Hi Daniel,

I'm inclined to follow your suggestion about using disk images to backup before major installations, but I presume some preliminary steps are needed before I can even do that. It's not entirely clear to me what preparations are necessary, how much I can do with Windows 2000 Professional by itself, and how much more I can do with with Partition Magic (and when).

Using Win2K Pro's Disk Management facility, I don't see any way to simply create a new partition (or "extended partition"), and I don't know if the concept of "logical drives" is applicable for disk imaging purposes. It appears that Win2K Pro alone can't just create a new disk partition without my having to do a clean reinstall of Windows and all of the preinstalled programs. Do I need to physically repartition the disk to use a tool like Norton Ghost? Could I use Partition Magic at some later date to do the partitioning, after installing a bunch of stuff on my present monolithic C: drive, without having to reinstall what's been installed so far?

Since my machine is starting out in a clean state that can be reconstructed from the Dell-supplied CDs, I'm willing to take the modest risk of installing a fair number of familiar "safe" apps before I take my first snapshot and begin using the machine seriously. I'm trying to understand if Partition Magic would make it possible for me to postpone repartitioning, if that is indeed necessary at all. It's going to be a while before I need to worry about optimal utilization of disk space or performance on this new machine.

I will follow the advice from you and Cindy about doing VFP version installations from oldest to newest. The part I'm still struggling to figure out is what to do first, before I get to the FoxPro installations. Thanks very much for your helpful advice.

Mike

>Michael,
>
>I think there are many different personal preferences when it comes to configuring a development environment. What follows are some recommandations that have been working well for me for the last years.
>
>First of all, I strongly advise you to work with disk images such as PowerQuest DriveImage or Norton Ghost. Before you start changing anything, take an image of your current drive.
>
>1. Partitoning
>I would create at least two partitions maybe three. It makes it much easier to organize your data and plan for a backup strategy. I recommend separating programs and data. I have all my programs on my C:\ drive and all my data on the D:\ drive. The easiest way to partition your drive without loosing any data is with a utility like Partition Magic from PowerQuest. How you size your partitions depends on different factors. For example, the size of the partition impacts the cluster size:
>
>

>Partition Size (GB) Sectors Per Cluster	 Cluster Size
>------------------- -------------------- ------------
>0.256-8.01	                       8          4 K
>8.02-16.02                            16          8 K
>16.03-32.04                           32         16 K
>> 32.04                               64         32 K
>

>Large partitions are handy, but if you have many small files, then a lot of disk space is wasted because each file is allocated to at least one cluster. For example, a 1Byte file on a 32GB partition occupies 32K of disk space.
>
>2. Backup
>In my experience, most of the time when you're forced to format/reinstall a system, it's because of an install/uninstall that didn't go well. The best way to protect you from these bad surprises is to make an image of your C:\ drive before you install new software. I often make a snapshot before and after installing new software. This allows me to make a rollback if something goes wrong. This is why I split the data from the programs. If you decide to work with disk images, then the fastest way is to save the image to another partition in a first step and save the image to CDs in a second step. To create an image of my C:\ drive (4 GB) it takes about 18 minutes.
>
>3. Installing different version of Fox
>I have FPD2.6, FPW2.6, VFP6 and VFP7 on my machines without any problems. Installing FP2.x doesn't impact anything since these installations don't write anything to the registry. As for the sequence of installing the different versions of VFP, I would suggest you start from the oldest version. I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but it's probably safer this way.
>
>Good luck!
>
>>I've just purchased a Dell Inspiron 8100 notebook computer with Windows 2000 Professional. It's got a 48GB hard drive as one large FAT32 partition, with an assortment of preinstalled programs, including Office XP Professional. Before I install a few dozen additional apps on this machine, including various incarnations of FoxPro, I would like to plan the most sensible sequence of steps. Here are some of my questions and concerns:
>>
>>- should I repartition the hard drive before doing any installations, and if so how?
>>
>>If it's unnecessary or can be done later without reinstalling everything, I would love to punt this issue for now. Is it likely that I will end up needing to go back to square one if I don't do something about reformatting and/or partitioning up front? Also I'm confused about exactly how to go about creating a new partition under Win2K Pro, and whether a separate "logical drive" would suffice for most purposes. It's unclear whether I can create additional "extended partitions" (or any other type of partition) at this point without reinstalling everything that came preinstalled on the machine.
>>
>>- should I install Norton utils before anything else?
>>
>>I've got a complete set of Norton utility packages, including both Norton Internet Security and Norton SystemWorks (which includes Norton Ghost). I'm very concerned about taking precautions to avoid the likelihood of EVER having to do a complete reinstall. Should I install Norton SystemWorks first (to get Ghost), and would it be best to have created a separate drive partition (or logical drive) before that step? Should I install Norton Internet Security first, to be sure I can safely get live updates?
>>
>>- does it matter what sequence I use to install versions of FoxPro?
>>
>>I will want to install FPD2.6, FPW2.6, VFP3.0b, VFP5 (maybe), VFP6, and eventually VFP7 on this machine. Is it necessary do these installations in sequence? Is there much chance of problems if I install an older version of FoxPro after a newer one (assuming I use separate directories, of course)? More generally, how likely is it that installing older apps after newer ones will cause problems that would have been avoided by adhering to an installation sequence that starts with oldest apps first?
>>
>>- any other tips, e.g. should I disable write cache on the hard disk?
>>
>>The Dell Inspiron machine came with Write cache enabled on the hard disk, which seems risky, especially with a FAT-based file system. Should I disable write caching to reduce the risk of major corruption that might necessitate a complete reinstallation?
>>
>>Thanks in advance for any advice on all of this.