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Strategies for using user-data folders in Windows 7?

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Stoic Joker:
I haven't done imaging for years, but I've been contemplating getting into it again... also, when I do a clean reinstall, I do want the format to get rid of any leftover junk and have a fragmentation-free clean slate.
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I'm not really sure what you mean by leftover junk...anything on the drive that is unwanted is delete-able (I assume I'm missing something).-Stoic Joker (January 21, 2010, 06:00 AM)
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System Volume Information :)-f0dder (January 22, 2010, 07:50 AM)
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...Which contains one metric boat load of system recovery snapshots and etc.

Hm... For some reason I ws thinking that the install cleaned that out. *Shrug* but it can be deleted if need be. I don't do it frequently enough to quip off the top of me head, but I'll play with it this weekend if I have time.

f0dder:
I wouldn't expect the windows install to clean up System Volume Information, but I honestly don't know - it might not, it might, or it might remove snapshots but not other stuff in there... at any rate, there's something nice about knowing that you have a completely fresh filesystem, without the possibility of any old corruptions :)

tinjaw:
The my whatever folders were moved out of the (My) Documents root because too many company networks were having issues with backing up users music file collections.
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-Stoic Joker (January 20, 2010, 06:03 AM)
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Excellent comments. The corporate world is so different than the home. And small businesses are the ones that have to deal with things like this all the time with small staffs and even small budgets.

tinjaw:
Corporate IT has been dealing with this for decades and everybody still comes with their own twist on things. I have never seen two shops do it the same way. Even different departments within a company often handle these issues differently.

What is a lowly home user to do?

Stoic Joker:
Corporate IT departments hopefully have at least one person who has read and understands the MS white papers on how to setup a network.

Mid sized company networks (like the ones I see daily never do, and) tend to be a train wreck; growth never allows enough time for organization (until it's too late - Then I show up, and tend to sigh alot...).

Small companies (I see these too) that use work groups and working servers, are doomed. There is just no right way to do that in this day and age.

Home users can either just backup the user folder, or redirect the folders they use back into Documents (ala XP) and back that up. Or use some manner of imaging strategy as the tweaker/power user types do. For home users the method isn't really important ... the frequency is. Only exception is (in my experience) restoring from a multi session CD backup always fails. I once met a fellow with 3 complete sets of a CD backup...(9 CDs total)...all of which were full, yet failed to restore a single file. The external USB/FireWire/ESATA drives do seem to work well enough however.

I've got the purchasing managers home comp on the bench right now ... hundreds of family photos ... and a failing drive. They were going to do a backup - when they had time...

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