What's the Fastest RAM that I Can Add?

[dencorso]

Great!

A full sector-by-sector "dumb" image is good for every possible happenstance. It's, however, long to acquire.

An incremental, file-based back-up is good mainly for data, but may be useful for the registry, too, if done properly, and it's fast.

Both have their uses. So making "dumb" images monthly or fortnightly, at most, should be enough, if supplemented by an up-to-date incremental backup. And out-of-schedule supplemental "dumb" images may be created at critical moments, such as before a big install or some software addition you want to do just for a short time, before restoring the previous state. That's a very sound strategy, that covers all bases.

[BlouBul]

BlouBul,

Well, that's the thing -- the installation program didn't seem to offer a clear choice to say, "don't install this component at all," at least not that I can remember now.

I just check on my installation (you can easy check with add-remove programs (or the shortcut I gave in my previous link, Appwiz.cpl,) then select office, change, add-remove components. There you will see a little hdd with a down arrow next to it next to each program. If you click on the down arrow next to the hdd, you can choose between install, run on first use or do not install (at least on my Office 2010) I think Office 2000 was the same. You can safely test it now and just cancel if you do not want to apply the changes. That way you can also safely uninstall Word 2007 only (if it is still necessary after the other steps)

Hopefully, it won't get to the point where I have to think about redoing those settings!

It should take you less than five minutes: input display name, username and password incoming mail server (pop3.XYZ.com), outgoing mailserver (smtp.XYZ.com), check remember password and Voila! You're finished! Really not difficult

BlouBul,

OK, give me a couple of days and I will try the first one, and then report back.

OK good luck (and you still have a full image if you do something wrong, so do not worry too much )

[JorgeA]

Great!

A full sector-by-sector "dumb" image is good for every possible happenstance. It's, however, long to acquire.

An incremental, file-based back-up is good mainly for data, but may be useful for the registry, too, if done properly, and it's fast.

Both have their uses. So making "dumb" images monthly or fortnightly, at most, should be enough, if supplemented by an up-to-date incremental backup. And out-of-schedule supplemental "dumb" images may be created at critical moments, such as before a big install or some software addition you want to do just for a short time, before restoring the previous state. That's a very sound strategy, that covers all bases.

dencorso,

Wow, I stumbled into doing something right!!

One question that maybe should wait till your workload lightens up has to do with the size of that sector-by-sector image. I was prepared to end up with a ~465GB image of my "500GB" drive, including all the unused space. But when the image was done, it was only 137GB -- that is, the amount of space that's actually in use. I thought that the sector-by-sector image took everything and included it, whether or not the sector contained any information?

But the explanation can wait if time is at a premium.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

BlouBul,

Thanks for the tips! I'll examine the options on the Office 2000 CD bearing in mind what you said.

Tomorrow there should be time to try the Word repair install.

About those e-mail settings: maybe what I'm remembering is just how overwhelming the entire process was, considering that my previous PC was largely unusable and I literally had to start from scratch, with a whole new system, new software, even a new e-mail account. That's what persuaded me to get serious about knowing my tech. Two years ago this month. Oh, and the old PC turned out to need only a good interior dusting. Had I been more diligent about keeping it clean, I might still be doing my work on Windows 98 and dialup... But I'm glad I got the new computer anyway.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

If the image is compressed, the unused space takes very little space. If the image is *not* compressed, it should be the same size of the disk. If it's *not* compressed, and *not* the same size, then it's not "dumb", but "intelligent". If this is the case, then you should look up in the manual for the appropriate settings (or command-line switches) for acquiring the "dumb" image instead. The "intelligent" image already obtained is not useless, but is less reliable than the "dumb" one. And most if not all imaging programs don't do "dumb" images by default, usually requiring some switch or setting to do them. For Ghost, it's "-ir" for the "dumb" image and "-z9" for maximum compression, for example.

[JorgeA]

If the image is compressed, the unused space takes very little space. If the image is *not* compressed, it should be the same size of the disk. If it's *not* compressed, and *not* the same size, then it's not "dumb", but "intelligent". If this is the case, then you should look up in the manual for the appropriate settings (or command-line switches) for acquiring the "dumb" image instead. The "intelligent" image already obtained is not useless, but is less reliable than the "dumb" one. And most if not all imaging programs don't do "dumb" images by default, usually requiring some switch or setting to do them. For Ghost, it's "-ir" for the "dumb" image and "-z9" for maximum compression, for example.

Thanks, dencorso! I see in the BlackArmor manual that the preset compression level is "Normal," and that there are choices for "High," "Maximum," and "None." Next time I do this I'll try "None."

Although, come to think of it, I believe that I did see that and that I did select "None" for compression. But still I got only a 137GB disk image. What other factors could be at play?

Oh, wait. Looking elsewhere in the guide, I see that when selecting a sector-by-sector backup, there is a choice to "back up unallocated space." That must be the difference, right? I don't remember if I did anything with that particular setting.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

If you don't "back up unallocated space.", it's not a "dumb" image. Figuring out the right parameters takes some tries.

Try once with "back up unallocated space." and no compression, and let's see the size of it.

[JorgeA]

Thanks dencorso, I''l try this over the weekend!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

BlouBul,

I want to report that I tried the Office Diagnostics that we discussed, and nothing turned up. The program says that there is nothing wrong with my Office installation.

I'm still working up the courage to try putting the Office 2000 CD back in there. Although I will say that I've been reading up on running both 2000 and 2007 on the same PC, and this is a known situation, for instance here, here, here, here, and here. (There is some opinion that it works the same for Office 2000 and 2003, relative to Office 2007.)

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

If you don't "back up unallocated space.", it's not a "dumb" image. Figuring out the right parameters takes some tries.

Try once with "back up unallocated space." and no compression, and let's see the size of it.

dencorso,

This afternoon I ran an image backup while we went to visit a friend in another state.

I made sure that "back up unallocated space" was selected this time, in addition to the sector-by-sector setting. However, once again the size came out to 137GB when finished. Either I'm still missing something, or I'm misunderstanding the manual somehow.

Here's a link to the BlackArmor manual. It's not identical to the one I have, but hopefully it will be close enough.

The only caveat (maybe this is what I'm missing) is that, thinking about it, now I am not certain that I selected "no compression." Maybe it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the process, but it comes off as so d*mn complicated. (Well, we WERE getting ready to go out...) It would be helpful if every option affecting the size of the backup were clearly listed on the same screen, instead of having to wade through waves of menus, some of which don't volunteer to show up. There MUST be a market out there for backup software that, instead of overwhelming non-tech users with an avalanche of different backup types, just gives them a SIMPLE and CLEARLY set out choice to do a SINGLE, ALL-INCLUSIVE type of backup (no fine distinctions, please) for use in case of catastrophic disk failure. I would call the product "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and the slogan could be, "The one and only backup you'll need in your time of need!" [end of rant]

One mitigating factor that may spare us (me) from having to run through the process all over again: I went back in as far as where the compression level setting hides under "Backup options" in the middle of the list. It provides estimates of the size of the backup at each level. Whereas "maximum" compression is calculated to take up 80.18GB, and "High" compression 82.22GB, "Normal" compression (the default) is still at only 93.99GB. You would think that "No" compression hardly could jump suddenly five times in size to the ~465GB level that I seek, no?, So that would still leave us searching for the right settings that will produce the "dumb" unselective image we want.

--JorgeA

Edit: I'm not the only one who's noticed the complexity of the BlackArmor backup software. There must be a happy medium between dumbed-down "consumer" backup sottware intended basically to back up documents and pictures (leaving your OS and programs vulnerable) and complex BlackArmor-type software that buries the user in choices with unfamiliar nomenclature and mysterious distinctions.

Edited December 5, 2010 by JorgeA

[dencorso]

That's a complex imaging/backup system, for sure!

However, on fist glance, and after some thought, I'd say you should select the following options:

• Create an image using the sector-by-sector approach
  
• Full backup
  
• Back up unallocated space
  
• Create new backup archive
  
• Source files exclusion: exclude nothing.
  
• Compression: None.
  
• Validate backup archive when it is created

Let's see what results do you get from them.

[BlouBul]

I want to report that I tried the Office Diagnostics that we discussed, and nothing turned up. The program says that there is nothing wrong with my Office installation.

I'm still working up the courage to try putting the Office 2000 CD back in there. Although I will say that I've been reading up on running both 2000 and 2007 on the same PC, and this is a known situation,

Hi JorgeA,

Ok, I was not thinking of installing 2 versions of the same program (Office 2007 without Word 2007 with Word 2000, so just one version of Word). Although reading through your links (I couldn't access the middle two from http://uksbsguy.com, maybe the site was down), it doesn't seem so complicated (just read the fine print and check to keep the old version). If you really want both Word versions you can do that. There is also a little registry hack to prevent Word from making each version the default if you have both versions of Word installed (which might seem terrifying to you, but it is very well documented and is just a case of Monkey See, Monkey Do )

Anyway, installing Word 2000 was the last option on the list (although that gave fantastic results ). If repair Office didn't help, try uninstalling Word 2007 only and reinstalling after reboot Word 2007 again. Another safe, but slightly more complicated option to try after that (not that complicated but safer to do after your image is finished) is to uninstall Office 2007 and reinstall Office 2007. I know you will now throw your hands up in horror and complain that you then have to resetup Outlook Here is a quick test to see if you will be able to do that. Try adding an e-mail account to your outlook. Go to account settings (try to edit your current mail account settings to get the values (do not save or change anything there). Then create a new second account with the same settings. If it work there, it will work in a new setup as well. This might not be necessary, but is good thing to know you can do it if you have to

After all those and as a last option, we can try the word 2000 after removing Word 2007.

Whereas "maximum" compression is calculated to take up 80.18GB, and "High" compression 82.22GB, "Normal" compression (the default) is still at only 93.99GB. You would think that "No" compression hardly could jump suddenly five times in size to the ~465GB level that I seek, no?, So that would still leave us searching for the right settings that will produce the "dumb" unselective image we want.

I think normal compression will also back up all the unused space into a very small portion, where uncompressed will show huge amounts of nothing

Edited December 5, 2010 by BlouBul

[JorgeA]

dencorso,

After I logged off MSFN last night, I was so riled up that I went back into the BlackArmor program and ran it again. I didn't see your post till this morning, but as it turned out I included all of your suggested settings, except for the one having to do with "source files exclusion."

So I re-loaded the backup software to see what that was all about. The "Source files exclusion" defaults to excluding *.BAK, *.~, *.TMP, and *.TIB files. Can we say that leaving these files out will not affect either the reliability of the backup, or the value of the restored image, in case of a total HDD failure?

And, except for that possibility, it looks like we have SUCCESS. I let the backup run overnight (it was estimating that it would take about 9 hours) and when I got back to the computer this morning, it was finished. Now for the most important thing: the size of the backup file is 465GB. Both the C: main drive and the D: recovery drive are now imaged.

Score one for persistence, if not exactly technical brilliance on my part!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Hi BlouBul,

The uksbsguy.com site is back on line. Very informative discussion there on those two links. He, too, talks about the Registry fix to make Word 2000 and 2007 coexist. But the most important thing that I got out of these web pages is that the scary-sounding "configuration" box that appeared the next time that I loaded Word 2007 after installing 2000, is simply the system's way of putting 2007 back at the front of the line.

Let me get familiar with the process for uninstalling Word 2007 (Google is a huge help when it comes to this sort of thing). Assuming that everything resets to default when it's re-installed, I wonder if there might be a way to keep or recover all the little settings adjustments that one makes along the way -- at this point, I wouldn't even know what they all are, or where a hypothetical "Word settings file" might live.

As for the Outlook settings, I really hesitate with that one. A couple of months ago, my main customer wanted to give me my own e-mail account within the company domain. I worked with the IT guru for weeks to make the webmail work. We managed to get e-mail that was addressed to me at that account forwarded to my own ISP's webmail and then into Outlook, but d*mned if we could get Outlook to accept the second domain so that I could create and receive e-mail right in Outlook. We ended up breaking Outlook three times, and had to be satisfied with the forwarding service, plus going on their webmail page whenever I want to create or reply to e-mail. A more cumbersome procedure, and it doesn't have HTML, so my e-mail from there looks plain like a typewriter. So I really, really would rather not do anything that could mess with Outlook -- and that bit the other day, where the Outlook icon in the Start menu stopped working, I take it as "fair warning" to keep my hands off!

But like I said, let me look into the process of uninstalling and re-installing Word. Not promising anything!

Thanks again.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

And, except for that possibility, it looks like we have SUCCESS. I let the backup run overnight (it was estimating that it would take about 9 hours) and when I got back to the computer this morning, it was finished. Now for the most important thing: the size of the backup file is 465GB. Both the C: main drive and the D: recovery drive are now imaged.

Great!

Now we know how to do the "dumb", sector-by-sector image. So the experiment was a huge success.

But, for general use, we may use compression, now that we're sure of the other parameters.

So, let's try it one last time, with the same settings, except for maximum compression (it's not clear whether the exclusion of any type of files will work on a sector-by-sector image... it shouldn't, because the contents of the sectors ought not to be interpreted, just saved blindly). Do not delete the 465GB image, however. It's a good one, so only after the compressed version is validated, you may contemplate to do that, OK?

BTW, does Black Armor provide any method of browsing the contents of the image? I can search the manual for the answer, but maybe you've found out already, so I'm asking it. If the contents of the sector-by-sector image can be browsed, we can find out many answers on details, just by browsing inside it. But probably it's not possible. Only file-by-file backups can be browsed, usually. But one can always wish...