2 questions. For my photography letterheads, I've always used Andantino JF font. I recently nuked my PC, and though it's running much better, my stupid Microsoft works 9.0 no longer has the font (strange because it had it before).

I did a quick search online, and it seems like I can get a download for it, but I've got to buy it. I didn't buy it before, and I had it (not illegally either, I'm almost 100% it came with the SW) and don't want to buy it again.

Can anyone point me to where/how I get my font back? It's important to me, because I want my paperwork to look the same when I hand it to folks.



Next question,

I'm going to probably buy a 1TB external HD (maybe 500gig, can't decide) as a "soft" back-up to my dvds. As it stands now, I get the photos DLed to the computer. I burn the raws to DVD (before formatting my cards). Then after my edits are performed, I burn them to DVDs. Nuking my PC made me realize, if I didn't burn those disks when I did, I would have been hosed.

Is it possible for me to partition this drive, while there's an OS on it? Or do I have to format again? I'm definitely buying an external HD, so it's not too big a deal, I'm just curious.

To answer your second question, yes, your boot drive can be partitioned, but I'm not really sure why you'd want to do that, unless your goal is to have a set amount of space available for something. If you do decide to do it make sure you've got everything backed up before you partition, just in case.

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going to partition the main drive. Like I know I can part it out, however I wasn't sure if I could do it after the OS was already on it.

I'm more concerened with my font, because that's how I present all of my logo on my letterhead. It looks "elegant" to me.

Some fonts can be pretty hard to find for free these days. Your best bet might be to find someone who has it on their computer and have them send you a copy of the file.

I fear I may have to do that. The downside is, I already had it WITH the software. It's like, I wonder what install Dell did, that I didn't do when I nuked it

You have no idea where the font came from? I guess you need to figure out which software you don't have installed now that you did have before. I remember for example that Corel Draw used to come with a lot of fonts - is it possible you installed and then removed something like that? If you can't find it, how much are they charging to buy it? You're a professional - maybe you should accept that its more cost- and time- effective to pay the money.

With respect to the partitioning, there are many options to partitioning after install. Windows won't do it natively though. You need a bootable cd with a load of utils on. The UBCD (www.ultimatebootdcd.com) has a lot of useful stuff, and also Hirens boot cd (www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd). Warning though - Hirens cd is not completely legal i think.

You can also boot to pretty much any Linux install cd and it will have a disk partition util available. A lot of the linux live cd's have a partition tool available too. Some guidelines on how to do this in Ubuntu are here http://tinyurl.com/yfzqbja.

Partitioning the drive will give you a performance boost on the first partition (because it uses the faster outer tracks of the drive that are longer and need fewer track changes to access data) but as a backup strategy it is almost useless. Backups need to be on separate drives from the originals and preferably off-line. I've had quite a few HDDs die on me over the years and so I know not to rely on a single anything, HDD or not.

By the way, even your backup DVDs need to be checked periodically to ensure that they are still readable. It is not a totally reliable medium.

- Alan

Hi Robert,

Here's a link that you might be able to find a font similar to what you're after, I had a quick look and the one you're after isn't there but you never know what you can find.

http://www.fontcubes.com/popular

As for partitioning your HD, do it, I recommend it. I partition mine (and always do after having a virus early in my computer years).
Typically a virus attacks your OS and leaves your data intact but there are exceptions to this.

I have my OS in a partition at about 20gig, my programs/applications in another partition at about 20-40gigs depending on your HD size and the balance for data/achives. I use the largest drive with the most space spare for my scratch discs for PS etc. The bonus in paritioning your drive like have, it takes only 15 minutes to do a fresh format by keeping a disc/usb/a partition with your settings so that the registry can link your programs/applications correctly. Even your desktop, email, browser fav's will be as you had them.

I use EASEUS (it's free) for Vista as my Partition Magic had an issue with Vista but worked great with XP. http://www.partition-tool.com/

It does take a relative long time for EASEUS to so it's thing but it works great, partiton before you go to bed and you'll wake to a nicely partiton HD. BACK UP before you do just in case.

If you get lost with EASEUS, PM me and I'll email you the ZIP file, it's about 9megs so it isn't huge.

USB ext HDs are great, I use about 12 of them for Back up and redundancy and everything gets burnt to DVD as well, I lost everything early on so I"m Captain back up. As soon as Blur Ray burners become reasonable, I'll use those as well.

Cheers Gaz