Every Operating System is Evil

How's that for an extreme headline. What I mean is every operating system (OS) locks you in and makes the switching cost hard, the cost being money to have a geek squad do it for you, or your valuable time if you got skills. Want to try a Mac but the data is hard to move from Windows? Or maybe you want to try Linux because it's free and sounds white and nerdy? You can, really easy, if you just separate your data from the OS. It's pretty easy to do once, and then it's brain-dead simple after that.

When a computer gets an OS installed, by default it wants the entire hard disk for itself. If you buy a prepackaged Dell, it comes that way. It'll make space for your data and applications along with the OS, all in the same partition, the drive letter like C: and D: in Windows. Data, Apps, and OS are put together in a mashup of folders. This is horrible! It's the proverbial putting all of your eggs in one basket. If the OS blows up, it's hard and sometimes impossible to get your data back because the situation becomes FUBAR. Your data is the critical information that needs to survive! An OS and the applications can be reinstalled, but if you don't have a backup, your data is sometimes gone completely.

And what if you wanted to try the new version of your OS? Like update from Vista to Windows 7? Do not try the automated upgrade! You must make a clean, fresh, install. And if you do that, won't the OS destroy your data folders? Yes or very special care has to be done, or new software bought. Forgeddaboudit!

There's an easy way to do this and I'll go through that in detail in another post. Simply, put your data and usual applications on a separate hard drive partition. The data doesn't die if the OS does. The data is untouched when a new OS is installed, whether it exploded or you got a virus. And the data can be backed up super fast by a partition or image transfer.

The catch is, if you buy a new computer, you have to repartition the hard drive to reduce the installed OS to a minimum and create a data partition. An extra step with a new machine but one which will be so much easier for you and save time in the future when the OS starts spewing chunks. See my sequel post, Part with your Operating System for more details.