Mars said:
Yes, floppy drives are cheep, but I am not interested in more junk
floating
around in my workspace.
Then you will need to examine other backup options that don't require
floppies. ntbackup, the XP backup utility, does require a floppy for what
you seem to want to do.
You might also want to consider what's junk and what's required tools or
hardware. If you have to look after a number of PCs, a USB floppy can be a
valuable tool.
What is IIRC and ASR? And are you saying that you do need to use a floppy
for the system state?
IIRC = If I Recall Correctly
ASR = Automatic System Restore, an optional function of ntbackup.
ASR is the option in ntbackup that lets you create a restorable, bootable
backup of Windows.
Otherwise, you have only data backups, which will require a running copy of
Windows for restoration. The data will probably not include registry
entries for applications. If you want that, you'll be using ASR, and that
means you need a floppy.
ASR doesn't use the floppy for your user data as such; it's disk and volume
information so it knows what to restore to.
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.
"Best" is a rather subjective term, and given the number of posts you can
see here about failures with ntbackup, I'd say it's possible to challenge
that evaluation.
And I would suggest that a backup app that *requires* a floppy drive is no
longer the "best" solution, and hasn't been for some time.
As to "quickly", for reference, I often do complete drive images, 30 gig or
more in about a half hour. Restoring to a new, replacement drive takes
about the same time. However, I often do this with the drive hosted in
another system. And I'm including the time to move the drive from the
original system to a USB2 drive adapter.
Now, your description of the required task sounds a lot like ASR, and it
requires a floppy.
You might be able to hack a redirection to an image, but if you do this, you
*must* test the backup and restore process to see if your hack breaks it.
And that carries its own risks, as the ASR restore process starts with
wiping the Windows volume. So, you'll need to have another known-good
backup or swap in a sacrificial drive to test with.
So I certainly won't recommend that you try this, unless your time and data
are of very low value.
When you say, MUCH more reliable, what do you mean!? Backups may not work
if I use the inhouse backup program!?
That is what I mean, yes. Some people have good results with ntbackup.
Others don't.
You must test to find out what works - and more importantly, what doesn't
work - for you.
If you're trying to get around basic requirements, you generally aren't
tipping the scales in your favour.
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.
Well, the reality is, it *can* be hard to do, if it isn't supported.
And if your workaround doesn't turn out to really work, you're basically
scre... ah, you may not be in a desirable position.
Unless you test it thoroughly, you'll find this out at the worst possible
time.
I just can not figure out how to do this.
The short answer may be that you don't. You use something else that
doesn't rely on floppies, but creates bootable CDs or DVDs instead, or
creates fully restorable, bootable images to a hard disk.
And that something isn't ntbackup.
Or, get an external floppy drive.
Good lord I can not even remember the last time I've seen a floppy! ha!
And many new systems don't come with them. Perhaps later versions of
ntbackup will create bootable optical media (or write to it in the first
place!), but it doesn't do that now.
You probably don't see a lot of tape drives on PCs, either.
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.
When I start to service a machine, I normally back the drives up by removing
them, attach them to a host system, and image them there. This works very
well, and normally is under 30 minutes to back up or restore 30+gig of data.
If you are using a network, some versions of imaging software can be loaded
onto a central backup system, much smaller agents loaded on the PCs. The
PCs will then be backed up to the central system over the network. Note
that this usually *requires* that user accounts have passwords. These
versions are also a *lot* more expensive than floppy drives - but can be
much more reliable.
The term "expensive" should be evaluated as a comparison between the backup
utility price and the value of your data, and your time.
Talk to the ArcGIS vendor and manufacturer support about backup
compatibilites. They are your best first source of information on this
topic.
And whatever backup solution you look at, test it first.
HTH
-pk
<snippage>
The only way to find out if your idea will work is to try
