Hi to everyone,
                    I have a very simple question. On my laptop I have different partitions including one for my system and one for storing the images of the system partition.

I use the laptop both at work and at home and since some time, my company is putting some security policies on my machine such that my internet connection while very good at work, becomes very bad at home.

I still keep images of my system partition when my machine was connecting very well to the internet and I use these images to make newer images at home.

That said, when I go home I have the tendency to put back an image on my system partition with which my internet connection works fine at home. I would like to ask if I put back images on my system partition very frequent (such as on a daily basis), will this affect the lifetime of my hard drive? I understand that putting back an image on a partition means to format that partition first and restore files on that partition. The size of my system partition is 45 GB with a data size of about 15 GB. And it takes less than 20 mins for me to boot with NG03 and clone back my system partition.

Thanks a lot

Hi,
   Many thanks for your message. Restoring an image takes well under 20 mins for my system partition. I was thinking of this: when we create the image, we have the option to compress the image or not. I normally pick "fast compression". Now when the image is being restored, the compressed image has to be decompressed "bit by bit" and then be written to the selected partition. I was thinking then if it would be better not to use any compression at all so as not to "stress" the drive further.

Yes I agree with you bumping and dropping are more serious and can cause a hard drive failure.

About my internet connection problem, I have asked the IT department at work for an explanation. I'm still waiting for an explanation from them. When I first got my machine, the IT dept spent some days to install their own security systems. So when I connect to the network at work, many security policies are downloaded to my machine without I having any control over that.

First I thought that the problem was at home but thanks to my Ghost images, I know that something is happening at work. So when I want to make a newer image, with updated software and so on, I do this at home now as I know that I'll get a "good" image.

And I've noticed that I can't connect my PDA via Active Sync either at home or at work after bringing my laptop at work. So something is definitely messing the connectivity of my machine when I'm bringing it at work. Hopefully, this week I'll know more of what's happening

Hi,
    Thanks for the interesting comment. So I'll opt for high compression then.

HI Rad.Test,
                 Thanks for the message. Cloning back an image made with high compression can take longer time and then as you say the disk may then be work more.

back to compression.

i have compared high compression to no compression.

hopefully i have a record somewhere. 

times sizes before and after.

if i find it , i will post it.

the only time i use compression is when i make an image of my hard drive and want it to fit on one DVD.

zs i recall, there was no real advantage to compression otherwise.

ps

i backup and restore all the time.

occasionally a bad hard drive.

every one i called about said out of warranty.

now i don't call.

Hi Guys,
           Sorry for my late reply. Yes, I can setup an OS on another partition. I have done that earlier on a different machine and then I was using Ghost from DOS to make the partition that I want active. This works fine.

At present I don't have a Windows OS CD so that I can't do what I did earlier. I was thinking of Linux....but it'll take me time to be effective in Linux. At times I just think that it might be easier to buy a very cheap machine for home usage. I don't play games and I won't expect my home machine to carry out complex computations.

Anyhow, I'll think of the best thing to do.

Thanks again