Win 8 Disaster Recovery for Retrospect 7.7.620 vs Retrospect 8.0

[MarkF2748]

(1) Is it possible to build a disaster recovery CD or DVD for Retrospect 7.7.620 running on Windows 8 32-bit server with Win 8 clients? If so, how?

(2) Is there a different, more robust process for disaster recovery preparation with Retrospect 8 which justifies upgrading?

(3) I need to access an external drive attached to a PC over the network to obtain backup set for bare metal restores. Do I have to add drivers to the recovery disk?

 

[Edit]

Since original post, I reviewed docs at http://www.retrospect.com/en/support , but I am still confused.

It says for R7.7 I will need to download Windows AIK to create the recovery CD. But is the Win 7 / Server 2008 AIK compatible w Windows 8?

It appears that ADK replaces AIK for Win 8. Does R8.0 handle that correctly?

 

Running R7.7.620 on Win 8, the Backup>Disaster Recovery window Prepare for Disaster Recovery provided the link "Download the Retrospect Emergency Recovery CD Image" with no mention of AIK and no mention of selecting a backup set. I downloaded the exe, ran it to create the iso image, and burned the iso to CD (without downloading AIK or ADK). Booting from that CD left me at a hung X window with command prompt for wpeinit (not the Restore Your Computer home screen). I escaped out of there and feel lucky I did not destroy the Win 8 installation I used for testing.