ASR with IDE and SATA drives installs to wrong drive

[Phil]

I am having some problem getting ASR restore to work on machines that
have both SATA and IDE drives. The problem occurs on both Windows XP
and Windows Server 2003.

The setup is as follows:
- 2 x SATA drives in RAID configuration with 3 partitions:
- C:SYSTEM
- E:TEMP-SWAP
- FATA
- 1 x IDE drive (G

The ASR backup is made to the G: drive.

When I boot from the CD, press F6 to load the SATA RAID drivers then
press F2 to enter ASR, It warns me that it is about to reformat the
IDE drive rather than the SATA drive.

I initially had to disconnect the IDE drive when installing windows as
otherwise it would only make the SATA drive D:

It looks like windows always assumes that that system boot drive is
thefirst IDE drive it comes to?

Can anyone help?

Phil.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

One cannot use ASR if you wish to copy your entire disk image to another drive.
ASR is not an imaging program and cannot be used as such.

Windows XP's Automated System Recovery (ASR) is an extension to the
conventional backup-and-restore. It provides a framework for saving and
recovering the Windows XP operating state, in the event of a catastrophic
system or hardware failure. Windows XP ASR recovers the target system
in a two-step process. The first step, termed the boot recovery process,
requires a new copy of Windows XP to be temporarily installed on the
target system using the original distribution media. The second step,
called the OS restore process, restores the files of a previously saved
Windows XP installation using a backup-and-restore application
(this will delete/overwrite some of the files installed by the boot recovery process).

How to Set up and Use Automated System Recovery in Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/asr.mspx

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


|I am having some problem getting ASR restore to work on machines that
| have both SATA and IDE drives. The problem occurs on both Windows XP
| and Windows Server 2003.
|
| The setup is as follows:
| - 2 x SATA drives in RAID configuration with 3 partitions:
| - C:SYSTEM
| - E:TEMP-SWAP
| - FATA
| - 1 x IDE drive (G
|
| The ASR backup is made to the G: drive.
|
| When I boot from the CD, press F6 to load the SATA RAID drivers then
| press F2 to enter ASR, It warns me that it is about to reformat the
| IDE drive rather than the SATA drive.
|
| I initially had to disconnect the IDE drive when installing windows as
| otherwise it would only make the SATA drive D:
|
| It looks like windows always assumes that that system boot drive is
| thefirst IDE drive it comes to?
|
| Can anyone help?
|
| Phil.

 

[Mike Matheny]

Miss Frisch (I hope it's miss!),
Exactly when was the last time you created an ASR diskette? I bet NO ONE
has, because, every time I try to create one, it tells me it will be backing
up 5,734,000,000 (over 5 GIGABytes) of data - oh, by the way, it is also
nice enough to tell me it will take 4 days, 1 hr, and 12 minutes at the
current back-up rate - what a totally useless piece of junk ASR is - you
need a damn hard drive to back up the data to get your hard drive back up!

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

The solution is to purchase and install a suitable device,
such as an external hard drive.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


| Miss Frisch (I hope it's miss!),
| Exactly when was the last time you created an ASR diskette? I bet NO ONE
| has, because, every time I try to create one, it tells me it will be backing
| up 5,734,000,000 (over 5 GIGABytes) of data - oh, by the way, it is also
| nice enough to tell me it will take 4 days, 1 hr, and 12 minutes at the
| current back-up rate - what a totally useless piece of junk ASR is - you
| need a damn hard drive to back up the data to get your hard drive back up!
|
| --
| Mike Matheny

 

[Phil]

Carey,

Many thanks for you help - I am now trying a new approach but would
again, welcome any comments you may have.

I will install two copies of Windows XP in a dual boot configuration.
- one on the C: drive (called BACKUP)
- one on the D: drive (called MAIN)

In general, I will be running the MAIN install 24x7

On the MAIN install, I will schedule a batch job to run each night
that will do an ntbackup of the entire d:\ drive and system state:

D:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup D: SystemState /n
"%COMPUTERNAME%.bkf" /SNAPn /d "%COMPUTERNAME%-Set" /v:yes /r:n
o /rs:no /hcff /m normal /j "SystemBackup" /l:s /f
"C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.bkf"

If the machine goes belly up, I can just boot into C: and do a
restore.

Will that work?

I am experimenting and one problem I have found is that not all the
files are backed up?

Phil.

 

[Phil]

Carey,

Many thanks for your help. I have now decided on a different approach
which I would welcome your comments on. I will be installing two
copies of Windows XP in dual boot mode:
- one on the RAIDed SATA drives (MAIN) D:
- one on the IDE drive (BACKUP) C:

the MAIN one will be my everyday OS that I use 24x7

I will also then set up a scheduled job to backup the MAIN drive and
system state to the IDE drive using the following batch job

set DESTDIR=C:
set SRCDRIVES=D:\
del %DESTDIR%\%COMPUTERNAME%-PREV.bkf
rename %DESTDIR%\%COMPUTERNAME%.bkf %COMPUTERNAME%-PREV.bkf
D:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup %SRCDRIVES% SystemState /n
"%COMPUTERNAME%.bkf" /SNAPn /d "%COMPUTERNAME%-Set" /v:yes /r:no
/rs:no /hcff /m copy /j "SystemBackup" /l:f /f
"%DESTDIR%\%COMPUTERNAME%.bkf"

If my machine goes belly up, I just boot into the BACKUP OS and
restore the backup to D:

This all works fine except for the fact that when I restore, there are
missing files in the system32 directory.

On closer inspection this is because the restore of the SystemState
happened locally rather than to D:

I was warned this would happen by the backup software unless I
specicified that the restore was to an alternate location. So I did
specify an alternate location but it still happened???

Phil.