Automated system recovery

[John Eppley]

Greetings...I am stumped. I just purchased a WD external HD for "backup"
purposes. I am using XP Professional which came installed on my HP. I used
the XP BACKUP and selected that a recovery disk be created. The backup went
smoothly. Unfortunately XP asked me to use a "floppy" disk to create the
backup media. Not possible. It booted me out. There must be a workaround.
BTW, I believe I checked every knowledgebase article. Can I use a CD or DVD
to make the backup media, and how???

John

 

[Jo-Anne]

Hi, John,

Check out Patrick Keenan's response to my query with the same subject line;
it appeared in this forum yesterday. Essentially, no, you can't use anything
but a floppy drive with ASR. If you have a notebook computer, you'd need to
buy an external floppy drive. A far better backup approach, though, is a
third-party backup program, such as Acronis True Image, Casper, or Ghost.
You can back up to just about anything with them.

Jo-Anne

 

[John Eppley]

I forgot to mention that Knowledgebase article 315255 claims I can create
the required ASR using a tape or Hard Drive. My external disk is a hard
drive.

 

[Gary S. Terhune]

That article in no way addresses ASR. Doesn't even mention it. Talks about
an entirely different problem. Read it again.

 

[John Eppley]

Thanks for your input. Should my HD "crash", will the Acronis software allow
me to boot then copy the files from the external HD?? In other words..... is
it bootable??

Regarding 315255 info. I was led to this article from another knowledgebase
discussion. I followed the path and assumed I was in the right playing
field. Please note that the article says it applies to XP Professional.

 

[Jo-Anne]

What you do is create a bootable CD using the Acronis software. It boots
directly into Acronis and allows you to restore from your external HD. For
lots of information about the program, I recommend the Acronis support
forum:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

You can download a free trial of the program at

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

It's a complex program with a long, detailed manual; but you can do simple
backups by following the directions in a wonderful beginner's guide written
by one of the forum members. It's at

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/gh-acronis-backup1.pdf

Jo-Anne

 

[Meebers]

The recovery disk (cd/DVD) will allow you to boot. From there you choose the
image and the destination. Then you should be able to boot from the main
HDD as it was on the day you made the image.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Greetings...I am stumped. I just purchased a WD external HD for "backup"
purposes. I am using XP Professional which came installed on my HP. I used
the XP BACKUP and selected that a recovery disk be created. The backup
went smoothly. Unfortunately XP asked me to use a "floppy" disk to create
the backup media. Not possible. It booted me out. There must be a
workaround. BTW, I believe I checked every knowledgebase article. Can I
use a CD or DVD to make the backup media, and how???

John

No, you can't use anything but a floppy.

Your workaround is to get a USB floppy drive and diskettes, or use just a
few dollars more to get a modern imaging program that does not require
floppies and will write to optical media. Examples are Acronis True Image
and Norton Ghost, there are a number of others.

You've found one of the reasons many people buy 3rd party applications for
this.

HTH
-pk

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Thanks for your input. Should my HD "crash", will the Acronis software
allow me to boot then copy the files from the external HD?? In other
words..... is it bootable??

Absolutely. TrueImage, and likely Ghost and others, allow you to create a
bootable CD or DVD that will then mount and install your image files.

Plus, it will handle many of your regular primary and incremental backup
needs.

It usually takes me around an hour to image or recreate a full system in
this way.

TrueImage is in the $50 range, and I find it worth the money. Check out
the free trial version, which runs for about two weeks.

HTH
-pk

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I forgot to mention that Knowledgebase article 315255 claims I can create
the required ASR using a tape or Hard Drive. My external disk is a hard
drive.

Yes. While the article doesn't mention ASR, ASR is an "advanced" though
comparatively rather primitive function of ntbackup. And ntbackup can't
deal with optical disks, only tape or hard disks.

You do want to be sure that ntbackup *can find* your hard disk at bootup.
Unfortunately it's a little risky to test this.

I personally don't bother. I use TrueImage, which finds all the disks I
use and has not let me down in several years.

HTH
-pk

 

[Twayne]

Greetings...I am stumped. I just purchased a WD external HD for

"backup" purposes. I am using XP Professional which came installed on
my HP. I used the XP BACKUP and selected that a recovery disk be
created. The backup went smoothly. Unfortunately XP asked me to use a
"floppy" disk to create the backup media. Not possible. It booted me
out. There must be a workaround. BTW, I believe I checked every
knowledgebase article. Can I use a CD or DVD to make the backup
media, and how???
John

For ASR, it is not your backup it wants to put on the floppy. What goes
on the floppy is the information to be able to get things going to
recover from a catostrophic failure and it's still going to look for
your "big" backup files on disk, or CD, DVD, or wherever you sent those
to. The floppy IS needed, is bootable, and is what you use to get a
catastrophic recovering going.
Floppy drives are cheap; like $10. And easy to find. So if you
don't have one, it's easy enough to get one.
OTOH you'll never need the ASR floppy if you don'thave a drive
failure. You need to read up more on what the ASR is, I think. Each
ASR is also connected to its own set of backup data, so each full backup
should get its own ASR disk.

As someone else mentioned, it is a lot easier and smoother to use
imaging software, but it costs a little more though a lot less than
$100. Norton Ghost and Acronis True IMage are the two most often used
ones out there. BootItNG is good if you're a techi type but it's not
that user friendly for most people.

HTH

 

[John Eppley]

Jo-Ann: Thanks for your rapid and courteous reply. Your advice makes sense.
I have downloaded the 15 day trial of Acronis True Image 11 Home as
suggested. I now have two choices....install a 3.5 floppy, or purchase the
Acronis program. Again, thanks for your inputs.

 

[Jo-Anne]

Glad I could help. FWIW, Acronis is $29.99 with free shipping for the boxed
version at Newegg.com--a reputable retailer. For some reason, the download
is more expensive. If you get the boxed version, the CD of the program is
bootable. I burned my own anyway, though, just to make sure I could do it
with the software.