The price difference between an external drive and an internal one is
roughly $50 - $80. If you consider what it costs to buy and add a
cage for a removable drive, and the cost of a new PC case, you can
make the case for a new USB/Firewire drive instead. The advantage
with an external drive is that it can connect to any PC that is equipped
with either USB or Firewire capabilities.
Lost my registration
If the external drive is a true copy of the internal drive, then all you need is a means of getting your system back up and try to do the following:
(1) Recover the original drive - you could try to use the emergency
recovery disks for that.
(2) Effect a windows repair - you can boot to your install disk and tell
it that you want to effect a repair.
(3) Do a clean install over the internal drive, but avoid reformatting it -
you may be able to recover your apps and data this way.
(4) Boot to a floppy - limited by the 1.44 mb size, but if you can then
access your hard drive(s), you may be able to effect repairs or
programs already found on it.
(5) Boot to a CD-ROM - a very effective method, since the 700 MB
disk size lets you put everything needed to effect a full recover on
it.
(6) Use the fact that you were smart enough to create a multi-boot
process, and targeted the external drive as one of the boot options
(you couldn't boot to the mirror of the internal drive because of
drive letter associations, but you can have a small partition that
would let you boot specifically to the external drive and run from
there).
There are other variations on these themes. In fact, you technically
might be able to figure out a way to either install that external drive
as a replacement for the internal one, or get a new internal drive and
use some method of copying the external drive's contents to it so
that you can replace the internal drive with a mirrored, bootable
image.
And you might get a new internal drive, boot to floppy or CD-ROM,
and use the tools proviced to copy the external drive over onto the
internal drive, then reboot to it. Note that the operating system that
you boot to in the interum is not important - it could be DOS, Linux,
or a different version of Windows. It's only a means of effecting a
restore of the internal drive, and useful as long as it can perform
that trick.
At which point I might suggest you don't throw away your old DOS
floppys, or that you look for a nice CD-ROM based operating system,
which could be something like BeOS or Knoppix, both free, and both
downloadable from the web.
The advantage of having an alternative OS as your interum boot
choice is that it is a non-respector of file and directory flags that might
limit your access to certain files. That is, when you boot into a Windows
environment, you cannot always effect a copy, delete, or renaming of
certain files because of sharing violations and such.
But if you boot to an alternate drive or source, and the original files can
easily be handled because you are now in a different Windows
environment, even if it is the same version of Windows. But booting to
either the initial drive or to the external drive could have the effect of
preventing certain files in the boot partition from being copied or copied
over. With a third boot device involved (the floppy drive or the CD-ROM),
there is no possibility of that happening, since presumably, all copying
will be just between the internal drive and external mirrored drive.
There are even more choices: You can attempt to just recover the
ability for the internal drive to boot by trying to restore the boot sector
and possibly the Master Boot Sector (MBS). Look at the SYS command
under DOS, or check out other articles on restoring the boot process.
If the Internal drive is intact, you can try to create or use another
partition on it which you can then set up as a bootable drive and boot
to it. You will probably still have to restore all you application
associations, but if you've saved the Registry, it should be possible
to do this without having to restore all the apps themselves - look into
good Registry utilities that might help you do this.
Another great tool to help with this is PartitionMagic, which makes it very easy to work with changing individual partitions around. However, if you
are willing to learn to work with Linux, it has tools for free that can do
nearly as much, though not convert the current drive format from one
form to another.
If you can't access the C: drive at all, but possibly the other logical
drive partitions on the internal drive are intact, you can install an
alternate boot process in one of these, or create a new one. It
depends upon the sophistication of the software you have resource to
and your imagination. I keep an alternat boot partition on my F:
drive, which is just a logical partition, but it allows me a way to get
back up on the fly to make sure my C: drive is intact before I attempt
to go any further in a recovery effort.
(1) Recover the original drive - you could try to use the emergency
recovery disks for that.
(2) Effect a windows repair - you can boot to your install disk and tell
it that you want to effect a repair.
(3) Do a clean install over the internal drive, but avoid reformatting it -
you may be able to recover your apps and data this way.
(4) Boot to a floppy - limited by the 1.44 mb size, but if you can then
access your hard drive(s), you may be able to effect repairs or
programs already found on it.
(5) Boot to a CD-ROM - a very effective method, since the 700 MB
disk size lets you put everything needed to effect a full recover on
it.
(6) Use the fact that you were smart enough to create a multi-boot
process, and targeted the external drive as one of the boot options
(you couldn't boot to the mirror of the internal drive because of
drive letter associations, but you can have a small partition that
would let you boot specifically to the external drive and run from
there).
There are other variations on these themes. In fact, you technically
might be able to figure out a way to either install that external drive
as a replacement for the internal one, or get a new internal drive and
use some method of copying the external drive's contents to it so
that you can replace the internal drive with a mirrored, bootable
image.
And you might get a new internal drive, boot to floppy or CD-ROM,
and use the tools proviced to copy the external drive over onto the
internal drive, then reboot to it. Note that the operating system that
you boot to in the interum is not important - it could be DOS, Linux,
or a different version of Windows. It's only a means of effecting a
restore of the internal drive, and useful as long as it can perform
that trick.
At which point I might suggest you don't throw away your old DOS
floppys, or that you look for a nice CD-ROM based operating system,
which could be something like BeOS or Knoppix, both free, and both
downloadable from the web.
The advantage of having an alternative OS as your interum boot
choice is that it is a non-respector of file and directory flags that might
limit your access to certain files. That is, when you boot into a Windows
environment, you cannot always effect a copy, delete, or renaming of
certain files because of sharing violations and such.
But if you boot to an alternate drive or source, and the original files can
easily be handled because you are now in a different Windows
environment, even if it is the same version of Windows. But booting to
either the initial drive or to the external drive could have the effect of
preventing certain files in the boot partition from being copied or copied
over. With a third boot device involved (the floppy drive or the CD-ROM),
there is no possibility of that happening, since presumably, all copying
will be just between the internal drive and external mirrored drive.
There are even more choices: You can attempt to just recover the
ability for the internal drive to boot by trying to restore the boot sector
and possibly the Master Boot Sector (MBS). Look at the SYS command
under DOS, or check out other articles on restoring the boot process.
If the Internal drive is intact, you can try to create or use another
partition on it which you can then set up as a bootable drive and boot
to it. You will probably still have to restore all you application
associations, but if you've saved the Registry, it should be possible
to do this without having to restore all the apps themselves - look into
good Registry utilities that might help you do this.
Another great tool to help with this is PartitionMagic, which makes it very easy to work with changing individual partitions around. However, if you
are willing to learn to work with Linux, it has tools for free that can do
nearly as much, though not convert the current drive format from one
form to another.
If you can't access the C: drive at all, but possibly the other logical
drive partitions on the internal drive are intact, you can install an
alternate boot process in one of these, or create a new one. It
depends upon the sophistication of the software you have resource to
and your imagination. I keep an alternat boot partition on my F:
drive, which is just a logical partition, but it allows me a way to get
back up on the fly to make sure my C: drive is intact before I attempt
to go any further in a recovery effort.
has-been wanna-be (You may not agree with what I say, but it will make you think).
I hate to have to continue this thread if you aren't interested in what I
have to say, but there is another detail to consider. Some of the
possibilities I mentioned, notably booting to an alternate drive, are
not possible if your sole operating System consists of Windows 95, 98,
or Me. That is because those operating systems (and DOS) must be
installed and booted using the C: drive. Windows NT, 2000, and XP
can be installed on any partition, but rely on a file called BOOT.INI
on the C: drive to provide the choice of which partition to boot to.
So that even if you set up an alternate partition for a boot process,
the C: drive has to be sufficiently intact to let you get there.
Unless you boot to a floppy, Zip, Jaz, CD, or other external device. In
this case, C: is just another drive letter. You still need the Boot.ini
file to direct you to where you want to go, but now it can be read from
the boot device, which was not the normal C: partition.
PartitionMagic allows you to effect many changes to your hard drive,
including moving, deleting, adding, and repositioning partitions. It can
even mark partitions as hidden. All this effects the way the hard drive
interprets the drive table, and how it relates the drive letters to each
partition. You can screw things up worse, but if you have an
understanding of what you are doing, you also have the means of
making some significant changes in your hard drive configuration that
might prove useful - such as hiding the original C: partition and setting
up an alternate that is boot-enabled to boot to one of the other
partitions.
As you can see, drive recovery is almost an art unto itself. Not many
people really delve into it, and it can consume a lot of time. If you
practice this art, you will quickly learn to deplore the fact that Windows
locks in both Registry and shortcut settings, and is so stuck on the
C: drive that it makes it tantamount to a total failure if that drive
should fail for any reason. You really have to depend on third party
utilities and recovery tools to stand a chance of getting the system
back if that drive crashes.
have to say, but there is another detail to consider. Some of the
possibilities I mentioned, notably booting to an alternate drive, are
not possible if your sole operating System consists of Windows 95, 98,
or Me. That is because those operating systems (and DOS) must be
installed and booted using the C: drive. Windows NT, 2000, and XP
can be installed on any partition, but rely on a file called BOOT.INI
on the C: drive to provide the choice of which partition to boot to.
So that even if you set up an alternate partition for a boot process,
the C: drive has to be sufficiently intact to let you get there.
Unless you boot to a floppy, Zip, Jaz, CD, or other external device. In
this case, C: is just another drive letter. You still need the Boot.ini
file to direct you to where you want to go, but now it can be read from
the boot device, which was not the normal C: partition.
PartitionMagic allows you to effect many changes to your hard drive,
including moving, deleting, adding, and repositioning partitions. It can
even mark partitions as hidden. All this effects the way the hard drive
interprets the drive table, and how it relates the drive letters to each
partition. You can screw things up worse, but if you have an
understanding of what you are doing, you also have the means of
making some significant changes in your hard drive configuration that
might prove useful - such as hiding the original C: partition and setting
up an alternate that is boot-enabled to boot to one of the other
partitions.
As you can see, drive recovery is almost an art unto itself. Not many
people really delve into it, and it can consume a lot of time. If you
practice this art, you will quickly learn to deplore the fact that Windows
locks in both Registry and shortcut settings, and is so stuck on the
C: drive that it makes it tantamount to a total failure if that drive
should fail for any reason. You really have to depend on third party
utilities and recovery tools to stand a chance of getting the system
back if that drive crashes.
has-been wanna-be (You may not agree with what I say, but it will make you think).