How to Back Up XP Home System with No Floppy!

[admin]

TIPS:

I have done this successfully - ASR laptop backup and restoring to an extra hard drive (good move for those who have kids in college, hint - get the backup before they touch the laptop) that way they can have the drive swapped if really in a crisis.

BACKUP

• Use Microsoft XP Backup Utility: go to advanced mode - automated system recovery wizard - next, file, next, finish (need USB floppy drive and an external USB hard drive) I have never heard of anyone doing this without a floppy, don’t know why but it locks you into using a floppy, just go get a USB floppy drive, and the rest is cake. No need to pay for some expensive backup utility.
• This advanced mode option will backup this computer only, otherwise the simple wizard option recursively copies everything on E: into your new backup image. Don’t want to do that if you got a ton of stuff on E:

Special Notes:
• On creating the backup ASR floppy, there was no problem seeing the USB floppy drive.
• On Restoring from the ASR floppy my laptop (HP6000) did not see the floppy drive. So I went into the BIOS and clicked a setting to ENABLE USB legacy support. This had the USB Floppy fired up on my next boot and all went fine!!!
RESTORE

• When you restore to the new hard drive you need to install the new hard drive, connect the USB floppy, do not connect the backup disk drive E: otherwise windows install will examine this drive for format potential, boot from the windows XP install CD, hit F2 which asks for the ASR floppy first, insert the floppy, then tell it to format the c: drive, then it loads a windows kernel before is does a glitch boot.
• While it is down: remove the floppy, leave the CD in, and plug in the external drive E: go back into BIOS and clicked a setting to DISABLE USB legacy support and when it comes back XP setup looks like it is continuing with the typical T+39 minute message, but at about T+30 minutes the Backup Utility pops up and said E: is not a valid drive and no access. I typed OK then the ASR wizard asks where to load the full-backup image, I still had to diddle with this some by browsing to E: and unplugged/replugged in the Eternal backup disk until it could find it, but eventually it did allow me to access the E drive. That was the most uncertain part of this evolution.

And this process is relatively quick. I can backup 5 gig in less than 20 minutes on USB2 and restore is mostly hands free.