Re: [Qemu-devel] Windows Laptop Idea

[jeebs]

Thomas;

>> Unfortunately, there aren't too many disk imaging programs I'd recommend.
>>  Both Norton Ghost (the old version) and DriveImage (the old version) have 
>> problems.

>I agree here. Norton really seems like technology from the past (DOS,
>16bit mode etc).

I disagree about that part.

The underlying OS is pretty much irrelevant because Ghost takes over and does 
most things itself.

Realistically it wouldn't be any better performance etc. if it ran Linux or 
embedded XP, etc.  It would be more convenient for the programmers, but that's 
about all.

Also, I'm not aware of any version of Linux that is small enough to fit onto a 
1.44mb floppy (while still having all the needed drivers) and leave more than a 
meg on the disk for the backup program itself.  (The reality is that bootable 
floppies are still often far more convenient than a more fragile bootable cd.)

Just because an OS is 16 bit doesn't mean it's automatically bad.

Maybe I'm being a bit over sensitive here, but I've been using computers at 
home for more than 20 years.  A whole lot can be done with 8 bit systems.  More 
can be done with 16 bit systems.  32 bits and 64 bits are nice and can make 
things more convenient, but that doesn't mean that nothing good can be done on 
8 or 16 bit systems.

I'm not a fan of DOS or the 8088 etc., but I'm not going to ignore that very 
useful things can be done with them.  Just because Linux is the latest 
fashionable OS doesn't mean useful programs can't exist for other OS's.

The faults in Ghost have little or nothing to do with it booting off a DOS 
floppy.  Things like:

1) Writing to the disk while making a backup (it should only read the disk, not 
write to it.)

2) Trying to put too much data onto a cd and being unable to close it right.  
(Or maybe that's some other writing error.)

3) Failure of self checks while dealing with NTFS file systems.

4) By defualt not putting NTFS files back exactly where they were, but 
reorganizing the file system.

Those and other problems are programming issues, not OS problems.


>But I can recommend two programs. The first ist OSS: partimage. It
>certainly has its limitations (e.g. it does not know anything about

I've known of partimage for quite a while, but I wouldn't recommend it for two 
reasons.

First, it's not even vaguely user friendly.  The interface was definetly not 
written for regular users.  It was written for advanced users and developers.  
More specifically, Linux users and developers.

Also, it appears that it can't actually save the compressed disk image to a cd 
or dvd.

You've got to back up to another drive or partition and then copy them to 
cd/dvd yourself.

To me, that's a fatal flaw in any program claiming to be a backup program.  
Makes it worthless because it's too inconvenient to actually use.  And a backup 
program you don't use is utterly worthless.

Maybe I'm wrong... but there's nothing what so ever in the docs to even suggest 
it can burn directly to a cd or dvd.  Between that and the poor user interface, 
I've never actually used it.  Just booted it up to see what it looked like.  
The poor user interface of PartImage is enough to keep me using Ghost or 
DriveImage, in spite of their problems.


I think this thread has gotten a wee bit off topic for this mailing list...