My computer is a 4 year old Dell with 4 gb. RAM, a 2.8 gb. processor and a Seagate IDE hard drive. The machine has had serious use on a daily basis and I am beginning to worry that the "C" drive is nearing the end of its useful life (or maybe it's not but I've decided to worry about it). If the first one fails, I do not want to spend 2-3 days reconfiguring a new hard drive, calling software mfr's begging for another install, etc. 

You can buy IDE Seagate hard drives of an even larger capacity than the original hard drive for less than $100.00.  I would like the second hard drive to replicate the "C" drive so that if anything should happen to the older one, the drives could be switched. 

How should this be done? I could use the old DOS command to copy "C" to "D" or is there software that makes the second drive "raid" the first one?

Your advice would be appreciated.  

Thanks,

Stan  

 

 

 

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Stanley Winikoff |  Dell Moser Lane & Loughney  |  Attorneys and Mediators  | 525 William Penn Place | Suite 3700 |  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  15222  |  T:412.281.3333  |   F:   412.202.3565 

Stan,

There are a number of ways that you can accomplish this. For example, Acronis TrueImage 2009, as well as some previous versions, allows you to make image backups and/or clone disks. Cloning is probably the simplest process if your system has the capability of supporting multiple drives, which your post implies. However, there are a couple of caveats:

1.  Using Raid configurations requires a little more effort than you would get in return advantages because of the necessity to reconfigure your system if you have to swap drives (i.e., C drive fails). Nevertheless, it is a viable approach if you know what you're going.  However, it wouldn't be my first choice (i.e., KISS).

2.  Whether you backup and restore or clone a disk, you have to keep the backup current by making sure that the backup program does regular daily backups.  Acronis can do this by scheduling backups.  I use Acronis TrueImage to back up twice a day, once at noon and once at midnight.  This always gives me to backup images in case one goes south, and keeps them relatively current.  However, if you use a backup utility like Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost, and there are others besides these two, I would suggest that you get an external drive that is at least 500 GB to use for backup purposes.  Or, add another internal drive that you reserve entirely for backups.  The reason is that you can't store your backups on drive C for obvious reasons.  Nevertheless, this is what I do.

3.  If the drive that you are going to use as a replacement drive has a different configuration or is not absolutely identical to your original drive, then the machine fingerprint associated with DNS will change when you insert the new drive (i.e., when cloned or restored from a backup).  This will result in DNS prompting you with the security code dialog, for which there is now a relatively easy solution.  Nevertheless, be aware of the fact that any change in hardware, particularly hard drives, will alter the machine fingerprint and require a new activation code.  In short, the entire process that you wish to consider is not pure plug-and-play and can be confusing if you don't understand what's going on and how to resolve it.  Regardless, there are a number of us who have been through this process and can help you walk through it.

The bottom line is that regardless of what you do or how you do it, there are certain things that you need to understand so as to make your transition from one drive to the other as painless as possible.  As I said above, "Keep It Simple Stupid" is the best approach.

One tip.  Don't use the DOS copy command: (1) it won't work except to preserve your data because you cannot use the DOS copy command to produce an identical/bootable C drive image, and (2) talk about taking two or three days, the DOS copy command is the slowest method that you could possibly use even if it did work.  Besides, even if it did work, the DOS copy command is not what you would want because that would make copying tedious and require that you sit by the system for several hours and would require your intervention for each folder and subfolder.  If it did work, what you would want to use would be the DOS xcopy command.  Regardless, don't do it.  It won't solve your problem, it won't do what you wanted to do, and you would likely be long dead and buried before it completed.

Chuck Runquist
Owner, GEMCCON - The Choice of Intelligence
Speech Recognition Consulting and Training

"Life's Rule #1: Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend."  (Variant of Murphy's Law  -  Edward A. Murphy, Jr)

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It makes sense to use backup software and I take it that it would not be possible to just switch the drives without difficulty. The automatic backup feature does follow the "KISS" principle and that is what I'm going to do. I've already ordered TrueImage and I will talk to a friend who used to work at Seagate when they had a research lab here in Pittsburgh to see what drive would be closest to the one I have although I expect that 4 years brings significant changes to the firmware/physical configuration of the drive itself.

 Thanks for your wisdom and common sense. Stan Winikoff 

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_________________________________________________________

Stanley Winikoff |  Dell Moser Lane & Loughney  |  Attorneys and Mediators  | 525 William Penn Place | Suite 3700 |  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania  15222  |  T:412.281.3333  |   F:   412.202.3565 

It is highly unlikely that you will find a match for your current drive.  Even the slightest change in hardware configuration among different drives that are both 500 GB can trigger the necessity to reset the activation code.  I ran into that many years ago with one Maxstor 120 GB and one Seagate 120 GB drive.  Theoretically they were identical for all practical purposes.  However, DNS picked up the difference.  Fortunately solving this problem is relatively simple, but back then even Nuance technical support didn't really understand what was going on and the process was exceedingly tedious.  In fact, without understanding what was going on and without access to the activation server that users now have when prompted with the security key dialog, you couldn't even uninstall DNS so as to be able to reinstall it.

My point is even the smallest differences can be detected.  Sometimes you get lucky.  However, just be prepared.

Chuck Runquist
Owner, GEMCCON - The Choice of Intelligence
Speech Recognition Consulting and Training

"Life's Rule #1: Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend."  (Variant of Murphy's Law  -  Edward A. Murphy, Jr)

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Is there a limit to the number of times one can successfully be sent to the activation server?

Yesterday I booted my computer and was sent there; it was only after I reactivated that figured out that one of my RAM SIMMs was loose, and the system had booted with 6 GB of RAM active, not 8 GB.

After I re-seated the loose SIMM and started Windows with 8 GB installed, Dragon NaturallySpeaking sent me to the activation server again.  I did not know whether it would recognize that configuration is one has seen before (normally I do put up with 8 GB RAM), but apparently not.

Oddly, however, I have booted up twice since then and each time DNS and that the activation server.  This is a new and stable installation of Windows, and the computer has been acting well; so, I do understand why the hardware fingerprint is not stable -- and I do not know whether there is a finite number of activations that I am going through at this problem occurs.  And, if there is, I do not know what I will do if the problem continues in I reached a limit for activations.

If anybody can help with information about the number of allowed activations or about possible reasons why the software may be perceiving my hardware fingerprint anything to change even though as far as I can tell it is not changing any more, I would be grateful.

Andy.

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DNS 12 Professional with KB 2012, VoiceComputer 12, and Samson Airline 77.  

Running on Maingear Shift Desktop: Intel Core i7 3930K (Sandy Bridge-E) overclocked to 4.2G5Hz, with 256KB X 6 L2 and 12MB L3 Cache; ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Motherboard, 64GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 Memory;  2 X Nvidia Geoforce GTX-580 display adapters; 8 X Samsung 830 SSDs arrayed as 512GB R0 (OS) and 713GB R10 (DATA).

This feature is designed to prevent people from ghosting (copying) a hard drive and attempting to get away without installing NaturallySpeaking on a 2nd computer but in our opinion, it's too sensitive and unnecessary. We think it's fairly rare that someone attempts to steal software by ghosting a hard drive. In this situation, NaturallySpeaking is simply requesting a fingerprint of your system but we believe that DNS is smart enough to realize that you haven't attempted to make an illegally copy of the application. Making a minor system change such as adding a hard drive, video card or RAM can trigger this event. In this situation, NaturallySpeaking shouldn't (but nothing is guaranteed) use up 1 of your 10 activations.

PS: If you run out of activations, contact Nuance Technical Support (800) 654-1187 and if that fails to produce satisfactory results, simply use your KnowBrainer command software to launch NaturallySpeaking and when prompted to activate, click No. Although you won't be able to view the Dragon bar, KnowBrainer will force NaturallySpeaking to open (activated or not), open the last known user profile and display NaturallySpeaking in Tray Icon Only view with full menu access. The only catch is you will have to remember to save your user files before exiting KnowBrainer because it will instantly close NaturallySpeaking.

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