Recovery Restore, full of traps?

[Steve Young]

How do you put 50 gigs of files into 5gigs of space? well you don't!

I painstakingly clean installed XP Pro onto a new 120 gig hard drive. I then
proceeded to do the 100+ megs of downloads from the update site, through a
dial up. Through the process, I had the old 40g drive in as a second hard
drive (either D or F, depending in where you are with system work in
progress). I did not install any additional apps or even troublesome devices
such as the Sound Blaster Platinum Live 5.1 sound board or its associated
software. I wanted XP updated and squeaky clean and then saved for possible
future recovery.

After I did this, I wanted to do a recover 'back up' and deposit it on the F
drive. Well surprise surprise, if you have (the nearly full) F drive in the
computer, you have no choice about whether it will be part of the saved
restore If you remove the drive, you have no place but C to put the .bkf
file. I had no CD burning software installed at this point and with a LAN and
plenty of disk space laying around, I didn't have any desire to burn the file
on CDs. Realizing I can pretty well deal with moving files and working in
DOS (recovery console) I didn't worry about removing the F drive and putting
the restore .bkf on C drive, so the backup only contained the full updated
XP. I did this and then copied the .bkf file to several places on the LAN
and of course to the old C which now would be F.

So having my work saved and all packed away, I proceeded to build C with the
apps and installing the troublesome hardware. All the while making update
downloads from the various vendors and depositing them in designated folders
on C. Through all of this, I made a mistake in an order of install on the
SoundBlaster card and caused an occasional BLUE screen. I didn't like this
jumping out from time to time, so after a bunch of futzing, I decided to roll
back to a restore point I had established after XP upgrading was complete,
which was several days prior. I successfully rolled back the install.

Now another surprise. All of the app updates that I had downloaded (a !00meg
or so) had all disappeared from where I had them. Then I realized the
rollback took them away So not to waste all the hours of downloading, I
rolled forward the now backwards rollback and voila, there were the files and
I copied them to other drives and the network. Well, I hadn't realized this
problem so I found that I had to roll back and forth a few time to find all
the missing files By the time I was done with this I had on hell of a
mess. I can imagine that some humogous baggage is created by doing this back
and forth a half dozen times.

After a nights worth of messing around, trying to get this to work well, I
said screw it, IIIIIII have a nice clean restore sitting ready right?

So, I drink a couple beers to get confident and proceed with the recovery
restore, after all, I have .bkf files copied everywhere. (Damn you're a smart
dude Steve) Oh?

So with all the confidence in the world, I put in the XP CD and let it go to
console and format C because I want it clean. Then I go back and start
recover with the F2 and insert the floppy to get it underway. Oh!, I see it
does a format itself, oh well, I'll sit and wait. Then after a bunch of
gyrations, a screen comes up to restore from the back up. Dandy, I'll point
it to F and off we go......, but,..... where is F,.... I see C and of
course the ever useful A: and D cd and E dvd but where the hell is F? no F
no F no F FU*K where's F? ahhh the network, I know I have copies there
let's go what no network? it's not installed? what the hell are you
talking about you stupid screen GIVE ME F F F F F F OR THE NETWORK!

Nope as hard as I tried, I may have lost twice to MS

Is all of my work down the drain? Recover let me make the .bkf file on C
why did it do that if I can never gain access to it again? If I had bought 2
hard drives instead, could I have put it on F and now have access to F This
is really stoopid

After having 12 - 15 hours of updated downloads possibly tossed out the
window, I'm ready to spit nails.over your G** D*** recovery..I even thought
about paying someone to take the nearly 2gig file from my old hard drive and
burn it to DVD as the 'E' drive does show up in the recovery choices.

I have the 2 pieces parts that are needed, how can I get this to work?

Thanks a bundle for any help

Steve Young

 

[dglock]

i think you will have to start over.
this time get a real backup program like ghost or acronis
or drive image. as you found out the hard way,the windows
backup is garbage!
don

 

[t.cruise]

Just two suggestions, get CD/DVD packet writing software like Nero, and burn
the update files to CD or DVD. Then you won't have to worry about losing
them. Many people in this group seem to think that a ghosting utility and a
second hard drive are the way to go, rather than using backup files. If you
ghost your master drive to a slave drive, and your master drive dies, you
just make the ghost drive your master drive, and you're in business again in
a couple of minutes, rather than having to spend hours restoring everything
from backup files.

 

[Spinner]

How do you put 50 gigs of files into 5gigs of space? well you don't!

So with all the confidence in the world, I put in the XP CD and let it go to
console and format C because I want it clean. Then I go back and start
recover with the F2 and insert the floppy to get it underway. Oh!, I see it
does a format itself, oh well, I'll sit and wait. Then after a bunch of
gyrations, a screen comes up to restore from the back up. Dandy, I'll point
it to F and off we go......, but,..... where is F,.... I see C and of
course the ever useful A: and D cd and E dvd but where the hell is F? no F
no F no F FU*K where's F? ahhh the network, I know I have copies there
let's go what no network? it's not installed? what the hell are you
talking about you stupid screen GIVE ME F F F F F F OR THE NETWORK!

That's what a network boot floppy is for ;-)
What I have done in the past is use a network boot floppy and Norton's Ghost
to create a disk image on a network
drive. It's fast and easy, and a restore only takes a few minutes.

<snip>

 

[sgopus]

Just what is the benifit of this, cd takes only 850meg at
the most, dvd can only store 1gig, and most operating
systems (mine) takes a min of 4 gig!

The cd route would take so many, as to be unusable, like
spanning floppies, the DVD route might be usable, but same
problem, gotta span DVD's, so why not TAPE backups.
you can get a tape that can take 40 GIG, and with
compression, even more! yes I know you have to have
the operating system up and operating before the tape will
restore, big deal, takes about an hour to install/reinstall
then restore.. CD DVD just doesn't make sense these days.
Unless I'm just completely out of touch?

Course the cost of the tape drive is rather expensive.
but worth it.

-----Original Message-----
Just two suggestions, get CD/DVD packet writing software like Nero, and burn
the update files to CD or DVD. Then you won't have to worry about losing
them. Many people in this group seem to think that a ghosting utility and a
second hard drive are the way to go, rather than using backup files. If you
ghost your master drive to a slave drive, and your master drive dies, you
just make the ghost drive your master drive, and you're in business again in
a couple of minutes, rather than having to spend hours restoring everything
from backup files.
--

T.C.
t__cruise@[NoSpam]hotmail.com
Remove [NoSpam] to reply

How do you put 50 gigs of files into 5gigs of space? well you don't!

I painstakingly clean installed XP Pro onto a new 120

gig hard drive. I
then

proceeded to do the 100+ megs of downloads from the update site, through a
dial up. Through the process, I had the old 40g drive in as a second hard
drive (either D or F, depending in where you are with system work in
progress). I did not install any additional apps or

even troublesome
devices

such as the Sound Blaster Platinum Live 5.1 sound board or its associated
software. I wanted XP updated and squeaky clean and

then saved for
possible

future recovery.

After I did this, I wanted to do a recover 'back up'

and deposit it on the
F

drive. Well surprise surprise, if you have (the nearly

full) F drive in
the

computer, you have no choice about whether it will be part of the saved
restore If you remove the drive, you have no place

but C to put the
..bkf

file. I had no CD burning software installed at this

point and with a LAN
and

plenty of disk space laying around, I didn't have any

desire to burn the
file

on CDs. Realizing I can pretty well deal with moving files and working in
DOS (recovery console) I didn't worry about removing

the F drive and
putting

the restore .bkf on C drive, so the backup only contained the full updated
XP. I did this and then copied the .bkf file to several places on the LAN
and of course to the old C which now would be F.

So having my work saved and all packed away, I

proceeded to build C with
the

apps and installing the troublesome hardware. All the while making update
downloads from the various vendors and depositing them

in designated
folders

on C. Through all of this, I made a mistake in an order of install on the
SoundBlaster card and caused an occasional BLUE screen. I didn't like this
jumping out from time to time, so after a bunch of

futzing, I decided to
roll

back to a restore point I had established after XP upgrading was complete,
which was several days prior. I successfully rolled back the install.

Now another surprise. All of the app updates that I had

downloaded (a
!00meg

or so) had all disappeared from where I had them. Then I realized the
rollback took them away So not to waste all the

hours of downloading,
I

rolled forward the now backwards rollback and voila,

there were the files
and

I copied them to other drives and the network. Well, I

hadn't realized
this

problem so I found that I had to roll back and forth a

few time to find
all

the missing files By the time I was done with this I had on hell of a
mess. I can imagine that some humogous baggage is

created by doing this
back

and forth a half dozen times.

After a nights worth of messing around, trying to get this to work well, I
said screw it, IIIIIII have a nice clean restore sitting ready right?

So, I drink a couple beers to get confident and

proceed with the
recovery

restore, after all, I have .bkf files copied

everywhere. (Damn you're a
smart

dude Steve) Oh?

So with all the confidence in the world, I put in the

XP CD and let it go
to

console and format C because I want it clean. Then I go back and start
recover with the F2 and insert the floppy to get it

underway. Oh!, I see
it

does a format itself, oh well, I'll sit and wait. Then after a bunch of
gyrations, a screen comes up to restore from the back

up. Dandy, I'll
point

it to F and off we go......, but,..... where is F,.... I see C and of
course the ever useful A: and D cd and E dvd but where

the hell is F? no
F

no F no F FU*K where's F? ahhh the network, I

know I have copies
there

let's go what no network? it's not installed? what the hell are you
talking about you stupid screen GIVE ME F F F F F F OR THE NETWORK!

Nope as hard as I tried, I may have lost twice to MS

Is all of my work down the drain? Recover let me make the .bkf file on C
why did it do that if I can never gain access to it

again? If I had bought
2

hard drives instead, could I have put it on F and now

have access to F
This

is really stoopid

After having 12 - 15 hours of updated downloads possibly tossed out the
window, I'm ready to spit nails.over your G** D***

recovery..I even
thought

about paying someone to take the nearly 2gig file from

my old hard drive
and

burn it to DVD as the 'E' drive does show up in the recovery choices.

I have the 2 pieces parts that are needed, how can I get this to work?

Thanks a bundle for any help

Steve Young

---
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.

 

[Steve Young]

i think you will have to start over.
this time get a real backup program like ghost or acronis
or drive image. as you found out the hard way,the windows
backup is garbage!

yep

thanks for the responses, and Don, I went the Acronis route

some things I would suggest to MS:

allow selectable .bkf read from other drives, with AMR
Mandatory back only the operating system and associated programs.
Allow user selection for all else, give the ability to freeze frame an OS
load. Other stuff should be separately backed, because it changes
more often.

The 'roll back' feature is really nice, *except,* users must learn how to
best use it, as it too can be used to freeze frame the best picture, but one
must realize this and select it, then clean off the rest as a maintenance
task. Start new from that spot by creating a new point with a name. A
frustration that should be solved is that it should only roll back the OS and
assoc. parts. NOT downloads and zipped app and update files

One should be able to take a new hard drive, a bootable recovery and retrieve
the archive from most any where it's stored. If the old C works, that's where
it could come from, or even the older D, used as the previous backup. Of
course, Acronis has a secure partition for this important stuff

Steve Young

 

[Steve Young]

some things I would suggest to MS:

allow selectable .bkf read from other drives, with AMR

oops, ASR (how soon you can forget, when it doesn't work