[clue-tech] Getting XP laptop ready for duel boot install at installfest

[Nate Duehr]

On Nov 1, 2008, at 3:44 PM, Adrian F. Nagle, IV wrote:

> I've run the XP defrag several times to clean up my hard drive (it  
> was bad).  I'm using 26 of 52Gb drive.  There are still file  
> fragments spread out over the sparse second half of the drive.  So  
> repartitioning will not work.  Is there something more I can do to  
> clean up the drive?

Are the things that aren't moving things marked by Microsoft's  
Defragmentation tool as "unmovable"?

These are often things like the system swap file (a linux term...  
whatever Windows calls it... "Virtual memory") and other system files  
that are in use and can't safely be moved while the whole OS is up and  
running from the hard disk.

There are *commercial* applications that can take the machine down to  
a bare DOS boot during a reboot that can move these while they're not  
in use, like "Diskeeper", but they're kinda expensive.  I haven't seen  
any Free-as-in-beer options that do this well/safely yet, but I'll  
admit since my main machine has been a Mac for some time now, and the  
servers are Linux, I'm just not paying attention to such things much  
anymore.  So there may be something that works well out there.

The technique this old computer guy has used in the past isn't  
appealing, but it does work... repartition and then REINSTALL  
everything.  That gets into a lot of work, though.  One of the things  
you may consider if you decide to follow that difficult a path is to  
invest in learning a free or buying a commercial drive imaging  
solution... that way, once you've reinstalled your base OS you can  
shoot an image, and then again after you've reinstalled your  
applications.  Then finally another every so often after your personal  
data is back on the partition... that way, you can always "get back  
to" a fully working system quickly.  This technique seems to be  
popular with company IT departments these days... I can hand my work  
laptop in for "re-imaging" at any time, along with a list of  
applications I'm authorized to have that aren't part of the base  
image... if I'm willing to handle putting my own data back on the  
machine myself.

(I do wish they'd put in a "continuous-backup" system for the data  
that's part of the image... that would be easier than copying  
everything to a USB-connected disk, but a lot more expensive... so I  
do understand why it'd be a bad business decision... my time is still  
less valuable than paying for a giant backup system.)

Generally I use this technique at home now, with rsync and if I ever  
get time to mess with it for one of the Windows machines, BackupPC...  
handling the day-to-day data backups.

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com