Recovery Partition? Or something else?

J

jnick

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 25, 2004
Messages
2,888
Being straightforward, my sister and her husband are pretty bad with the computer. I am simply tired of dealing with their stupidity, from browsing various porn sites, or clicking 'YES' to every advertisement/pop-up that shows up, including the "Ultimate Drive Cleaner" which stripped every driver out of their system...:rolleyes:

My dad gave them one of his old PCs (P4 2.6Ghz) roughly 5-6 years ago. While it's still trucking, it would seem that every 4 months or so it faces a major catastrophic OS failure because of their ignorance.

The problem is, the PC was really intended for my niece and nephew. My nephew of 9 years old puts my sister and brother-in-law to shame when it comes to using the PC. However, he always loses out because they seem to constantly break it.

My parents and I have decided to build the kids a new computer. E6600, ATI 5770, 500GB HDD, 2GB RAM, 500Watt PSU, etc. This will allow him to play the more current games that my dad and I play so he can game with us. However, we would like to institute a method that should my sister or her husband "break it", we can easily recover the system back to a base OS build with-in hours instead of days.

Therefore, I was going to simply partition the C: drive, create an image with Acronis, and should the system's OS get corrupted, they can restore the image. I would also have this image on a second data drive connected to their computer as well as on my dad's server located off-site. Therefore, I would always have a copy of the image should there be a major hardware failure of some sort.

Is this the best/most efficient way? Is there something better or quicker? This seems simple, easy and effective. I just want to make sure I'm not missing something!

Thank you,
 
I haven't used it personally, but SteadyState might be something to look into. Maybe get the first PC fixed up, and use that to keep things working properly. If theirs just keeps working, they'd probably be less likely to mess with the kids' PC.
 
Not familiar w/SteadyState, but I think the OP's plan of action w/regards to the image backup sounds solid. That's what I do w/my father's PC, 'cept I've just kept the image on a DVD... I suppose I could keep it on a hidden partition on his laptop and it'd make the recovery process faster, I think I created it on DVD originally when the laptop's drive went bad at one point (which would be a good reason to do both).

If they're not already using separate users they should be, and if you haven't installed AdBlock and some robust malware protection I'd make sure to do that as well... Altho bad habits and clueless clicking will foil any of that. You could try raising UAC's level and installing something like MSE or Norton (which usually prompt the user less than something like Avira, and when they do it's simpler to understand).

NIS also has a nice Google search results plug-in which flags any dangerous sites w/a simple exclamation mark... And contrary to the bad rap it built up a few years ago it's one of the lightest yet most effective security suites out there.
 
you could put a second drive in and ghost wain the main drive acts up or maybe ghoat to a usb drive thats way the kids has the backup no were near the pc that way if they do mess it up and it looses the petition he can still recover the system

another system would be a small whs and that way you could have a few backups for when games get installed and save points etc you would have a better way of recovery without loosing to much stuff
 
I agree with the idea of Acronis. It's simple and fairly reliable for restoration. Just make sure they can't in any way get to the image you create and accidentally delete it. From the way you describe them, they're likely to find a way to screw up even the most carefully laid plans. Good luck. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top