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October 27, 2006
Dear CNET members,
Happy Friday! As a result of last week's Q&A topic on converting vinyl records and tapes to digital, many members submitted similar questions about converting their 8mm and VHS tapes to DVDs. Well, you're in luck; we covered a similar topic in one of our past newsletters, so check it out here. Hopefully it will help answer your questions. If not, you can always post your question in the CNET forums for further assistance from our helpful members and moderators.
Now on to this week's topic from Mervin about creating your own system restore disc like manufacturers do. In this week's answers, you'll find that many members suggested different methods on how to create your own system restore disc or bootable image disc, and in one way or another, most members suggested using a third-party utility. So to get you started, here is this week's winning answer by Will, who gives us some details on how he does this task. If any of our members has a method or technique that doesn't require a third-party utility to make a personal system restore disc, please join us in this week's discussion to tell us all about it. Thank you all for your participation and have a wonderful weekend!
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Member Question of the Week
Hello, my hobby job is building computers. I have always wanted to know how I can make a restore CD or DVD so that all I have to do to restore a computer is to place this CD or DVD into the optical drive and, presto, just like HP or eMachines, I can restore a unit and reregister with Microsoft. If this is possible, please give me step-by-step instructions, and if it's not possible, what could I do that would come close? Thanks!
Submitted by:
Mervin M.
We all know that we should back up our systems, but even the most experienced techies rarely take the same care of their personal systems as they would of their employers' systems. The question of doing backups is more complicated than it first appears. The answers vary by what you are backing up and for what purpose. Do you need disaster recovery or just protection from hardware failures? I recommend taking backups so that you are protected from disaster. Then you are also protected from lesser failures. For this, you want backups on removable media that you store away from your machine.
Then, is it the bootable system or your personal data? Having had to rebuild systems, I recommend keeping data in a separate partition from the bootable drive. Then you can back up or restore either without affecting the other. But you want backups for both.
Submitted by:
Will H.
For
Will's
efforts, we're sending him his choice of any
CNET Learning CD.
Community Buzz
 Each week we take a look at topics discussed in the forums.
Best regards and enjoy!
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Check out next week's question:
I have a poor sense of direction in the nonvirtual world. Buying a GPS unit that gives directions makes sense, but I need help figuring out the different features and how much to spend on one. What kinds of features are there to consider? Are certain brands more trustworthy? Who has the best coverage area? Are there service fees, and if so, what's an average amount? Any information would be helpful.
--Submitted by:
John L.
If you have the answer,
e-mail us at messageboards@cnet.com.
If we choose your response, you'll get a
free CNET Learning CD.
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