Xpress Recovery2 - The saga continues

[Anna]

Hi Anna, I'm not going to say much about XR2 untill I hear back from
Gigabyte. I emailed them a few hours ago. I emailed in such a way that
left no room for doubt as to what was going on and what is required and
what I expected of them.

The ball is now squarely in their court! I gave them a hypathetical out of
the box new system.
I outlined to them what motherboard was going into it,
the harddrive (blank) that was going to be used and what size it would be.
I told them how many partitions I wanted,
And I told them exactly what software was going to be loaded, which was
Windows XP, the Drivers and the
Microsoft updates. That's all.
Finally, I told them exactly what the problem was trying to get XR2
installed.

I asked them then to go ahead and prepare this system (on paper) with XR2
installed. Step by Step

I can send you a copy of the letter if you like. It's in a Word.doc, just
ask.

My sister is a perfect typical example, let me explain.
She does not and never will ever learn how to use Windows correctly. Why,
because she says she doesn't want to know. Her one and only concern is
that when she pushes the button the computer turns on!

Now how many users do you think are out there like her. The number would
be staggering.
You think these people are going to want to spend time learning Casper or
Acronis? you can bet your bippy their not going to want to.

Enter XR2. When the machine goes down permanently simply hit the F9
button when booting up and in a
little while what ever is in the image backup is back only leaving it
necessary to reload what ever was installed in the machine after the last
backup.

Yes the image partition is on the same drive but as long as the image
partition is not damaged and it's
usually not, then there is no problem.

XR2 is perfect for the, "I don't care how it works, I just wanna play my
game user", such as my sister.

When she calls me with a crashed system, (she lives in another state) I
just tell her to boot up, hit F9 and call me in the morning!!

You know my feeling regarding incremental backups but did I mention
'Erunt'?

Erunt is a program I use to do incremental backups of my registry, and
it's free.

If I install a program that messes up my machine then it's not as simple
as to just uninstalling the offending
installation. Because uninstalling, as you know, doesn't in most cases
clear the clutter out of the registry.

I simply use Erunt to restore my registry to before I installed the
ofending installation. Everytime I install a new application and all is
working ok, then I just make another back up of my registry.
Works pretty much like that Windows program, that only works when it feels
like it. Oh yeah, system restore.

How do you like the subject heading of this thread?
I was for a little while considering, Like sands through the hour
galss.....

Mickey

Mickey:
Well I do hope you'll get some kind of a responsive reply from Gigabyte and
I'm sure you'll post the contents of such if & when you do receive that
communication.

Just one comment re your sister's dread of using a PC for little more than
powering the machine on & off and performing the most basic tasks with her
machine.

All of us in the business of selling, maintaining, repairing PCs have met
thousands of end-user consumers just like her. As a matter of fact, over the
years the vast majority of those type of users I've encountered have the
same degree of interest (or "uninterest"!). Their use of their PC involves
little more than using their email program, some internet browsing, basic
word processing perhaps, and using a program or application or two that
holds some particular interest for them. All this is quite understandable.

I recognize that such users have little or no interest in maintaining
routine backups of their system (even though I may do my best to spark such
interest!) or perform more complicated tasks with their PCs other than the
above. So be it. More than a few of them would even balk at pressing the F9
key during bootup to access some backup/recovery type of program.

Perhaps the Xpress Recovery2 program is a workable solution for them.
Hopefully I'll have a chance to work with the program in the coming week as
I previously mentioned to you.
Anna

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Unallocated space is usually 10-15% of the size of the drive

I haven't followed the earlier messages in this thread, so I may be
misunderstanding what you mean by that. But if you are saying what
that appears to literally mean--that all drives normally have 10-15%
of their space unallocated--that's not at all correct. Drives don't
normally have any unallocated space.

 

[Mickey Mouse]

Hi Ken,
Yes your right. Unfortunately, you've arrived quite a few days after the
party started.
And you have missed the pre dinner drinks. lol

Mickey

Nice to hear rom you though.

 

[Mickey Mouse]

Ok, got it now.


And that still leaves the proof in the pudding by the information you
provided, partition C: was 302.73 GB and the unallocated space was 34.46
GB which is buy a long shot no where near the same size or larger than the
C:.
I think we may have hit upon the cause of the issue (or not), by your
clarification I believe it may have something to do with XR2s Hard Drive
Detection. They do state that XR2 "is capable of backing up and restoring
only from the first physical hard disk", I'd have to go back and refresh
on whether they mentioned somewhere else it being the first Primary disk.
Going with that and only that said, the information you provided shows E:
drive as DISK0, the C: drive as Disk1 and ICR if any mention was made as
to wwhat if any drive was set as Active. Now, since Disk0 is the first
physical disk and Disk1 is the second physical disk, XR2 may not have
detected either of the disks. Then once you set Disk0 as active, XR2
found the first physical disk and was happy to work. As a test to kill
the cat, try connecting/setting the C: drive to be Disk0 and see if XR2
plays nice.

Hello Brian, and others.
I am under the impression that XR2 will 'only' backup the first physical
drive it 'finds an OS on'.
regardless if it's drive 0 or drive 100.

However, after reading your above comment and until I hear back from
Gigabyte, you just may
have hit the nail on the head. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the cat!

I'm thinking out loud here, XR2 only appeared to work on my C: & D: (drive1)
after, making my E: (drive 0) active.

I'm thinking if I physically disconnect my Edrive0) from the mobo, would I
be able to make a new image
if I boot up and press F9.
ALSO
My knowledge is limited here, help me out. (Read the next bit slowly, it
even confuses me a little.) lol

If I physically disconnect Edrive0) from the mobo sata connection,
my current (disk1) C: & D: will remain disk1, right?

Or will disk1 automatically move up to disk0? (probably not.)

If not, then is it just a matter of unplugging disk1 from the sata
connection(1) and plugging it into sata connection(0)

If also not, then how do I make my disk1, disk0?

The original pc that instigated this whole thread is no longer with me. It
however appears not to be coming back.
The system I'm using at this moment is also a Gigabyte system of which we
have spoken much about.
I'm thinking about disconnecting this particular system and connecting my
backup system which is running an
Asus mobo and therefore nothing to do with XR2. I'll refer to these two
systems now as the Gigabyte system and
Asus system.

I'll repartition, format, reinstal the Gigabyte system with Windows Xp as
many times as is required, and experiment with XR2
and also adopt any suggestions made here re XR 2 to find the definitive
method of installing and using XR2.
I think it's worth the trouble, what do you think folks?
Think of it as an adventure, I love an adventure, this could be fun. If you
think I should go ahead with this, 'adventure', then
I'll expect some feedback, especially from the wallflowers.


Mickey

 

[Brian A.]

Hello Brian, and others.
I am under the impression that XR2 will 'only' backup the first physical
drive it 'finds an OS on'.
regardless if it's drive 0 or drive 100.

However, after reading your above comment and until I hear back from
Gigabyte, you just may
have hit the nail on the head. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the cat!

I not sure what to really think on that and await a response as well,
which I hope they can do with better clarification then their support I've
seen so far.

I'm thinking out loud here, XR2 only appeared to work on my C: & D:
(drive1) after, making my E: (drive 0) active.

Another thought on that:
By any perchance is Drive E: set before Drive C: in the BIOS device boot
order? If it is, it may have something to do with it, or not.

I'm thinking if I physically disconnect my Edrive0) from the mobo, would
I be able to make a new image
if I boot up and press F9.

The only way to find out is to try it, at theis point I don't think anyone
can give any other answer than it's a 50/50 shot.

ALSO
My knowledge is limited here, help me out. (Read the next bit slowly, it
even confuses me a little.) lol

If I physically disconnect Edrive0) from the mobo sata connection,
my current (disk1) C: & D: will remain disk1, right?

Or will disk1 automatically move up to disk0? (probably not.)

If not, then is it just a matter of unplugging disk1 from the sata
connection(1) and plugging it into sata connection(0)

If also not, then how do I make my disk1, disk0?

Disk1 should become Disk0. You would already know before now if you had
tried it.

The original pc that instigated this whole thread is no longer with me. It
however appears not to be coming back.
The system I'm using at this moment is also a Gigabyte system of which we
have spoken much about.
I'm thinking about disconnecting this particular system and connecting my
backup system which is running an
Asus mobo and therefore nothing to do with XR2. I'll refer to these two
systems now as the Gigabyte system and
Asus system.

I'll repartition, format, reinstal the Gigabyte system with Windows Xp as
many times as is required, and experiment with XR2
and also adopt any suggestions made here re XR 2 to find the definitive
method of installing and using XR2.
I think it's worth the trouble, what do you think folks?
Think of it as an adventure, I love an adventure, this could be fun. If
you think I should go ahead with this, 'adventure', then
I'll expect some feedback, especially from the wallflowers.

IMHO, XR2 is no different than the OEM PC manufacturers hidden recovery
partition and nothing more. Although it has my attention right now, it's
not anything I would ever use.


--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Mickey Mouse]

Conroe,
I have may a solution re- XR2 but won't know for sure untill tomorrow so I'm
holding off posting until
I'm sure.
However, I know you've been hasslling with this for two years.
Email me at
(e-mail address removed) with your email.

Do you know the difference between a harddrive and a partition?
If so, how many harddrives are installed in your system?
How are they partitioned?
What is your boot partition?
Are they Sata or ribbon?
In disk management, which is the boot drive (0) and drive (1)?

I don't know what part of the world you are in but it's my bedtime now.
email me and I'll read it in the morning. Oh, I'm in Australia.

Mickey