ASR?

[MS]

Is it good to make the ASR (Automated System Recovery) disk, in case of a
crash? Does it offer functionality not offered by the Recovery Console, or
other third party recoverers (such as Vcom's "Recovery Commander")?

The directions say you need to make a diskette. Diskettes are pretty
outmoded these days. No software comes on diskettes, no one uses them to
transfer data, and many laptop computers do not have a built-in diskette
drive.

Can you make a bootable ASR CD instead? Or an ASR flash drive, CF or SD
card, etc.?

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

First of all your must have either a hard drive in two (or more partitions)
or multiple hard drives in order to be able to use ASR.

What it will actually do is make a complete copy of the primary drive onto
the second partition or a secondary hard drive. When you boot from the
diskette, it will COMPLETELY format the primary partition, then recovery it
from the file it created on the secondary partition or drive. The diskette
simply tells the PC where this partition may be found.

It is ONLY useful where you install the operating system onto the primary
drive and EVERYTHING ELSE onto the secondary partitions/drives. Everything
must be custom installed to ensure that the destination drive is correct...
obviously registry entries and stuff that MUST go on the primary drive will
still do so.

Done correctly, it is a life saver. Done incorrectly, you can lose
everything and gain nothing.

Take a good look through:
http://support.microsoft.com/search...t=0&comm=1&ast=1&ast=2&ast=3&mode=a&x=10&y=15

 

[Rock]

Is it good to make the ASR (Automated System Recovery) disk, in case of a
crash? Does it offer functionality not offered by the Recovery Console, or
other third party recoverers (such as Vcom's "Recovery Commander")?

The directions say you need to make a diskette. Diskettes are pretty
outmoded these days. No software comes on diskettes, no one uses them to
transfer data, and many laptop computers do not have a built-in diskette
drive.

Can you make a bootable ASR CD instead? Or an ASR flash drive, CF or SD
card, etc.?

They are not the same. The ASR allows you to restore the drive as it
was. You boot with the XP CD. In the process it asks if you want to do
an ASR recover. Saying yes does a basic install of the OS then restores
the data from the backup file. ASR must use a floppy diskette. There
is no way around it.

IMO it's cumbersome method since the OS must be installed first, then
the backup, and the couple of times I tested it the restored system did
not have the same functionality. At least one program hung up and had
to be uninstalled/reinstalled.

I would suggest you look at a drive imaging program. They are faster
and more reliable, and don't need a floppy drive. Programs of this type
are Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, and Terabyte Unlimited's Image for
Windows and BootitNG.

 

[MS]

Thanks for your response.

Doesn't sound like a very good solution then, if it completely formats the
primary partition.

One could do the exact same thing without ASR--copy everything on the
primary HD to a different one. Then if there are problems with drive 1,
format it and copy drive 2 to drive 1.

I don't really see the point of ASR, if it functions as you say.