Backup with out a Floppy Drive in XP

[Guest]

I do not have a floppy drive for any of my computers. I have no interest in
purchasing one just to backup Windows XP.

so,

What is the magic for backing up without a Floppy Drive in Windows?

How do I make a Floppy Image so I can finish my Backup in Windows?

Thank you

 

[peter]

What do you have?? CD ?? DVD?? 2nd HD ???
The "magic" is to back up to a specific folder of your choosing on the HD
and then use a 3rd party burning program that will burn spanned volumes ..CD
or DVD.This of course depends upon the size of the backup...a few items will
be able to be burned to a CD with XP's native burning program. so long you
do not exceed the capacity of the CD.DVD's you will need a seperate program
as XP does not natively burn to DVD's.If the backup is bigger than the
CD/DVD then you will need a burning program that is capable of continuing
the burn on a 2nd/3rd/4th CD/DVD.
Nero does this as do some others and chances are if you have a CD/DVD you
have a program for that task.
peter

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I do not have a floppy drive for any of my computers.

A common enough scenario. Laptops haven't come with floppies for some time
now.

I have no interest in
purchasing one just to backup Windows XP.

It's perhaps $20-$30 for a USB floppy that you can attach to any system.
They work very well, as long as the floppies work.

I see internal floppy drives for maybe $12, but then you have to open the PC
case.

so,

What is the magic for backing up without a Floppy Drive in Windows?

IIRC, you don't need a floppy to backup your data, only the system state if
you are using ASR.

How do I make a Floppy Image so I can finish my Backup in Windows?

Thank you

Well, a starting point mught well be choosing a backup program or method
that does not require a floppy drive.

For example, Acronis TrueImage and Norton Ghost don't require floppies at
any point in the process, and you will get a complete, quickly restorable
system image. And from what I observe here, these images are *much* more
reliable than the results of ntbackup.

And it's very easy to mount the image file and verify the files. After
all, backups are less than worthless if they failed. Verification is
essential.

However, this may require that you purchase multiple copies of software,
which, as it happens, will be somewhat more than the price of the single USB
floppy you can move from system to system as needed.

Ultimately, it's up to you, and what you consider the value of your time and
data to be. I personally use Acronis True Image, and there's a free
trial, so you can check it out for two weeks.

HTH
-pk

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

I do not have a floppy drive for any of my computers. I have no interest in
purchasing one just to backup Windows XP.

You'd not be able to efficiently backup anything if you used floppies
anyway.

CD works, but it's clunky and requires a lot of those as well. Best
solution is an external hard drive.

 

[Xenomorph]

??????????????????

what would a FLOPPY DRIVE have to do with backing up Windows??

this isn't Windows 3.1

 

[Guest]

To everyone who wrote....

Wow, this is my first time asking a question in a Microsoft Windows Forum.
Not exactly the same experience as when asking in other forums.

Okay, should I start off by saying, " I love Microsoft, I think they are the
greatest company in the world and make the best darn software I ever did
use,.... please help." ?

hehehehe,

So, essentially I'm not a hard core windows geek, and my only experience
with command line tasks have been with Bash. I do remember using DOS back in
the good ole days when purchasing an old X86 with a monochrome monitor was
somehow a step up from my Commodore 64.

So, why am I saying this?

Because I do not know what all these acronyms are in Windows. Think of me as
a neophyte and someone who would like to embrace Windows, and does not have
much patience for silly remarks, unless of course they come from my nephew.

So back to my original Question I was asking:

I have used the BackUp application which comes with Windows XP Pro. It's
free and makes sense to use whatever utilities come with the operating system.

I do not wish to purchase a floppy disk driver, I don't care if it costs
less than bowl of cherries, I'd rather buy the cherries thank you.

Every operating system I have used has a nice quick utility for creating "
disk images " I am looking how to create a "floppy disk image" for windows
xp.

Why?

Because after backing up "All information on my Computer" using "Backup" it
asks me to insert a floppy disk so that restore information can be saved.

I am backing up everything because I am hoping that if Windows XPpro gibbles
on me again, ( This largely do to some sort of issue with ArcGIS Info and a
developer tool set I installed improperly.. I assume) I can simply restore my
system to my latest Backup and not go through the full 12hr + reinstallation
of Windows XP, it's many updates, then ArcGIS, it's many updates, then all
the dependancies updates.

So now that you know I am not an operating system wizard, not an acronym
juggler, not interested in purchasing a floppy drive, that I do wish to
embrace XP and what it can offer, and am interested in finding a nice simple
solution, any takers?

oh Yes, I back up to a hard drive. That hard drive gets mirrored to another
hard drive and all my hard drives get once again backed up to an offsite
location. So yes, my time and data are very important to me.

Please forgive me for not being very clear in the first post, this operating
system is kinda new to me.

Thank you.

Mars

 

[Guest]

I am back up to multiple Hard drives.

Why do you have to use a third party app and create a CD or DVD hardcopy for
a system restore backup?

 

[M.I.5¾]

What do you have?? CD ?? DVD?? 2nd HD ???
The "magic" is to back up to a specific folder of your choosing on the HD
and then use a 3rd party burning program that will burn spanned volumes
..CD or DVD.This of course depends upon the size of the backup...a few
items will be able to be burned to a CD with XP's native burning program.
so long you do not exceed the capacity of the CD.DVD's you will need a
seperate program as XP does not natively burn to DVD's.If the backup is
bigger than the CD/DVD then you will need a burning program that is
capable of continuing the burn on a 2nd/3rd/4th CD/DVD.
Nero does this as do some others and chances are if you have a CD/DVD you
have a program for that task.
peter

If he really is creating a backup, he needs to consider how he is going to
restore it. Spanned volumes are useless in this regard, because the
application required to read the spanned disk must be assumed to be absent
from the system he is trying to restore to.

Have you any idea how many people (and organisations come to that) discover
that their religiously made back up is quite useless when they need to
restore it in anger?

 

[M.I.5¾]

??????????????????

what would a FLOPPY DRIVE have to do with backing up Windows??

this isn't Windows 3.1

It is quite possible to back a Windows XP installation onto floppies. I
does, take a humungous amount of floppy disks though.

 

[Guest]

Yes, floppy drives are cheep, but I am not interested in more junk floating
around in my workspace.

IIRC, you don't need a floppy to backup your data, only the system state if
you are using ASR.

What is IIRC and ASR? And are you saying that you do need to use a floppy
for the system state?

For example, Acronis TrueImage and Norton Ghost don't require floppies at
any point in the process, and you will get a complete, quickly restorable
system image. And from what I observe here, these images are *much* more
reliable than the results of ntbackup.

The microsoft representative I spoke to before purchasing Windows XP pro
stated that the backup program contained within the operating system is the
best way to create a complete system backup that can be used to quickly
restore the system to it's state at time of backup.

When you say, MUCH more reliable, what do you mean!? Backups may not work
if I use the inhouse backup program!?

The reality is, I just want to create a Floppy Image to write the important
restore stuff windows wants and needs to save to a floppy. This can not be
hard to do. I just can not figure out how to do this.

Good lord I can not even remember the last time I've seen a floppy! ha!

thanks for the software tips, though I would rather minimize the software I
have loaded into windows XP, until I become more familiar and comfortable
with it, just in case there are conflict issues with ArcGIS.

 

[Guest]

he he, he,

I am backing up to a hard drive.
The floppy image is needed for .. . something windows wants.

 

[Guest]

..... so teach me how to do a complete system backup so that I can restore it
if the unthinkable happens.

Yes what in the world does a floppy drive have to do with backing up windows
anyways!!!!!!!

Look above as to the reason I wish to create a floopy drive image.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

It is quite possible to back a Windows XP installation onto floppies. I
does, take a humungous amount of floppy disks though.

The OP apparently has no concept of what "humongous" means.

By most standards, I have a small installation to backup: about 35
gigs. My backup image is about 28 gigs and takes about 20 minutes to
do when it's created on a second internal drive, and it takes no
effort on my part: it's done at 3am automatically.

If there could be an exact transfer of that to floppies with no
loss...

ONE gigabyte = 1,024 megabytes, or about 700 floppies
28 gigabytes = 28,672 megabytes = or about 19,600 floppies.

THAT is "humongous".

 

[Guest]

Mars:

Why?

Because after backing up "All information on my Computer" using "Backup" it
asks me to insert a floppy disk so that restore information can be saved.

I've been doing backups since the mid 80's, and I recall doing a backup of a
"20 meg" drive to floppies took 30 minutes. Floppies are slow to begin with.
These days, I have 20Gigs or more to backup on each PC, 1000 times the
volume, so it'll take 500 hours to sit there and back it up onto thousands of
floppies.

How much would 20,000 floppies cost, and think of the room you'll need to
store it, and what happens if some of them fell on the floor. LOL.

There are these additional problems with the NTBACKUP

- I've tried using it to backup to an external HD just for the fun of it,
but failed as maxes out at a certain point, and there's been prior
discussions as to why on this board.
- As someone who's done backup and actual needed and done "restore" of many
years, often, you need to restore ONE or sevral files, as files may corrupt,
or you may mess up that spreadsheet from yesterday. Norton Ghost allows me to
restore just that one file whereas NT backup does not.
- Often, when HD fails, it's gotten old and bloated, and it'll be better if
you restore the software and data searately. If you restore the system the
way it was, it'll be the same virus ridden bloated system that you got.

Let's put it in simple terms (for a neophyte).

While it's free, NTBACKUP is useless. Backing up to thousands of floppies is
ludicrous in this day and age HD's with a minimum of 20 Gigs of data.

Spend less than $200 and get yourself an external USB drive and a useful
backup package like Norton Ghost or Acronis.

And here's an old "war story"

Years back, I worked somehere (a cheap company) we actually used the old
DOS "backup" and "restore" utilities to backup data onto floppies. As I
mentioned, 20 megs took over 30 minutes.

One time, we had a brilliant idea. Let's try restoring data to a new PC we
got to see if restore works or not. In the days of 5-1/4" low desnsity
floppies, 20 megs backs up to over 50 to 100 floppies.

And we couldn't restore. Why??

One of the floppies was bad, corrputed. We were stuck on floppy "#15" as I
recall, and we couldn't get onto #16, so the rest of the set was useless,
though. somwone taught us a trick much later on to get through this, losing
some data in the process.

And we couldn't restore just one file either.

 

[M.I.5¾]

To everyone who wrote....

Wow, this is my first time asking a question in a Microsoft Windows Forum.
Not exactly the same experience as when asking in other forums.

Okay, should I start off by saying, " I love Microsoft, I think they are
the
greatest company in the world and make the best darn software I ever did
use,.... please help." ?

hehehehe,

You might feel a need to creep to William Gates, but it is frowned upon
otherwise ;-/

So, essentially I'm not a hard core windows geek, and my only experience
with command line tasks have been with Bash. I do remember using DOS back
in
the good ole days when purchasing an old X86 with a monochrome monitor was
somehow a step up from my Commodore 64.

Crikey!

So, why am I saying this?

Because I do not know what all these acronyms are in Windows. Think of me
as
a neophyte and someone who would like to embrace Windows, and does not
have
much patience for silly remarks, unless of course they come from my
nephew.

So back to my original Question I was asking:

I have used the BackUp application which comes with Windows XP Pro. It's
free and makes sense to use whatever utilities come with the operating
system.

There are two stages in a useable backup regime.

1. The need to copy the entire disk file system to some external medium.

2. The need to copy that stored file system back to a PC that has absolutely
no operating system on it all (like if your hard disk has failed and you
replace it with a new one).

Some people rely on backing up only the non system files and then copying
them back to a newly installed Windows. It just depends on the amount of
hastle that want to get a working system up and running.

Many people use one of the hard disk imaging utilities such as Acronis
TrueImage or Norton Ghost. These produce a compressed backup in a
proprietary format, but the image is literally that - an image of the disk.
They come with the ability to create a bootable CD, that loads a minimalist
operating system and a version of the application that allows you to copy
the image back to the blank hard disk. The big advantage with TrueImage
(can't speak for ghost) is that it will perform incremental images where it
just appends the changes to the backup file (saves a lot of time).

Whatever backup system that you go for, it is essential that you actually
try steps 1 and 2 above (using a gash disk if necessary to try step 2). If
your restore ain't going to work, it is best to find out before you *have*
to do it.

And remember, there are two types of PC user: those that have had to restore
their backup, and those that are going to have to restore their backup.

 

[Daave]

I am backing up to a hard drive.
The floppy image is needed for .. . something windows wants.

A "floppy image" is not needed for you to back up your files to another
hard drive. A floppy isn't even needed to create an entire image of your
hard drive (Acronis True Image is recommended for that).

I'm not sure by what you a referring to when you say "something windows
wants." Are you perhaps thinking of the set of six Windows XP Setup boot
floppy disks? If so, see:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994

 

[Zilbandy]

Why do you have to use a third party app and create a CD or DVD hardcopy for
a system restore backup?

Because Windows backup program does not do well for system files and
files that are in use when the backup is run. If all you want is a
backup of your data, then it will be fine. If you want a backup that
can be restored without having Windows installed and running, then you
need a program with a proven track record for creating disk images
that WORK when you need them. I use and have been very satisfied with
Acronis True Image Home Version 10.

I backup my system to a couple of USB2 hard drives to maintain
multiple backups. I have created the Acronis "recovery CD" that will
boot my computer and run the Acronis software so that my computer can
be restored from a totally blank hard drive. The Acronis recovery CD
includes support for USB devices so your USB keyboard and mouse, if
you have them, will work as well as provide support for my USB hard
drive.

My C drive has about 17gb of data, including the operating system. The
backup image created is roughly 12gb in size and takes me about 14
minutes to create. To restore my system requires that I boot from the
Acronis recovery CD (takes a couple minutes or so) and then walk
through a few steps telling the software which backup image to restore
which takes another minute or so, then sit back and wait for the image
to be restored. Total recovery time in my case is about 45 minutes,
with no further user interaction with the computer. When done, close
the software, take out the CD, and after a reboot, you are back to
where you were. I've had no problems with the process to date, and
I've been using Acronis from version 7 to present (several years).

You can also use the images to restore single files or a mix of
folders and files. The investment in software, and a USB hard drive
for backups in small compared to the headache and time to restore by
reinstalling and configuring ALL you software. This is just my
opinion, but if you want to experiment with other programs and backup
media, good luck.

 

[Zilbandy]

What is IIRC and ASR? And are you saying that you do need to use a floppy
for the system state?

Even backing up the registry using ERUNT takes over 40mb on my laptop.
In today's XP world, floppies are almost useless.

 

[Zilbandy]

When you say, MUCH more reliable, what do you mean!? Backups may not work
if I use the inhouse backup program!?

Yes. The native backup software may not do what you want should you
need to completely restore you system and all programs / data. Many of
us have learned the hard way what works and what doesn't work. I put
my trust in 3rd party software, Acronis True Image... and no, I don't
work for them or get any "kickbacks" for plugging it. I'm simply happy
with it. The only way to find out if your idea will work is to try
it.

 

[Guest]

thanks for the info.

I'm getting pretty frustrated with XP. I can honestly say it is the most
complicated OS I have used.
It looks like I will have to purchase a proper backup application to
safeguard my system.

I did finally figure out how to produce a floppy disk image,
I had to use a different operating system though, and Windows seems to
recognize it fine.

I just have to get used to the idea that everything is more time consuming
and complicated in windows from what I am used to. I do hope that Vista is
an improvement on this, but I will not be able to find out until all my
scientific software and GIS applications support Vista.

The Acronis recovery CD method seems like a pretty reasonable compromise,
and sounds like you have experience in recovery. I'll certainly put this in
my box of "Things to do:" with regards to Windows.

Thank you for the info, I really appreciate it.

Mars