Hi Shaun.

Thanks for altering the requirements for posting to your blog (unless it get abused). I have no problems signing up for these things and I tried, but it asked me what my website/homepage was, and as I don’t have one, I closed the window and didn’t continue – perhaps I could have put google? I used to work for IBM as a technical disaster recovery consultant. However careful you are it is a pain in the butt to restore your system and not loose any data. I always do loooong formats on drives at customers/work/home as it is worth checking your drive is up to scratch and you are less likely to suffer data loss (yawn). Doing a quick format just nulls the file index and specifies the geometric boundaries of the partition (yawn again) but it doesn’t check the integrity of the drive. It is a very good idea to install your OS on one partition and your data and perhaps apps on another. As you say if/when you have to wipe your boot drive all the useful bits are still there. Having seen and experienced many computing disasters I recommend 1) a good backup regime to CD/DVD/tape/LAN and 2) if you have the space, install a second basic bootable OS which you could boot off cleanly if having probs with your main OS. You can do this with NT/2000/XP.

But I’m probably teaching you to suck eggs. You should work in this industry if you enjoy it.

Cheers,

Johnnie Giffin