ASR--How Does This Work?

[W. Watson]

I found something of an explanation on the web about ASR, and tried following it. Too
many unanswered questions before completing it. The procedure is this:

-Use Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup
-Click on Advanced Mode on the Wizard screen. This displays a Backup Utility dialog
with tabs.
-Click on the ASR Wizard button.
-Click on Next on the Wizard to get by the opening screen.
-Now you see the Backup Destination dialog. It tells me that I'll need a floppy. I
put the floppy in the drive. A Backup window has a Browse button to the right of it.

Now I'm stuck. Am I supposed to browse to the A-drive or browse to some other drive
where the larger collection of files will be placed? Will the A-drive just get the
registry stuff without me doing anything?

Lurking behind the Backup Destination dialog is the Backup Utility Dialog, which has
some interesting windows and tabs. None of them are operable while the Backup Dest
dialog is available. If I press Next on the Backup Dest dialog, things start to
happen. That wizard goes immediately to a window with a Finish button. If I press
Finish, the Backup Utility dialog starts doing things. What is it doing? Presumably
putting some skeletal info somewhere that is need to recover. What's going on? I'm lost.


--
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
(Formerly Homo habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis and now sapiens)

"I'm not going to die. It would ruin my image."
-- Jack La Lanne, 90 year old early TV health
& exercise promoter

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

 

[David Candy]

Home can't make floppies.

 

[Guest]

From MS:
"On the floppy disk, the wizard saves only hard-disk configuration
information (not user data), such as disk signatures, the partition table,
and volume data. If you run the ASR restore operation later, ASR Restore
configures disks by using the saved data on the ASR floppy disk. The ASR
backup operation scans your system and lists files to save for an ASR Restore"
There's more info at: http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/win_xp_backup.htm
Since I want this process to be automatic, (No waiting around for the
floppy) I just use backup to weekly create a file on a network drive and
plan to reinstall the OS before using restore.

 

[W. Watson]

I'm using XP Pro. When the Finish dialog comes up, immediately it looks like my
drives are being scanned. The checkboxes on the folders in the Backup tab don't seem
to have any meaning. Why can't I just settle for the hard disk config data to be
written on the floppy, and forget about writing anything to a hard drive or zip
drive? Well, I get a message saying the backup tape is full. I pressed cancel.
Nothing is yet written to the floppy. My f-drive (zip) has a 98M file in it. I have a
feeling that is the actual data found on my C-drive. I close the backup status
window. Nothing written to the A-drive. I click a couple boxes for folders I want to
backup (I really don't even want to back them up, but I'm doing this as an
experiment.) I press the Start Backup button. It just wants to write to the F-drive,
which is already full. I close out of all the dialogs. Nothing is written to the A-drive.

Makes no sense to me. I never got a chance to select any specific folders to backup.
It looks like it just tried backing up everything.

I fire up the Backup once again from Start. This time I do not select the big ASR
Wizard on the Welcome tab. (This is contrary to some web instructions I found on a
Que site.) Instead I look at the other tabs, Backup Tab in particular. No folders or
files are selected. I browse the Backup media browse window in the lower left to the
A-drive. Back to the Welcome tab. I also just discovered that if I don't use browse
and type in A:Backup.bkf, it will change back to F:blah...blah when I select
Welcome->ASR button. (Gads!) The backup in progress dialog appears. While it's
scanning the disk, I see the A-drive has two files written to it, both zero length so
far. Backup.bkf and A7B4(...).bj3. Now it's run out of tape. The A-drive now shows a
1.44M file, Backup.bkf. Cute. Of course, it's full. Makes no sense to me what this
program is doing.

 

[Guest]

ASR is supposed to restore your system to a working state in the case
when your PC say won't boot.

For this, ASR backs up all the system disk (usually, C, then asks
for a floppy. The floppy is only used to save the information about
the backup set, like the backup name and the name of the backup
device. A floppy is too small to contain all the info to restore your
system if say you replaced a failed HDD.

When you restore with ASR, you boot your PC with Windows Setup CD-ROM.
The Setup asks you for a ASR floppy, then launches ntbackup that
restores your system using the main backup set.

 

[W. Watson]

ASR is supposed to restore your system to a working state in the case
when your PC say won't boot.

For this, ASR backs up all the system disk (usually, C, then asks
for a floppy. The floppy is only used to save the information about
the backup set, like the backup name and the name of the backup
device. A floppy is too small to contain all the info to restore your
system if say you replaced a failed HDD.

When you restore with ASR, you boot your PC with Windows Setup CD-ROM.
The Setup asks you for a ASR floppy, then launches ntbackup that
restores your system using the main backup set.

Thanks. Your comment about the CD helps.

Follow along with this. Before I push the ASR button (the dialog that show 3
buttons), I use the backup Tab. If I browse to say put the data on a zip drive (F:,
for example), then I'm forced to save the Backup.bkf file; however, after pushing
Save, nothing is saved on F! (I did a refresh too) Contrary to the description on
the Welcome tab that says system setting will be put on a floppy. This is all very
odd. Now I select two files to back up. If I go back to Welcome and push the ASR
button, I get a message that says the selections are already made, would I like to
clear them? I might as well press Start Backup. I do and end up with a file,
Backup.bkf, on F; that is 15KB. I exit from the dialog. So I guess the story here is
that the registry and two files I wrote are in the Backup.bkf file?

If I try to recover using this zip disk, apparently XP will find the registry stuff
in the Backup.bkf file with the two doc/txt files I wrote? Very strange. Perhaps they
are written when one goes straight for the ASR button, and then starts back up after
the wizard is finished? Let's see what this does. My selections (two files) are
reset, and I'm not given any chance to select anything. Instead it tries to save
everything on my machine. Very screwy. It appears the sole function of the ASR button
is to save everything.



--
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
(Formerly Homo habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis and now sapiens)

"I'm not going to die. It would ruin my image."
-- Jack La Lanne, 90 year old early TV health
& exercise promoter

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

 

[Guest]

Sorry, I am not quite sure what you are trying to achieve. Normally,
you should

- start ntbackup
- click Advanced Mode
- click the Automated System Recovery Wizard big button
- click Next
- select destination and click Next
- click Finish

Your entire C: drive along with the system settings will be saved to
the destination, then you'll be asked for a floppy disk.

Cheers

 

[W. Watson]

Sorry, I am not quite sure what you are trying to achieve. Normally,
you should

- start ntbackup
- click Advanced Mode
- click the Automated System Recovery Wizard big button
- click Next
- select destination and click Next
- click Finish

Your entire C: drive along with the system settings will be saved to
the destination, then you'll be asked for a floppy disk.

Cheers

Simply trying to save the registry. I plan to manually modify it, and want to recover
in case I goof. However, I really don't want any data files saved. Just the simplest
amount of info to restore a potentially hosed registry.

--
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet
(Formerly Homo habilis, erectus, heidelbergensis and now sapiens)

"I'm not going to die. It would ruin my image."
-- Jack La Lanne, 90 year old early TV health
& exercise promoter

Web Page: <home.earthlink.net/~mtnviews>

 

[Daniel Rose]

Accoding to several entries in Windows XP on-disk and Web help, ASR is
supposed to back up "only those system files necessary for starting up your
system".

See, for instance:

--The opening screen of the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard

--The Windows Backup Help screens titled "Backup overview" and "To create an
Automated System Recovery set using Backup"

--The Web page at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/asr.mspx,
titled "How to Set up and Use Automated System Recovery in Windows XP"

Why are (e-mail address removed) and I having our entire C: drives backed up?

Thank you,
Daniel

 

[abram]

Why are (e-mail address removed) and I having our entire C: drives backed
up?

As it frequently is, the documentation seems to be not completely
correct. ASR backs up the whole system partition. Otherwise it would be
hard to sort out "only those system files necessary for starting up
your system".

 

[Daniel Rose]

Thanks for the reply. But the discussion on the firestream page at
http://www.firestreamer.com/fsdvd/ states,

"The Backup Utility (NTBackup) is a native part of your Windows®
operating system and has the following advantages:

....It is simple yet powerful and very well documented."

I don't think so.

--Daniel

 

[cristalink]

Well, on anything you say some people would agree, some people would
disagree, some would have their own opinion, some would not notice you at
all, some would shoot you down just because they don't like your face, and
so on.

Should I dispute your "I don't think so"? Will you listen? Do you _want_ to
listen? Please take no offense, I am just curious what kind of response you
expect.

I personally think that NTBackup is simple, though it could be simpler. It's
quite powerful, though it could have more features. And it's indeed well
documented. You'll find a lot of articles, how-tos, tips, faq, even videos
about NTBackup both on MS and 3rd party sites.

Some ignorant people say that NTBackup is a legacy application from Veritas
and suggest to use "non-legacy" BackupExec and Backup MyPC (btw, the latter
is named by PCMag as the best backup utility for the last several years).
Well, I tried both BackupExec and Backup MyPC, the latest demo versions, a
month ago. I can say that these are truly legacy apps. BackupExec uses
legacy ways to detect tape drives (DEVICEMAP registry key), but at least it
detects some, though being unable to work with them. Backup MyPC cannot even
detect new drives. NTBackup/RSM works perfectly with unknown tape drives.

I tried Backup MyPC vs NTBackup/Firestreamer with DVD. The first one
consumed 2-3 times more CPU time (with the "normal" compression) than the
second pair. The first one backed up a _hundred_ of files less in my Windows
directory than NTBackup. Backup MyPC failed to verify files after backup
(corrupted header or so) while I was alternating NTBackup/BackupMyPC several
times on the same DVD+RW disk. BackupMyPC failed all the tries, and
NTBackup/Firestreamer succeeded all the tries.

I am far from saying that NTBackup is ideal or so. But now I see that
Microsoft did a good job of removing Veritas' cr*ppy code from NTBackup. The
code seems to still be in place in BackupExec and BackupMyPC.

Cheers