WinXP Recovery and Page File

[SonicVanguard]

Hi Everyone.

I'm trying to setup a new system for a friend. She's not the most computer literate person so I want the system farily bullet proof. She's moving from an old Gateway Win98se system that is over 7 years old.

We purchased a Asus P4P800-MX, a Celeron D 2.26G CPU, 512Meg RAM, a 80Gig S-ATA WD HDD, an Enlight case and WinXP-sp2 Home OEM edition all from NewEgg. The installation went very smoothly and I installed AVG Free, Microsoft Anti-Spyware and activated the Windows firewall after discussing the differences between that and ZoneAlarm - she felt fine with the XP firewall. I also installed Firefox and Thunderbird which she had used on the old system. I copied over everything from her old HDD and decided to keep the old HDD in her new rig for backup purposes.

What I would like to do - but am not sure how - is setup the old HDD as a true backup drive. Rather than utilize the C: drive for the pagefile and recovery files, I'd like to use the old HDD for this purpose. Can this be done and if so, how? After looking over the setting for both the system recovery and the pagefile, I don't see anywhere to specify a path for this to occur. But I have seen turnkey video editing systems that are setup this way - a OS disk, a SCSI or S-ATA RAID array for editing and another HDD setup for the OS pagefile and backing up the OS disk - so I know this can be done. I just can't figure out how.

TIA.

[Force Flow]

For the pagefile, go to Control Panel > System > “Advanced” tab and under “Performance”, click “Settings”. Go to the “Advanced” tab and under “Virtual Memory”, click “Change”.

In here, you can disable the current pagefile and set a new page file on a secondary drive. Select the drive letter that displays the Page File size. Select “No paging file” and hit “Set”. Next, select the separate hard drive/partition. Select “Custom Size” and set the Initial Size and the Maximum equal to 1.5 to 2 times greater than the total of system’s RAM. For example, if your system has 512MB of RAM, set the two values equal to 1024MB. Hit “Set” and OK after you’re done. Reboot when prompted.


As for the "recovery files" you mention, if you're talking about system restore, I don't *think* you can place the restore files on a seperate HDD/partition.

Or, is this more of what you were looking for? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ed/backup.mspx

[eXe]

I know one backup software which able to save your recovery files on separate parttion and protect it by password,so no one can use it without password.Using the HDD for backuping isn't a good idea,try better to use cd or dvd for backuping

Good luck,man!
Wish your friend never has problems

[SonicVanguard]

She doesn't want to put any money into the backup software - and she doesn't have a CD or DVD writer so that's not an option.

I'm wondering is there is something like a batch file that could be run to copy (not move) the system restore files to the other HDD?

[macko72]

If you don't wona to spend money and will use XP you can automate XP Backup utility to work every day at same time, to overwrite yestardays, and to place backup to diferent place like( second partition, or second HDD).
And note that if you use backup utility you dont need System Recovery you can swich it off.
To reach backup utility click Start > all programs > accessories > system tools >backup
then you can choose either (recomended) advanced mode or wizard what ever you like!!!

[Force Flow]

This may do the trick: http://www.pcmech.com/newsletter/vie...=7&type=html#4

I'm not sure how this would work with restore files since they are usually "in use"