NTBackup wants a floppy to finish

[Ruptga]

I recently found that XP has a backup program built into it, so I fire it up and find that it "needs" a floppy to save some information to. What's the fix/workaround to this? A link is appreciated, but not necessary.

 

[RebateMonger]

You are running an "ASR System Backup". This is an option in NTBackup. The floppy is used record the disk partiion information so that you can automatically restore the original partition setup on your System drive.

You can cancel out if you wish. The actual "Backup" has nothing to do with the floppy. The information that is written to the floppy consists of two files that are duplicated in the .BKF file. But if you actually wanted to perform an ASR Recovery, you'll have to locate a floppy drive for the actual Recovery.

Keep in mind that an ASR System Backup is intended to back up the drive that holds your System. It won't automatically back up other drives on your PC. My preference is to set up the backup manually, ensuring that you are backing up ALL the drives (if that's what you want) and are backing up the System State. Without the System State, you'll not be able to recover a working system.

 

[Navid]

I use ntbackup frequently for backing up all my files. This does not need any floppy.

I think you will need a floppy if you want to backup and restore the entire OS using ntbackup. The last time I looked, ntbackup did not work properly for that purpose on XP home.
I use an imaging utility for backing up my OS even though I have XP pro.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Navid
The last time I looked, ntbackup did not work properly for that purpose on XP home..

Yeah. ASR System Recovery doesn't work on XP Home.

 

[Ruptga]

I have Pro, and this is a laptop so there's only one drive to worry about here.

So I can just ignore the floppy thing and it'll still load my backups if I need to restore?

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah, you can use the backups. But if you want to do a Restore without first re-installing Windows, then you'll need to attach a floppy drive to the laptop for the ASR Restore, and you'll need to pull the needed files from the .BKF file and put them onto a floppy.

I wouldn't worry about it. Frankly, ASR Recovery is generally troublesome. Sometimes you can't recover your system to the SAME size hard drive that you started with. ASR requires that the hard drive you are recovering to be either larger or the same exact size as the original. Unfortunately, an 80GB Seagate drive is NOT the same size as an 80GB Western Digital drive. One of them will be considered smaller and you can't do an ASR Recovery to it.

 

[Ruptga]

Between Windows Movie Maker and this NTBackup I'm beginning to see why some people like Macs.

Anyway, I know I can buy something to do what I want, but if I wanted to do that I wouldn't've tried this first. But, can't blame you all, the answers have been pretty good.

 

[RebateMonger]

The "safe" way to use NTBackup on XP Pro or Home. I've used it to restore several PCs and some Windows Servers. Following this procedure will get you back up and running with a PC identical to the one you had when you made the backup.

1) Make a FULL System backup. Tell NTBackup to back up all your hard drives and the System State. Always turn "Verify" on. It doesn't take long to do the verification, and it pretty much guarantees you have a usable backup. Note that this is NOT the "Automatic System Recovery" backup. I don't find the ASR that useful because of its "gotchas".

2) If you ever need to restore XP with the backup, you'll first have to re-install XP. Then patch it to the same Service Pack level as your PC was.

3) After XP has been re-installed and patched, open up NTBackup and follow the instructions for a full System Restore. Microsoft has some whitepapers on this for extra detail.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger
I have Pro, and this is a laptop so there's only one drive to worry about here.

So I can just ignore the floppy thing and it'll still load my backups if I need to restore?

I don't think so.
I think you need to backup to another hard drive or optical media. Since you only have one internal drive, you can use an external hard drive or DVDs.

The point is that if something goes wrong such that you cannot use your hard drive anymore (for example, if the hard drive dies), any backup you have stored on it will be useless!
That's why you should always backup on a different medium to diversify.

A less severe problem could render your OS useless, due to software problems. In that case, if you have multiple partitions and save your backup files on the other partition, you will be able to use the backup files.

I always backup on a second hard drive, as well as DVDs.

 

[Ruptga]

Oh of course I'll put the backup on some DVDs, as soon as I find how to split it up over several disks, but one thing at at time.

Why do I need to reinstall XP before loading the backups? I'm re-running the backup program and this time I went to advanced instead of just continue, I guess that'll sidestep the floppy since it's not the ASR?