Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Taking (ASR) Backup without floppy disk

An ASR set consists of a system backup and a 3.5" disk that lists the system files that are installed on the PC. If you don't have a 3.5" disk drive on your machine, you won't be able to create the ASR disk. However, you can still create an ASR disk by performing the following steps:

1. Run the ASR wizard, which is part of Windows Backup.
2. After you run the ASR Wizard, start Windows Explorer.
3. Navigate to the \%windir%\repair folder (e.g., C:\windows\repair).
4. Copy the asr.sif and asrpnp.sif files to a network location.
5. On a different networked computer that has a 3.5" disk drive, copy these files to a 3.5" disk and label the disk as your ASR disk.

For more information on ASR backup read this article : http://tec-articles.blogspot.com/2007/10/taking-automated-system-recovery-asr.html

5 comments:

Mario said...

How can I read that files on my machine without floppy disk?
Can I use a CD with the data instead of the floppy?

Robert said...

Exactly where is it in the bios can I relabel a network drive to "A"? (which is what is expected when doing a system restore)

Nishant Kumar said...

Unfortunately ASR recovery environment cannot use CD or a network mapped drive you have to use a floppy drive either internal or external (if your BIOS supports it)

Zain Hoosen said...

hi Nishant, i have an idea on how to restore machines with ASR files from a share on the local machine.

Please tell me if this will work - just don't have the time to test it.

1. I will do full system backup
2. copy the ASR files from ....\repair folder and store away
3. when i need to recover PC/Serve, I will reinstall machine and recover from backup
4. when prompted for ASR files, I will do the following
a)create a folder on local machine and call it adrive i.e. c:\adrive
b)copy the ASR files to that folder and share that folder
c) at command prompt run this:
c:\net use a: \\10.0.0.2\adrive

would'nt that work or will the OS during restore look for physical stiffy-drive

your input would help me decide as to whether i need to purchase 3rd party backup software as none of the servers i want to backup have stiffy-drives. They like dinosaurs- extinct

Nishant Kumar said...

ASR recovery environment cannot use network mapped drive.

4. when prompted for ASR files, I will do the following ---- Where you are prompted for file there will be no command shell for you to type

c:\>net use a: \\10.0.0.2\adrive

Purchase an external floppy drive, most of BIOS support them these days.