In news:Ooay8Ll$IHA.5192@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
Patrick Keenan typed on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:16:13 -0400:
> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
> news:uQuX1pk$IHA.2244@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> In news:eHvY0%23j$IHA.1152@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl,
>> Patrick Keenan typed on Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:58:11 -0400:
>>> "Tony" <news@t-onywoolf.co.uk> wrote in message
>>> news:kxVok.42446$E41.22617@text.news.virginmedia.c om...
>>>> I want to create an ASR in case of problems when installing SP3.
>>>> But it seems that ASR insists on copying pretty well the whole
>>>> contents of my C drive.
>>>
>>> Yes, that is its entire purpose.
>>>
>>>> It certainly does all of "My Documents" and "Shared Documents", so
>>>> I would need media capable of holding 50+ GB. This is fine if you
>>>> have a tape drive or a spare HD installed, which I don't. But I
>>>> already have full backups of my own data on DVD and USB drive. All I
>>>> need from ASR is the system files. So, can I stop the ASR wizard
>>>> backing up "My Documents" and "Shared Documents"?
>>>
>>> Not without moving those folders, or their contents, to another
>>> drive.
>>>> Or is there another way to be able to get the system working again
>>>> if all goes wrong? What do other folks do? Personal document
>>>> backup and system backup are not the same thing after all.
>>>
>>> Personally, and I know many others who do this, I use Acronis
>>> TrueImage in two ways.
>>>
>>> First:
>>> I create an image of the system drive on an external disk.
>>> I create a scheduled task to update that image, once a month. Yes,
>>> this also takes any data on the system drive. But this part
>>> is incremental, something ASR and ntbackup can't do, so the
>>> increment image is much smaller than the original.
>>>
>>> Second:
>>> I use the Backup functions of TrueImage to save the data / email /
>>> settings. Then I schedule another incremental backup of those, which
>>> runs daily.
>>> In the case of the system cratering, the Acronis boot CD will allow
>>> me to restore the system image, and then restore the latest data and
>>> settings. And it won't require a floppy.
>>>
>>> If you don't want ASR (or any imaging software) to backup your
>>> data, you have to keep the data on another drive.
>>
>> For starters, my ntbackup *does* incremental backups! And before you
>> use something like Acronis TrueImage, you better be sure it actually
>> works. I mean replace your hard drive with a fresh hard drive and
>> make sure the thing actually works! You will be surprised how many
>> make backups and then learn when their hard drive fails that things
>> like Acronis TrueImage was set wrong or simply doesn't work at all.
>
> One might note that the very same complaint is often made about
> ntbackup. You'll find lots of posts from people it just didn't work
> for.
> I've used TrueImage for years, and installed it on many client
> systems, and it's been very reliable, and much easier to use than
> ntbackup. And it doesn't require floppies.
>
> Absolutely, whatever method you use, you must verify that the backups
> work, and not rely on a single copy.
>
> But with things like TrueImage, you can simply mount the backup and
> open the files, you don't have to restore to anywhere.
>
>> And no! If you don't use ASR or other imaging software, it doesn't
>> have to be on another drive.

Same with my method. I simply mount the backup and there are all of the
files. I simply bootup BartPE (which is free for Windows XP users) on a
stick and I can copy whatever one to whatever two. And virtually anything
can be read by whatever two. It could be another Windows XP machine, a
Linux, a Mac, or even a Commodore machine. No TrueImage required.

--
Bill
Black Asus EEE PC 4GB 2GB SoDIMM Adata 16GB
Windows XP SP2 and Xandros Linux