Creating your own XP system restore disc?

I’ve been reading over the creating a system restore disk with tools like Acronis True image and Bart PE. I've kind of wanted to try this for some time now.

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic112918.html

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/geek-repair-create-your-own-ultimate-recovery-cd/

Have any of you tired this? Have any thoughts?

Think there might be any advantage on using this method over ghost?

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Comments

msteinhilber

We use Acronis in our shop quite a bit. The True Image line has an optional Universal Restore addon that can be used to restore an image from one hardware platform to another with fairly good success.

tiersten

msteinhilber wrote:

We use Acronis in our shop quite a bit. The True Image line has an optional Universal Restore addon that can be used to restore an image from one hardware platform to another with fairly good success.

Restoring an image from a different platform is what caused all those issues with XP SP3...

msteinhilber

tiersten wrote:

msteinhilber wrote:

We use Acronis in our shop quite a bit. The True Image line has an optional Universal Restore addon that can be used to restore an image from one hardware platform to another with fairly good success.

Restoring an image from a different platform is what caused all those issues with XP SP3...

Not sure if you were saying that I had bombed XP installs after SP3 because of this (from the earlier Vista thread), if you were then you are incorrect.

I have used the universal restore feature in a few emergencies and have updated said machines to SP3 without incident.

EDIT: Then again, we strictly run Intel so we wouldn't run into the SP3 issue - but I understand what you are getting at with manufacturers (HP to name one) using the same image for Intel and AMD machines.

tiersten

msteinhilber wrote:

tiersten wrote:

msteinhilber wrote:

We use Acronis in our shop quite a bit. The True Image line has an optional Universal Restore addon that can be used to restore an image from one hardware platform to another with fairly good success.

Restoring an image from a different platform is what caused all those issues with XP SP3...

Not sure if you were saying that I had bombed XP installs after SP3 because of this (from the earlier Vista thread), if you were then you are incorrect.

I have used the universal restore feature in a few emergencies and have updated said machines to SP3 without incident.

EDIT: Then again, we strictly run Intel so we wouldn't run into the SP3 issue - but I understand what you are getting at with manufacturers (HP to name one) using the same image for Intel and AMD machines.

Yeah sorry. I wasn't implying that you personally had any of these issues. HP as you mention did but I don't know if they used something like the Universal Restore addon. It is just something to be aware of anyway when using disk images.

jibbajabba

Universal restore even worked perfectly for us when we had to swap the hardware from a very old SCSI server (and its VERY old controller) to a new SAS system with an Adaptec 5 series card ...

Server 2003 didn't even care and booted up just fine .. Acronis has my vote for sure !

JDMurray

The problem HP (and others) had was they created their WinXP SP3 disk images on a computer with an Intel-based motherboard, and then used that image to create hard disks for computers with AMD-based motherboards. A CPU-dependent driver was on the image and caused the AMD computers to BSOD. The problem had nothing to do with WinXP SP3 itself.

Slowhand

JDMurray wrote:

The problem HP (and others) had was they created their WinXP SP3 disk images on a computer with an Intel-based motherboard, and then used that image to create hard disks for computers with AMD-based motherboards. A CPU-dependent driver was on the image and caused the AMD computers to BSOD. The problem had nothing to do with WinXP SP3 itself.

It's ironic, I was reading an article about this topic just today after it was sent to me by a former co-worker. Not exactly what you like to see when running a restore, the ol' BSoD.

jovan88

ive been using an older version of ghost on a bootable floppy disk for years, simple and it works

JDMurray

Slowhand wrote:

It's ironic, I was reading an article about this topic just today after it was sent to me by a former co-worker. Not exactly what you like to see when running a restore, the ol' BSoD.

True, but I take comfort in knowing that most BSODs are the result of bad hardware, bad drivers, or hardware/driver conflict, so at least I know where to start looking.

tiersten

JDMurray wrote:

True, but I take comfort in knowing that most BSODs are the result of bad hardware, bad drivers, or hardware/driver conflict, so at least I know where to start looking.

Yup. Microsoft released some statistics awhile back about what was the cause of most crashes under Vista. nVidia drivers accounted for about 30%. Intel and ATI were about 9% each. Microsoft itself was 18%.

Drivers are just as buggy as applications. The only difference is that because they're usually running in the kernel, when they go boom then the whole system dies along with it.

aordal

I've personally created a boot disc using Bart PE. There's a small learning curve, but once you figure out how to get the add ins working its a piece a cake. As a side note, use Virtual PC to test your .iso images. It's super easy and fast.