Re: computer backups, portable apps, cloud computing...

On 5/28/2009 9:48 AM, mcbgraham wrote:

> Goal- What I would want ideally is a whole copy of my current HD ready to
> use on a new or temporary computer, at least the main programs and
> documents.  But I assume if I were to make a ghost copy of the drive (that
> is the correct terminology?) than if I do switch to a new computer, it won't
> work as it has the OS from the old computer on there.

Documents are easy, assuming you have the software to read them on the 
new PC. Copy your My Documents (or equivalent) folder from the old 
computer to an external drive, a network share, or whatever, and then 
you can copy them down to the new computer. You may want to look into 
Dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) for that, and definitely for keeping 
backups of your documents in the future. 2GB storage for free, 50GB 
storage for $10/month or $100/year, and 100GB of storage for $20/month 
or $200/year.

Programs are less easy:

* The simplest case, those that don't write anything critical to the 
registry or to user-specific configuration files would just require 
copying their specific Program Files folder to the new PC.

* The next simplest case would be a program that doesn't write anything 
critical to the registry, but does write things to configuration files. 
Those would also require copying files from the %appdata% folder, and 
possibly the %homepath%'s local settings folder, too.

* The more complex case (and unfortunately, probably the most 
common)would be a program that writes to all these locations, and also 
to the registry. You'd end up copying all of the above locations, and 
also some part of the Windows registry specific to your program.

Unless you already do this kind of thing for a living, then for a few 
critical programs, you're probably better off just reinstalling them on 
the new PC.

And as far as imaging or ghosting the old drive, normally you'd do that 
to have a complete copy of whatever was on the old PC to transfer it to 
a new one. The transfer process would normally wipe out whatever was on 
the new PC, however. It may be your best option for a quick and dirty 
solution, as long as you either back up or don't care about whatever 
data was on the new PC's drive.

> I don't want to have to unexpectedly spend a day or more installing old
> programs on a new harddrive instead of actually getting things done that may
> need doing. If I could pre-plan it and do it as I go along, it would be much
> better.   I just got the upgraded version of Paperport installed and I had
> put that off for weeks, so I am not excited about doing it all again.

If you want a more automated way of getting applications on in the 
future, you'll probably want to look into anything related to 
"unattended installation". For example, appdeploy.com has the following 
page for Adobe Reader 8.x 
(http://www.appdeploy.com/packages/detail.asp?id=915) which says you can 
install it with the following command:

AdbeRdr80_en_US.exe /sPB /rs /l /msi"/qb-! /norestart /log 
c:\acrobat8.log ALLUSERS=2 EULA_ACCEPT=YES SUPPRESS_APP_LAUNCH=YES"

You could potentially have a folder on an external hard drive, a DVD, or 
whatever that contains both the Adobe Reader installation program, and a 
short .bat or .cmd file that contains the above command. Double-click 
the .bat or .cmd file, and Adobe gets installed. Repeat for as many 
other applications as you can find the relevant information for.

> Portable apps?  Since I rarely use any other computer, I never paid much
> attention to the idea of portable apps, but today I started reading a bit on
> them. How do they compare/work for those that have experience with them?
> What are the downsides?  Do you just keep a thumb drive plugged in the
> computer you use and not use desktop installed versions?  Do you sync them
> or just use them instead and have a back up copy or two in the event of loss
> or breakage?

I keep Thunderbird Portable installed on my C: drive after having had 
regular Thunderbird screw up its settings once. Though I don't back up 
my Thunderbird Portable folder regularly, at least it's all in one 
place, instead of in several different folders.

I keep a lot of other portable applications on my thumb drive, but I 
only use them when needed, mostly on other PCs.

There are few downsides to the portable versions, as far as I can tell. 
Mostly, if a setting would require a lot of writing to the disk, a 
portable app will probably turn that setting off by default (Firefox 
cache and history, for example). But if you'd be running from a hard 
drive, you could always put that setting back to normal if it bothered you.

-- 
Mike Renfro  / R&D Engineer, Center for Manufacturing Research,
931 372-3601 / Tennessee Technological University