[dba-Tech] New install

A horrible thing happened to me yesterday. I purchased a new monitor and
unplugged my old one and shut off the box and plugged in the new one and
turned it back on and suddenly everything went sideways -- endless loop of
reboots. I took it to the local store and got Johnny to plonk in a new HD
and to boot from there, and whew! It worked and I still have all the data on
the big fat HD -- it's tough to back up a 250GB even when it's only about
half full.

Once I got the box back, I immediately backed up the important stuff and
burned a CD and also copied it to my memory stick and thence to another box.

What a relief! Oh God, this kind thing is tough on the heart of an old man
like me. We're saved! More precisely, the work I did in the last couple of
weeks is saved -- which at the most modest of our rates, represents lots of
loot.

There's an even better part to this story. My pal Johnny plonked in a new
HD, made it the bootable one, reinstalled XP Media Edition, re-registered my
copy and called me to tell me the box was ready. I got all my data back,
although I do have to do some re-installing of software, but the performance
is WAY WAY better than it was. This is not due to a faster HD. I think it's
due to a clean registry. I run RegClean fairly often but apparently that is
nowhere near enough to optimize performance.

As a writer and developer and experimenter, I often put a lot of stuff on
and then forget that's even there, which perhaps explains why more than half
of the 250GB disk is occupied: things I used once or maybe twice, such as
JDeveloper. Apparently this stuff adds up and you end up with a machine that
runs at about 25% of what it's capable of with a clean install.

So this time I'm going to try something new: install only what I need and
only when I need it.

I can't believe the difference in performance. You don't timers to notice.
Compared to how the box performed before the crisis, the current performance
is like lightning vs. sound. Suddenly computing is fun again, instead of
"hurry up and wait".

So, this story ends with a happy ending and a very happy camper. The only
thing worse than writing code once is writing it twice. Fortunately, thanks
to Johnny, I'm rescued and don't have to.

I'm now attempting to set up a backup system that will be reliable and
foolproof (wot a concept). In days of old there was a fantastic utility
called JET from (IIRC) Pioneer Software. It was essentially a smarter xcopy,
but with fabulous arguments that would let you do just about anything. I
wish I could find a replacement for it, that would do the following:

1. copy all files changed today to the target;
2. copy all files, comparing dates on the target's file system, and copying
newer versions + new files (recursively);
3. list all files changed today;
4. fix all the bugs in all files I changed today LOL.

Somehow I guess the fourth requirement is beyond scope, but the other three
ought to be within scope. Anyone know of a tool that can do the first three
requirements?

TIA,
Arthur