Nov. 3, 2004

Hi, All! This Week: A big bug in Windows Part - 1

Dear Mr. ComputerFAQ:

I had a power outage while my computer was on but idle, causing a bad shutdown, which corrupted my Windows Operating System. This caused loss of all of my files on my hard drive. Could I have a second hard drive and install all my data, document and application files on it? Then Operating System crashes would not affect any of these other files?
My OS was corrupted by a bad shutdown and it appeared I'd lost everything on the HD. Fortunately, a computer tech was able to recover my files but apparently often in Windows PC's an OS corruption does cause loss of the entire HD. That's just crazy. Why would crash or corruption of OS have any effect on non-OS files stored on the hard drive?
On Macs, corruption or crash of OS has no effect on any non-OS files on the OS hard drive. The only way a Mac would lose data files, documents, applications, etc. would be if the hard drive itself crashed so badly that it was unrecoverable which doesn't happen even once per five years. We do have an OS problem perhaps once per two years requiring reinstall of the OS but that has no effect on data files, documents, applications or anything else on the hard drive. If the OS becomes unusable we just reinstall the OS and go ahead with work.
If this is the way Windows PC's work, why not install a second hard drive in a Windows PC and use it for all your data files, documents, applications and everything else? Then, if the OS becomes corrupted, destroying all files on that hard drive, you wouldn't lose your data files, documents or applications. You'd just reinstall OS on its hard drive and continue using your data files documents and applications which, being on the second drive, would not have been effected.

Mr. Curious about PC Hard Drives

Dear Curious:

Yes, this is a problem with the older versions of Windows. What, if anything, we can do about it next week, as I am out of space for this week.

'Til next week,
(ComputerFAQ#214)


Robert

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