Solutions: Preparing a backup hard drive

By JOHN TORRO
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 23, 2002

Q. The hard drive on my notebook was showing signs of crashing, so I purchased an identical hard drive with the idea of rebuilding my system on it. Is there any way I can duplicate my original hard disk (which is working okay) onto the new drive so that if the original fails, I can simply plug in the new one and be back up and running?

A. Yes, there is. Products I have used include Norton Ghost (www.symantec.com) and Powerquest Drive Image (www.powerquest.com). Each will allow you to make an image copy of one drive to another.

The process usually involves connecting the new drive to the PC as either a secondary master or a slave of the primary master, booting from a special diskette and running the image program. I have done this many times and it is easy, fast and usually 100 percent effective.

Situations like yours are a good example of what I refer to as being master of your domain. Always be prepared to replace anything on your PC either by backup or original media. Personal documents -- e-mail, photographs, etc. -- should be backed up. You should be ready to reinstall programs, including the operating system, from original media. You shouldn't have to live in fear of recreating your PC, which may only be a lightning strike away.

E-mail multiples when sent

Q. Sometimes when I send an e-mail, the recipient can receive one to 100 copies. My friends say they no longer want to hear from me. What could be going on?

A. Before you lose all your friends, you need to call your Internet service provider (from your address, it would be Road Runner) and explain your situation.

There is one condition where Outlook Express will send multiple e-mails from one, and this is by design: Outlook Express can be configured to break apart messages larger than a set kilobyte size. Outlook Express will break the message into smaller messages before it is sent. Chances are this is not your situation, but it's worth checking out. Do the following:

1. Start Outlook Express, then click Accounts on the Tools menu.

2. Click the Mail account you want to change (Road Runner), then click Properties.

3. On the Advanced tab, check to see if the "Break apart messages larger than KB" box is checked (x being the number of kilobytes). If so, click it to clear it.

4. Click OK, then Close, and quit Outlook Express.

XP system resources

Q. How do you find the percentage of system resources in Windows XP?

A. Good question. You're the first to write in asking about this regarding Windows XP. First, the comparison of System Resources between XP and other versions of Windows is apples and oranges. They are completely different things.

Performance and resources in Windows XP are measured in the traditional computer performance metrics of CPU (Processor), Memory (RAM), Disk usage and Locks and Latches (queing and interprocess communications). This information is almost impossible to measure accurately on a Windows 95, 98 and Me PC. However, on a Windows XP or Windows 2000/NT PC, these performance metrics are easily viewed using the Task Manager. You can get to the Task Manager by right-clicking the Task bar and selecting Task Manager. You can also get to it by doing an Alt-Ctrl-Del and clicking the Task Manager button. Click the "Show processes from all users" option box to see every process that is running on your PC.

The most interesting tab is the Processes tab. Clicking on a column name alternately sorts the processes in ascending and descending order. A quick click on the Mem Usage column sorts the processes from most to least use of memory. It's a great way to see what processes are taking the most memory. Aside from the default columns shown, you can click View, Select Columns, etc., to add performance metrics to your Task Manager view. You can also use the Task Manager to terminate processes by right-clicking on the process and selecting End Process. Keep in mind that there are many system processes running as part of the operating system with names you won't recognize (don't worry, the operating system won't allow you to terminate critical system processes).

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