Whoopee, I get to retire my 'hex zero' hack (on BootCamp)
- From: Mark Conrad <noneof@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:38:39 -0700
As most knowledgeable BootCamp users know, it is a real PITA to back up
and restore a Vista partition on their Mac.
Even the Vista NGs abound with horror tales about standard backup
utilities not doing the job.
Not to even mention the extreme hassle it is to always have to
"activate" the damn Vista OS whenever one does a fresh re-install of
Vista.
Activation is a royal PITA that is imposed by $MS.
Back to the subject. Macs are easy to backup/restore.
In fact, if the Mac partition has 8 GB total of files, in a partition
that is 75 GB in size, I can easily reduce that 4 GB backup to a
compressed backup of only 4 GB, for archive purposes.
Not so with the Vista partition, I have to back up the entire 75 GB
Vista partition, due to the way that Vista scatters its files all over
the partition.
75 GB is a LOT of stuff, consumes an inordinate amount of precious disk
space.
My "hex zero" files were a clumsy hack, that allowed me to reduce that
huge 75-GB Vista file to 4 GB, for archive purposes whenever the Vista
backup file was not actually being used to restore Vista.
Fortunately, found a free utility named "Eraser" version 5.84 which is a
Windows utility that works with Vista.
<http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/>
Make sure you get the 5.84 version, else it will not work on Vista.
Its main purpose is to securely erase files so they can't be retrieved.
It CAN be made to erase free space and cluster slack space with hex
zeros by some not-too-obvious configuration of Eraser, not adequately
explained in the Help section of Eraser.
Mac users can take advantage of this free utility to drastically reduce
the size of their Vista backup file.
Just be VERY careful when you use it, else you could easily wipe out
both your Vista partition AND your Mac partition.
Mark-
.
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