DeanB said:
Still I don't see why it can't offer to make a boot CD or boot DVD
instead of a boot floppy.
The ASR floppy is *not* a boot floppy and it doesn't repair boot
problems! You will not be able to boot the computer with that floppy
diskette. When you boot the computer with your Windows XP cd and select
the F2 option to do an ASR (Automated System Recovery) you will be asked
to provide the ASR floppy for the restore process, without the floppy
the ASR restore process cannot be done.
You can use the NTBackup utility to do backups without needing a floppy
diskette, just select to do a regular backup instead of the ASR backup.
You can still do an ASR backup without a floppy diskette, the ASR
files Asr.sif and Asrpnp.sif will be placed in the systemroot\repair
folder, these files can be copied to another media source or to another
networked computer with a floppy drive and they can then be copied to a
floppy diskette. The ASR restore *cannot* be done locally without a
floppy diskette, it is the same as trying to supply other files like
controller drivers or answer files, during the text mode portion of
Windows XP installation, these files *must* be supplied on a floppy
diskette.
As stated earlier the floppy contains the Asr.sif and Asrpnp.sif files.
The asr.sif file contains information about the disk configuration and
the restore itself (the asrpnp.sif file contains information about the
plug and play devices in your computer). The ASR process will format
the system/boot drives or volumes and with the information in the
asr.sif file it will it restore the disk signatures, volumes, and
partitions. The information contained in the asr.sif file is needed at
this stage of the restore process because the signatures, volumes or
partitions must be restored before the restore process proceeds to
install a basic copy of Windows, the rest of the restore process will
then be done by the basic Windows installation. The system and boot
volumes or partitions cannot be changed after the basic Windows copy is
installed, it must be done at this early stage in the ASR restore process.
While basic disks hold their partition information in the partition
table, and assuming that the table was intact after a disaster,
conceivably the restore could proceed without the disk configuration
information in the asr.sif file. However, if the partition table were
to be damaged, without the information on the floppy diskette the ASR
restore would have no way of being able to restore the partition table.
As for Dynamic Disks and Dynamic Volumes, the disk and volume
information is actually stored in a private region of the disk in the
Logical Disk Manager (LDM) database. The LDM database contains volume
types, offsets, memberships, and drive letters of each volume. When the
ASR restore process formats the drive the LDM database is lost (erased)
and it too must be restored from the information in the asr.sif file, it
too must be restored before the basic Windows copy is installed. The
use of Dynamic Disks is not too prevalent on workstations but they are
often used on mission critical servers, Dynamic Disks are more reliable
and recoverable than basic disks.
ASR is only meant to be used to backup the system and boot volumes, it
is meant to backup the operating system and system state data only. Do
not rely on ASR for your personal data backups, data should be backed up
by other backup methods. ASR is a "Bare Metal" restore process, it is
only meant to be used as a last resort. As others have already pointed
out the use of "cloning" utilities is more prevalent than ASR and these
utilities are for most part just as easy, if not easier to use than ASR.
Keep in mind however that few of the SOHO or Workstation versions of
these cloning utilities can actually do "Dynamic Disks". You will
usually need a "Server Version" of the cloning utility to do Dynamic
Disks and these server versions are usually pretty pricey, $500 to $700
and more not being unusual for these server versions.
John
