Optimal PC experience

[Stahlmann]

There is theory, that PCs are faster and faster, but the bloated software makes them slower anyway
One more time, I experienced that fact.

0. I use Win7 (due to some properitary software).
1. What's yours minimalist software package? I think I suitable with Win7+drivers (hey, the newer version makes my old PC even slower ; Ethernet card, WiFi, graphics, USB, printer...)+Web browser (at the moment Chrominium, is there something faster?)+archiver (7zip)+PDF reader+(AdobeReader)+LibreOffice+Flash (I'm interested what I would miss without it)+Java (I'm interested what I would miss without it)...
2. All of additional data (photos, music) I store on some external drive.
3. I heard it's good to have "physical" copy of this "installed" system. How would you do that? I've never tackled this issue, so here I'am asking for the help (it must be easy to mount such "copy").
4. Next time, I'll need something I'll use PortableApps, just to not litter the register.

I tried Linux for fun and Windows for work, but the same tragedy occurs to linux (after some time of *layman* use).


Probably #helpdesk101
PS. This isn't sponsored

[TheWanderingScholar]

For phyiscal copy I imagine an external backup system on an external harddrive, for when your PC shits itself.

[bryan]

> There is theory, that PCs are faster and faster, but the bloated software makes them slower anyway

It's a fact that the PCs (HW) are getting faster and the SW is becoming more "bloated". Of course "bloated" is in the eye of the beholder; often times there are good reasons for adding the bloat.. (i.e. different goals than speed of program execution).

> 3. I heard it's good to have "physical" copy of this "installed" system. How would you do that? I've never tackled this issue, so here I'am asking for the help (it must be easy to mount such "copy").

Simplified advice: you can create a boot cd/USB of some OS (ubuntu live should work.. others may be more purpose built for maintenance operations) and get a second hard drive. Boot from the external device (CD/USB) and you can do a low level copy like: "dd if=/dev/sd? of=/dev/sd? bs=1M" From there the two drive contents are identical (assuming same capacity...).

This is useful if you are really happy with your system and want to be able to start from this point again. It's usually not necessary as it's better to just backup your data and start from a fresh install. But sometimes it makes sense.

[Stahlmann]

I am rather noobie in this field, so it's more about "use X as disc cloner". Do you have any recommendation?

How to make your method valid if my "win installation with drivers" is estimated to be 20 GB (on 200GB HDD) and then I want to it be copied to some other disc (like one ISO file or anything like that)? finally I need someway to mount that next time. Back then acronis was the name in the "gear" PC magazine.

Also next question:
Is there any way to encrypt external HDD, but "for the dummies" way?
I want to store there more private data (Hi NSA )

[enigmaT120]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+ ... 8&oe=utf-8

I have to encrypt my thumb drives to be able to use them in work (government) computers. The computers themselves prompt me though, so I didn't know how to do it just because I wanted to.

[bryan]

For faster copies with my method (by way of not copying unimportant bytes) on a large hard drive you would boot into the live CD and use "gparted" to shrink the (assumed) single partition of your system to have just a couple GB free space. From there you do the dd command but incorporate a "count" param so that it stops just past the end of the partition. After that, you can re-enlarge your original partition and reboot from either drive.

You're right there has been and are bootable environments that make this stuff more user friendly. I'm not aware enough of the current offerings to make a recommendation. You can probably google around or check reddit for the best "disk cloner" solution.

For encrypted external HDDs, it depends on exactly what you need. Though, again I can't really recommend any great option. If you are just encrypting the aforementioned backup, it might be enough to instead of make a byte-for-byte copy onto another disk, you can copy to a single large file instead (e,g, of=/home/bryan/clear-backup.img, then encrypt that with opennssl/gpg/7z, but be sure to consider files being removed from filesystem but the bytes not being removed from the HDD) or skip the intermediate step if using linux (i.e. pipe the output of dd to the opennssl/gpg/7z encryption).

[Stahlmann]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+ ... 8&oe=utf-8

I have to encrypt my thumb drives to be able to use them in work (government) computers. The computers themselves prompt me though, so I didn't know how to do it just because I wanted to.

Well, I mean it's pain in the neck to encrypt/decrypt whole external disc using software like VeraCrypt just to copy some minor photos from external (it's mix of backup and storage) to "normal" HDD (and vice versa).

Is there any smart way to solve that? I like to have some privacy with this storage HDD.

At normal PC I can setup login password. How should I solve this issue with some extra drive?

Edit: After 40 minutes with google, it seems it's impossible on M$...
How about linux dear geeks?

[TimeTravel]

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+ ... 8&oe=utf-8

I have to encrypt my thumb drives to be able to use them in work (government) computers. The computers themselves prompt me though, so I didn't know how to do it just because I wanted to.

Well, I mean it's pain in the neck to encrypt/decrypt whole external disc using software like VeraCrypt just to copy some minor photos from external (it's mix of backup and storage) to "normal" HDD (and vice versa).

Is there any smart way to solve that? I like to have some privacy with this storage HDD.

At normal PC I can setup login password. How should I solve this issue with some extra drive?

Edit: After 40 minutes with google, it seems it's impossible on M$...
How about linux dear geeks?

If you only have a few photos you want to encrypt/decrypt, then how about using a program to encrypt/decrypt folders instead of trying to encrypt/decrypt a whole drive?