.
See, Dell doesn't seem to approve of the CD movement, because instead of backup disks, they partition a small part of your hard drive and install a little restore utility. This is as good as a backup disk in many ways, but some service people won't accept your computer without disks and it uses up space. The only good thing about the partition is that you can't "lose" it (ok, unless you do one of the many things that will fry it) and it has a "hold down the secret keys" feel to it. I finally got around to reformatting; though, and now my machine is mostly purged of Dell crapware and has all my old stuff back on it. Oh and it will hibernate again...something it forgot how to do at one point.
I highly recommend to any reader that if you only have one computer, buy an external HD and hook it up for a simple copy/paste type of backup. I use SyncBack so I can save specific files and ignore the system. It's great to have the extra storage and with the price of drives dropping monthly, you can store all of your media and your backup stuff on the same external.
Just my two cents...once I find something interesting online, I'll post something.
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Yo. Dropbox. It lets you backup and sync for free online. The limit right now is 2 GB. I use it to backup my stuff and to sync my stuff (a necessity when you're triple booting).
ReplyDeleteI still don't get the point of that...I mean there's a ton of ways to do a backup of 2GB....so I guess the interface just has to win out. That one has a pretty decent GUI.
ReplyDeleteI'm talking about Machine backup though, not syncing between computers. I'm pretty sure I backed up 40 gigs before I did my restore. I'm planning on getting a 500GB drive next time they're on sale.