What's the best way to configure a new machine?

I ordered an i8600 with XP Home because I already have a copy of XP Pro that I want to install and didn't want to pay the difference to Dell. I was planning on completely wiping all partitions and loading a fresh install of XP, and I have a few questions:

1. Have you encountered any problem deleting partitions (including hidden ones) created by Dell?
2. On a 60gb (total) drive, how much space should I create on a partion for storing images?
   1. I plan on creating 2 images:
   1. One w/ main programs on it (Office/Visual Studio/Favorite Games/etc)
   2. One "everything" image that will get updated for backups
   2. Should I use an external drive to store images instead?
3. Does Norton Ghost support saving the image to an external (USB/Firewire) drive?

Thanks for your help, and any other new notebook setup tips, cautions, or experiences you want to share are appreciated!

Rufus

 

I don't have a dell, bt usually there is not a problem with deleting hidden partitions if you have the restore disks already. On #2 that is up to you, I would not store backup images on the drive installed in the notebook itself, I would put backup images on an external drive or onto writeable DVDs. Yes Ghost does support extenal USB drives. Here is what I do. I don't create image files, I use ghost to do a drive to drive copy from my notebook to my USB hard drive. I do this every 2-3 weeks or so depending on how much changes; then I will also take the USB drive and put onto my desktop system that has a DVD writer and use ghost to backup the USB drive to DVDR, this makes a bootable backup that is on several or more DVDs depending on how much data you have. One thing I also would do if I were you is that right after you get XP on the notebook with all your basic applications(not more than 9GB of data if possible)and make a backup to your USB drive and then find a way to get it onto DVDR, this way if you ever need or want to start fresh from the beginning you can just boot from this 2-DVD set and get 90% of the way there in no time at all.

Jack

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill

 

Hy,
I own an Latitude from Dell. I too reinstalled the whole system, after I heard that someone reportedhis system crashed before quite often in the delivered state.
I havent had any problems regarding this. The hidden partition is only for the tech support and works as well when inserting the resource cd and booting up from that. So you can securely delete all on it.
For imaging I recommend an external drive. If the hard disk crashes- for what reasons ever- than it is likely that other partitions break as well. An external storage gives more reliability.
For ghost you will need a floppy disk. Or like me an usb stick where you transfer you ghost disk-image to.
The newer Dells support booting up from CD, USB, PCMCIA, LAN but not FireWire.
I did not create an exakt image of my docs. Instead I use Datakeeper to secure my files and use a second Win-Partition to boot up, whenever it may break. Other solution for restoring is Linux on CD: knopper.net. No installation needed and fully functional.

 

Thanks for your help, guys. Glad to hear that deleting all partitions shouldn't be a problem. My machine arrives today, so I can't wait to get started.

By the way, what prog do you use to delete partitions? Do I need to buy Partition magic, or does the XP cd cover my needs for this. Hard to justify spending $70 if I don't have to...

I haven't used Ghost before, so maybe when I get it this question will answer itself, but I'm curious why you do a drive-to-drive copy instead of an image file. Is it only so you can boot from it? And after you boot from, say, your bootable DVDs, is it really a lot faster to get the image back to the harddrive compared to restoring an image file?

I don't plan on taking an actual image so often, just one that has the basic apps installed. Then I will back up my data separately. The reason for this is that sometimes my system can gets slow when
I install/uninstall a lot and the registry gets a bunch of unneccesary entries, the drives get fragmented, etc. I don't want to have an image with all that stuff - just the OS and programs after a fresh install.

Thanks again,
Rufus