2.4GB CD? Really?

David Dorn is faced with a problem, finds the solution, and is well impressed, if a little confused.

So here’s the situation. My mate gets on the blower and tells me he needs to back up the contents of his portable PC which, because of software constraints, has a 10GB drive partitioned into a 2GB boot drive and 8GB D: drive. Oh, and he forgets to mention, the C: drive is full but for around 200MB of free space, and he has no backup device.

So the machine arrives chez Dorn, and I set about bunging a CardBus net card in there to attach it to my network. Which brings up problem number one. The drivers won’t load. There’s not enough room on the hard disk.

Move ‘em

I’m a brave little soldier, though, so I temporarily shift some directories over onto the D: drive to make space for the drivers, and after downloading a full new set from the Web, manage to get the Psion GoldCard operational.

The we eneter the next phase – backing up the full disk. No problem. Windows 98Se comes complete with a backup utility that can happily write to a file – it doesn’t have to talk to a tape drive. As long as the drive you want to write to has a letter assigned to it, Robert’s your father’s brother and Fanny’s your aunt.

Piece of cake. I assign the drive letter F: to a directory shared from one oy my own PCs, and set the backup away. An hour or so later, there’s a 1.8GB .QIC file sat in the folder on my machine. As my mate said… “Cool!”

Store ‘em

Next job is to get the 1.8GB onto something that he can take away with him, and refer to if he needs to restore anything. A quick riffle through my notes reveals that this box I hadn’t opened contained a CD burning tool that allows you to “Span” disks. From Roxio, the program is called WinOnCD5. Lest that confuses you, don’t worry – it confused me too.

Here we have Roxio, the software off-shoot of Adaptec, which is rightly famous for Eazy CD Creator, which has been my preferred tool for burning CDs for, it seems, aeons, publishing WinOnCD, a tool which, last time I tried it, I just couldn’t hack.

Never mind. The manual said to could do what I wanted it to do, so I installed it, clicked the right button – which was ridiculously easy to find – added the 1.8GB QIC file to the burn list, and clicked on the BURN! Button.

Twelve minutes and three disks later, the job was complete. Just to be sure, I slipped the first of the three CDs into a drive and double clicked on the “let me get at my data” utility that WinOnCD5 thoughtfully drops on there, and restored the complete file into another directory on another computer on the network.

Impressed

I couldn’t help feeling slightly proud of myself – although I have no idea why, other than I’d actually remembered something useful – and very, very impressed at the ease and facility with which the whole operation had been completed.

Indeed, I have decided that I’m going to back the whole of the contents of my main hard disk up onto a CD set in just this way. I suspect that it will take rather more than three CDs, mind – probably more like 30 – but just imagine what you could do with this particular facility.

For instance, a bog standard, straightforward Windows XP installation, with Office and one or two essential applications, can easily use up a Gig or more of hard disk – but you could get the lot onto maybe a couple of CDs, three at the most.

So, when you’ve got your PC set up, load WinOnCD5 into it, and back the whole thing up, then, when the inevitable happens, all you need to do it simply re-load the whole kit and caboodle – it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

It just goes to show, doesn’t it? A utility that I would not have given disk space to four years ago turns into something that, now, I think I won’t be able to do without.

Dazed? Yes. Confused? Yes Happy? You bet!

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David Dorn