Why Windows is Silly
Twice within a year I've had massive data loss:
- NTFS partition was 'damaged' by power failure or similar
event. When Windows 2000 booted again, it decided to 'fix' the
partition. The partition was then a non-starter, with all of my
NTFS data gone. I had approximately one year of non-recoverable
data on that drive. Reformatting and subsequent disk checking
proved that there was no physical problem with the drive, which I am
still using.
- FAT32 partition was destroyed by who knows what. When I
went to boot my system, Windows 2000 ran at snail speed (15min+ to
boot, slower than 'safe mode' normally) and I could not get explorer
up. By a process of deduction and subsequent linux boots I
deduced that the FAT had been destroyed by Windows and even linux would
not mount the partition (attempts resulted in an impressive series of
errors). I had to delete the partition record to get a usable
instantiation of windows running, and sorting work I'd done on three
months of digital photographs from a recent trip.
From this day
(2005-01-07) I will never use Windows 2000, ME or XP accessible
filesystems to store critical data.
(Previously I had switched from Linux back to Windows as I needed it
for multilingual input. Shameful, but I had no choice.
However, today Linux is also capable of international input in a
user-friendly manner - so we don't need Windows any more!)
Viable desktop alternatives to Windows:
- Mac
- Fedora Core
Hosted at pratyeka.