swapping out my C: drive...?

[mykhal c]

well, i know i would NOT schedule ANYTHING at 6pm on ANY NIGHT!! personally, i don't schedule my backups, only stating that you could. but i do run my scheduled scans at 4AM EVERY DAY!!! if i'm still workin' at that time it forces me to go to bed!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!!

[sunburst79]

3 copies for 3 PCs. I assume that the 'special offer' of two copies of the software is because you'll need two if you have two PCs and the software somehow won't let you run one copy on two. Perhaps an Acronis owner can clarify this here.

I dunno that I buy into that Linux v Microsoft thing. Sounds rather like the Apple v Microsoft thing - a bit of a myth as regards Microsoft being the evil empire and *** (insert your personal favorite) being the rebel forces. As for Gates himself... Well I find it difficult to fault someone who's putting millions of his own money into a major project to rid the world of malaria in 10 years.

I was very disappointed with Linux - it's heavily promoted as being easy to install and use. Now I'm good at PC stuff, and I found it to have among the steepest learning curves of anything I've encountered. It was like going back over 10 years. For anybody disgruntled with XP I suggest locking them in a room for a day trying to load a dual boot Win/inux (the most commonly desired setup, and surely one that should come built in to the Linux install)- they'll surely come out with tail between legs...

I'm trying to install Fedora in order to run Shake. Looking back it would've been easier to buy a Mac!

Scheduled backups? No way! I already have Norton interrupting whatever I'm doing at 6pm on a Friday (must switch that off! ) with a virus scan. I'll get my diary to remind me each month.

Cheers!

Try ditching Fedora, I'm not sure I ever heard anyone calling Linux EASY to use. but once you installed it you perhaps learned something about computers in a broader sense... Suse and Ubuntu have easy graphical installers. I don't think Bill Gates is evil-I do think that without any competition from Mac and Linux that there is little or any incentive more Microsoft to improve anything. If you can install and maintain Protools you should be able to install Linux. I certainly wouldn't install it on my main PT computer straight away though use a old PC. All of these different operating systems Win ,Mac, Unix, Linux each have something to offer, each also has some draw backs. Try a different distro before you write it off entirely.

[K.B.]

Just a quick update on HD Clone (the free version).

I had a 40Gig C: drive in one machine, and using HDClone copied the whole drive to a 80Gig drive in D: then I put the new drive into C:.

Boots up fine with everything as it was in a cloned 40Gig partition, and with another 40Gigs blank which I turned into a fresh partition from within XP (My computer/manage/disk management).

All software works fine off the clone (including XP) except for a couple, like 3DMax, that run the authorisation pop up - they probably use the ethernet HostID (which I believe is unique to each drive) to check authorisation.

It's a great way to increase the size of your drive "0" (C: remains the same size though) or swap out an old one.

Disconnect your external drives while you do this. Once you've done the clone take out the old C:, put the new drive in its place, put your old D: drive back in, reconnect your external drive, then boot up. Check it's all working OK, then go into Disk Management, initialise and format the new partition. Viola! Everything will now be as it was with a new partition on Drive 0 which XP will see as F:.


In theory you could now put the old C: disk into another PC and it would boot up (provided XP didn't think the hardware had changed too much).

If you want to know your own HostID (it took me some research!):
Start - Run "CMD" - type in "ipconfig /all"
The host ID is the "physical address" with the "-"s removed

Donations to Paypal gratefully recieved.


And no, I didn't try this on a machine with PTLE installed, but I can't see there'd be a problem - you'd still need your Digi hardware so there's no piracy involved.

[sunburst79]

Just a quick update on HD Clone (the free version).

I had a 40Gig C: drive in one machine, and using HDClone copied the whole drive to a 80Gig drive in D: then I put the new drive into C:.

Boots up fine with everything as it was in a cloned 40Gig partition, and with another 40Gigs blank which I turned into a fresh partition from within XP (My computer/manage/disk management).

All software works fine off the clone (including XP) except for a couple, like 3DMax, that run the authorisation pop up - they probably use the ethernet HostID (which I believe is unique to each drive) to check authorisation.

It's a great way to increase the size of your drive "0" (C: remains the same size though) or swap out an old one.

Disconnect your external drives while you do this. Once you've done the clone take out the old C:, put the new drive in its place, then boot up. Then go into Disk Management, initialise and format the new partition and change the drive letter to F:. Put your old D: drive back in, and reconnect your external drive. Everything will now be as it was with a new partition on Drive 0 which XP will see as F:.

In theory you could now put the old C: disk into another PC and it would boot up (provided XP didn't think the hardware had changed too much).

If you want to know your own HostID (it took me some research!):
Start - Run "CMD" - type in "ipconfig /all"
The host ID is the "physical address" with the "-"s removed

Donations to Paypal gratefully recieved.


And no, I didn't try this on a machine with PTLE installed, but I can't see there'd be a problem - you'd still need your Digi hardware so there's no piracy involved.

Glad it worked ! the Host ID you refer to would by your networking card. Surprisingly enough the Drive ID is a small part of what windows uses to determine if the products ID has changed.

Some (stupid) things that will change your windows product activation ID. enabling or disabling your network card in BIOS, installing a wireless card. And My personal favorite- enabling or disabling hyperthreading.

I just swapped a HD onto a replacement board and it was VERY unhappy as far as WPA goes. the boards were the same down to the BIOS revision numbers.

At any rate I'm glad to hear it worked. It seems it would be great for cloning your system drive as a backup measure.

And thanks for taking the time to search out your old post and check back

[K.B.]

My pleasure.

the Host ID you refer to would by your networking card.

My bad. I ran into a problem with Shake 2.5. where Shake is often used as part of a 'render farm' so its usage makes sense there.

[K.B.]

Which tells me why Shake won't load!!! I need to switch networking back on.

[sunburst79]

Just don't wake the sleeping demon of the dreaded windows activation wizard.... he's in there, Lurking, just waiting to to phone home to Redmond. You got Shake up and running too? You manage to get it running under MAC or Linux? just curious.

[K.B.]

Haven't got it going yet. I got a nice nVidia graphics card (which is basically what it wants) and have tried in vain to load Linux into what is an old Compaq machine. Waste of time - the BIOS won't allow it, even after flashing an update etc. Time for a new mobo there I think. However I thought I'd try loading Shake 2.5 (the last version to run on windows) to check that the graphics card is good enough to let it run, but even that's throwing up errors to do with my HostID. I'd switched everything off, but maybe that's where I went wrong and need to switch the network card back on.

If I'd known when I started out...

[sunburst79]

Best of luck! Its been my experience that you can basically install Linux on a freaking microwave oven but yeah graphics support is spotty at best. I usually picked the card first or used a version that works with that particular Distro. It does sound like the mother board may have a issue. Linux can be a fun way to refurb a old machine. Trying to install a 3D rendering app like Shake is probably the most difficult thing you could attempt.

[K.B.]

I'll keep you posted.

Beer time now!