VirtualPC -- A Good Alternative?

[Chu]

Hello all. Like most people, I pretty much do a yearly computer wipe, but also with all the encoding I do the time it takes to get things to where I want them again is just ungodly long. I was thinking, why not just get a copy of VirtualPC and do all my encoding on that? I figure :

1. Don't have to worry about system wipes.
2. Trivial to backup.
3. Trivial to test bleeding edge things without hosing my system (just copy the .vpc file and go)
4. Can clone all my settings onto any PC.

etc . .

The one downside appears to be proformance. If I decide to do this, how much of a hit are we talking about?

[Neo Neko]

In short. Substantial. What you meant to think of were ghost images. Install everything how you want it. Then back it up. If anything goes awry just restore the backup and viola.

[powderkegz]

Yes, Ghost images are cool, but not all that useful - I also reinstall once a year, and new versions of all the programs I want are always out so I always have to start from scratch anyway :/ Just the curse of using Windows, I suppose. One of these days I'll get around to converting my whole setup to Linux, but not just yet .....

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by powderkegz
Yes, Ghost images are cool, but not all that useful

Don't be so sure.

Originally posted by powderkegz
- I also reinstall once a year, and new versions of all the programs I want are always out so I always have to start from scratch anyway :/

You don't "have to" start from scratch. You could always install the new software over the old and update the ghost.

Originally posted by powderkegz
Just the curse of using Windows, I suppose. One of these days I'll get around to converting my whole setup to Linux, but not just yet .....

Take it from someone who has been using Linux for about a decade now. It is great. But can be screwed up just like windows if you start installing things willy nilly. I just recently re-did a system with Gentoo on it. Gentoo is one of my favorite distro. But things had started to go awry. Between bad disk clusters etc the system was having troubles. So I backed up all my data and litteraly threw yoper on it. System is running great for now. But I am sure if I start messing around again things will bog down again. Linux is not fool proof. Just generally designed better. But it can still have issues. ;)

[Doom9]

reinstalling often should also give you an idea of the tools you really use. I run a pretty stripped down windows at home, only containing what I really need (so stuff like Office stays out). That way I can have everything re-setup in 1.5 hours.

I would not agree that having a ghost image is the solution to everything. Sure, it substantially speeds up reinstallation, but if you have to remove old software and install new one, it'll still take time, and more importantly, you know how much setup can be screwed under Windows (and it's not Microsoft's fault but programmers that do not include proper cleanup routines in their software).. after installing a bunch of new software over old one, you're bound to end up with some problems along the way.

As far as VirtualPC (or VMWare for that matter, which I'm using on a daily basis) goes, I would not recomment it for heavy duty daily work. It's more useful as a testbed (see how your software behaves under different OS's), but especially I/O intensive stuff is really better suited for a physical infrastructure, rather than a virtual one.

[D3s7]

The new version of ghost "claims" to do incremental backups .... i haven't tested it personally but the logic makes ghostimages for restore a little quicker, especially if your system changed quite a bit since the last ghost...

although, all of use who do incremental / differencial backups know the problems w/ them :)

[trbarry]

I usually make one ghost right after installing the OS and one more after installing updates and maybe some core software. Usually one of them is safe and quick to go back to for a nuke&pave if needed.

- Tom

[Chu]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
In short. Substantial. What you meant to think of were ghost images. Install everything how you want it. Then back it up. If anything goes awry just restore the backup and viola.

I'm really not talking about Ghosting. I've had to .vpc files across multiple systems before for some funky CS project testing, and it does work.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Chu
I'm really not talking about Ghosting. I've had to .vpc files across multiple systems before for some funky CS project testing, and it does work.

Yes it will work. But it will be dog slow for media purposes. I have setups with Qemu in order to future proof some aging data aplications I have. And it works great. I can run the software under windows under almost any host OS I want on almost every system in existance. But it is as Doom said. The IO speeds are awfull. And you need the IO speeds. VPC encoding is not going to be advisable. At least not untill everyone is on one of those up coming IBM Power PC based CEL workstations capable of concurrently running multiple OS natively.

When I say slow I am not just speaking from my qemu experience. I have run under MS VPC, VMWare, Bochs and a few others I can't recall. They are all IO dogs that make any IO intensive process painfull. Latency is awful because of all the translation and abstraction.