Recovery Position.
Wednesday 02 July, 2008
Apple has built in disk duplication and Time Machine. Microsoft has msbackup and absolutely no built in disk duplication.
In Apple’s world, you can use the original OS disc and Time Machine to fully restore a broken situation. Apple have gone to the extreme of producing a one-touch backup solution. Set that bad-boy up, once, then you’re good to go. In Microsoft’s world, you’re on your own skippy. It’s a dog-eat-cat world world out there.. to hell with ensuring the OS can be restored.
At this point you may well be thinking “what about System Restore? fucking noob”. System Restore is a wonderful drain on disk space (with the ever logical usage level set to 10% by default) — it even works, sometimes. It’s also a haven for net-nasties of nearly every flavour.
And it’s always a case of Russian Roulette as to whether it will heal an install. Or deep-six it. That’s assuming you can actually boot into your system to begin with. Logically one has to assume that’s just not possible if the install actually implodes.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I have backups. Mountains of data and cruft and bloat. And stuff that I might actually need at some point too. But the problem frequently comes down to a central location. And what, exactly, do I actually need to make sure I have? Microsoft have taught us that the average user shouldn’t see large portions of the drive and yet will somehow be armed with a keen knowledge of the right things to store in a safe place.
That’s a plan that will always work, right?
Now, having bled in Microsoft’s world for nearly as long as Windows has existed (at all) I’ve got the art of finding hidden-shit-I-really-need down pat. But the average user? Now you know why an entire Microsoft-centric industry of highly-trained individuals exists, to do just one thing. Recover your stuff.
And yet Microsoft, to this very day, still don’t understand they are responsible for enabling us. We can push the fucking button if needs be.. sure, but after decades of building operating systems, you’d think they would — being the pants wearer in the relationship — have got a fucking grip and built an OS that can be successfully recovered from reliable backups.
No. No they have not. Instead, one must frequently erase a system that had a working install — ensuring the pre-requisite multiple-hour forensics mission was successful — re-install the operating system. Find drivers for core hardware — like network cards — potentially without internet connectivity. Then re-install at least one service pack. Then all the security updates. Then the applications.
Only then, once Microsoft feel that the operating system is somehow magically complete again — and one is as certain as one can be that all the applications are back — can one even consider locating the aforementioned forensic data and then return it from whence it came.
In the same period of time it takes me to get back to a running OS, an Apple Mac user has already gotten their life back on track, as though nothing. ever. happened. Who was the ass-hat at Microsoft that allowed this to continue? Windows 7 is around the corner and, yet again, there is absolutely nothing slated to revolutionise data retention.
Do you know what is most damming about the whole situation? It’s such a common issue in the Microsoft world that it doesn’t sound at all odd that folks will re-install their operating system every few months for what appears to be absolutely no functional reason whatsoever. And that should be an entirely ridiculous notion, not the norm.
I’ve spent 2 days attempting to breathe life into the rapidly-decaying corpse that was once my operating system. In the end I have had to — like a great many frustrated users before me — accept defeat, destroy the operating system volume and start all over again.
And again I am reminded of how inadequate and boneheaded the entire situation really is. Nearly every other popular operating system has this nailed down. It’s (very) early on a Thursday morning, do you know where your data is?
