Disaster recovery questions for Windows 7

[C Wilson]

Novice questions, my apologies if these are trivial!

 

OS is Win 7 64 bit. PC has SSD C drive, and a software RAID 1 SATA III disk pairing as the D drive.

 

Backup media is newly acquired SCSI connected LTO4 tape drive.

 

Imagined sceanrios: C: dies or PC is stolen. I have to work out what strategy I need to rebuild my OS and data from a tape.

 

Do I need to use the 64 bit disaster recovery disc option, or the 32 bit? My SCSI driver for the tape drive SCSI card is 64 bit. The RAID 1 Intel  Rapid Storage Technology driver is unknown as to 32 bit or 64 bit, and I am unsure how to tell. It was loaded off the Gigabyte motherboard driver CD automatically.

 

Can Retrospect Desktop create an image file of the C drive with the OS boot partition and files etecetera? Can it write it direct to tape? If not and  I write an image to say the D drive (which has no boot stuff on it), and then copy the whole D drive with the C drive image upon it to tape, can the recovery disc load the tape drivers and retrieve and restore the OS from the tape?

 

Tape seemed a good option at the time as I felt a hard drive stored unused for a few years may not reliably spin up, and a relatively inert tape cassette would be more likely to be usable after a long dormancy. I had not considered all the nuances of it, as a home user. I guess you IT gentlemen are more familiar with its use

 

As an aside, and not strictly Retrospect relevant, a question about my Intel motherboard software  controlled RAID 1 drives. If the MOTHERBOARD died, and a like for like replacement unavailable, would a different board still read this RAID 1 pairing? Would the Retrospect OS back up have any issues, maybe related to Microsoft not running Win 7 on different hardware, with backing up to a PC with a different motherboard? Would I need to buy the Dissimilar Hardware option?

 

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

[C Wilson]

Further  to the above I have succeeded in getting Retrospect to start writing a system drive copy from my tape drive to a blank C: drive, after speaking to support by phone. I copied the C:\Users\Chris Wilson\My Documents\Retrospect Catalog Files\ to a USB thumb drive and when the restore asked for the location of the catalog file I pointed it to the thumb drive and it started copying across to the empty C: drive from tape. But part way through the restore it stops and the log shows this error. i have hopefully attached a photo of the screen. Can someone tell me why this has occurred please? The back up tape was checked after it was written by Retrospect and showed no issues. Thanks.

[Scillonian]

The problem is the second ":" (colon) in the folder name "C:\D: RAID 1" which makes it invalid. What is this folder and how was it created?

 

If this really is the folder name you will have to rename the folder to something valid (if you can) and create a new full backup before trying disaster recovery again.

 

(From past experience many years ago it is possible to create invalid Windows names on NTFS volumes with Linux that Retrospect will backup without issue but Windows will reject if you try to restore them.)

[C Wilson]

Thank you very much for the reply, I made another backup, just of the C: drive this time, with the option set (and I don't recall the exact words) to write the windows system files to the backup. The previous one also contained the D: drive, which I suspect was the "funny" file name. I assumed I could separate the sections i wanted to restore, but see now that's probably not he case. This copied across without errors from tape to a blank drive. However things still failed to go well. The first issue was the recovery disc made under Retrospect did not give the option to make the blank drive  active. That option was greyed out. Nonetheless the image was transferred, but failed to boot. I then launched Windows with the original drives so i could then look at what Retrospect had written to the previously blank hard drive, the screen shot should be attached. This is obviously not what is required!

 

Firstly, am I right in thinking Retrospect should be able to create a bootable image itself, and copy it to an LTO4 tape drive, and that I should then be able to boot from said drive?

 

If it should be possible, can anyone suggest what's gone wrong here please? If this is not directly possible how do I backup the drive with Windows 7 OS on it to a tape drive, and be able to restore an operable system from it please?

 

Secondly, is it right I also need to copy the catalogue file to another medium, as Retrospect will be unable to "see" this file direct from the tape back up? I am getting more and more confused now and maybe I am just not understanding Retrospects tape back up capabilities. Cheers.

 

The screen shot of what Retrospect finally wrote from tape to a blank hard drive (the only one attached to the PC at the time) should be attached.

[Scillonian]

Do I need to use the 64 bit disaster recovery disc option, or the 32 bit? My SCSI driver for the tape drive SCSI card is 64 bit. The RAID 1 Intel  Rapid Storage Technology driver is unknown as to 32 bit or 64 bit, and I am unsure how to tell. It was loaded off the Gigabyte motherboard driver CD automatically.

As the RAID controller is by Intel I would think the drivers are 64-bit. The 32-bit Recovery Solution will work with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows and drivers but the 64-bit Recovery Solution will only work with the 64-bit version of Windows and drivers.

 

Can Retrospect Desktop create an image file of the C drive with the OS boot partition and files etecetera? Can it write it direct to tape? If not and  I write an image to say the D drive (which has no boot stuff on it), and then copy the whole D drive with the C drive image upon it to tape, can the recovery disc load the tape drivers and retrieve and restore the OS from the tape?

Retrospect is a file based backup application. It is not a disk or partition imaging application.

 

When Retrospect does a bare metal restore in the WinPE based Disaster Recovery environment it uses the System State information generated by Windows during the backup to restore the volume to its state at the time of the backup.

 

Tape seemed a good option at the time as I felt a hard drive stored unused for a few years may not reliably spin up, and a relatively inert tape cassette would be more likely to be usable after a long dormancy. I had not considered all the nuances of it, as a home user. I guess you IT gentlemen are more familiar with its use

Stored in an environmentally controlled environment tape can have a fairly long shelf life as long as a drive is still available to read it. In a domestic environment with constantly changing temperature and humidity the life can be much shorter. I don't know about modern tapes and drives but in the past tapes could be a bit finicky about the drive they were used with.

 

As an aside, and not strictly Retrospect relevant, a question about my Intel motherboard software  controlled RAID 1 drives. If the MOTHERBOARD died, and a like for like replacement unavailable, would a different board still read this RAID 1 pairing? Would the Retrospect OS back up have any issues, maybe related to Microsoft not running Win 7 on different hardware, with backing up to a PC with a different motherboard? Would I need to buy the Dissimilar Hardware option?

It would depend on how proprietary or not their RAID 1 implementation is.

 

If you want to use Retrospect to do a Disaster Recovery restore to different hardware you will need the Dissimilar Hardware option

 

Thank you very much for the reply, I made another backup, just of the C: drive this time, with the option set (and I don't recall the exact words) to write the windows system files to the backup. The previous one also contained the D: drive, which I suspect was the "funny" file name. I assumed I could separate the sections i wanted to restore, but see now that's probably not he case. This copied across without errors from tape to a blank drive. However things still failed to go well. The first issue was the recovery disc made under Retrospect did not give the option to make the blank drive  active. That option was greyed out. Nonetheless the image was transferred, but failed to boot. I then launched Windows with the original drives so i could then look at what Retrospect had written to the previously blank hard drive, the screen shot should be attached. This is obviously not what is required!

 

Is this a version of Windows installed by the manufacturer of your PC or a [Microsoft vanilla] version you installed yourself? Because OEMs sometimes do some custom boot configurations these can give problems with restores.

 

Firstly, am I right in thinking Retrospect should be able to create a bootable image itself, and copy it to an LTO4 tape drive, and that I should then be able to boot from said drive?

 

No, Retrospect does not create disk or partition images. If you want to create an image of the disk you will need to use a disk imaging application.

 

If it should be possible, can anyone suggest what's gone wrong here please? If this is not directly possible how do I backup the drive with Windows 7 OS on it to a tape drive, and be able to restore an operable system from it please?

There are at least to possible options:

• Install Windows from installation media, install Retrospect then use Retrospect to restore the system to its state at the last backup. (My experience with this method is to let Windows Update bring the installation up to date before doing the restore for a more reliable restore.)

• Us a disk image created with a disk imaging application stored on another hard disk or NAS to recreate the disk then use Retrospect to restore the system to its state at the last backup. (This is basically the method I currently use.)

 

Secondly, is it right I also need to copy the catalogue file to another medium, as Retrospect will be unable to "see" this file direct from the tape back up? I am getting more and more confused now and maybe I am just not understanding Retrospects tape back up capabilities. Cheers.

Yes. A USB flash drive will do for this but it must always be the current copy of the catalog for the backup set you are going to restore from. Every time the catalog file is changed you will have to remember to update the flash drive.

 

My backup sets are stored on a NAS (from where they are also on a schedule copied to off-site hard disks) with a Duplicate job scheduled at the end of the backup period to copy the catalog files to the NAS.

[C Wilson]

Sincere thanks for the very detailed reply Scillonian, I hope the Islands weather is to your liking, it's balmy and very nice for April here in the Midlands!

 

I am absorbing all you said, but I am curious to know why Retrospect installs the WAIK software? I also remain unsure if Retrospect is capable of making a bootable drive image within itself, and if written to a hard disk if the Retrospect emergency repair disk will restore from it single handedly? Or do I need totally separate imaging software to create a bootable image, something like Macrium Reflect? then store the image as part of a backup  using Retrospect?

Thanks again.

 

[Scillonian]

Sincere thanks for the very detailed reply Scillonian, I hope the Islands weather is to your liking, it's balmy and very nice for April here in the Midlands!

Nice to be able to sit outside with a cuppa and enjoy some warm sunshine again.

 

I am absorbing all you said, but I am curious to know why Retrospect installs the WAIK software? I also remain unsure if Retrospect is capable of making a bootable drive image within itself, and if written to a hard disk if the Retrospect emergency repair disk will restore from it single handedly? Or do I need totally separate imaging software to create a bootable image, something like Macrium Reflect? then store the image as part of a backup  using Retrospect?

Thanks again.

 

The WAIK is installed to provide the WinPE boot environment used by the Disaster Recovery boot media. It is the WinPE environment that should configure the partitions on the target disk and write the necessary information to the MBR/GPT that makes it bootable. Outside of WinPE I don't think Retrospect makes any use of the other parts of the WAIK.

 

The only bootable image that Retrospect makes is the Disaster Recovery boot media.

 

If the forecast rain arrives this weekend I may try out Retrospect's current Disaster Recovery option, now I've found a spare USB flash drive, and see what happens.