Pilaar39 Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 After creating the ISO image file, I tried to create the bootable CD using EasyCD Creator 6.0. I chose the option to create a boot CD, and then there are several other options: 2 floppy disks, Harddisk emulation, and no emulation. I tried creating both HD emulation and no emulation CDs.. neither will boot. Has anyone been able to create a disaster recovery CD with EasyCD Creator, and if so, can yo please advise how? (why wasn't this function included with Retrospect!?!) Sigh! Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Don't create a boot CD. Just create a regular CD from the ISO image. The image has that is needed, at least it is supposed to have all the right stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilaar39 Posted October 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Well, thanks for the reply, but that didn't work either.. now I have 3 wasted CDs. Any other ideas? Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pedro99 Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Hi. I hope that maybe this will help you .... I have successfully used this Website and its downloads to create a Windows Emergency Boot Disk - visit http://ebcd.pcministry.com/ There is a forum there to discuss and support its creation and use. Hope it helps. Good luck! Pedro99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awnews Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Can you tell us what you see on the CDR after you burn it? When you say it "didn't work" what happens--nothing burns, it's blank, it won't boot, etc.? After you create the ISO using Retrospect, you need to burn the ISO to a CDR as a disk image. Here's a site that shows some screenshots for doing this with a version (?) of Easy CD: http://www.wizardskeep.org/mainhall/tutor/cdcriso/cdcrtiso.html I agree with you that Retrospect should include the abilily to burn the image directly to a bootable CD. This forum (and I assume tech support and frustrated people) spends too much time trying to figure out/explain how to get an (ISO) image from the harddrive to a burned CDR using one of many other programs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Quote: Can you tell us what you see on the CDR after you burn it? When you say it "didn't work" what happens--nothing burns, it's blank, it won't boot, etc.? After you create the ISO using Retrospect, you need to burn the ISO to a CDR as a disk image. Here's a site that shows some screenshots for doing this with a version (?) of Easy CD: http://www.wizardskeep.org/mainhall/tutor/cdcriso/cdcrtiso.html I agree with you that Retrospect should include the abilily to burn the image directly to a bootable CD. This forum (and I assume tech support and frustrated people) spends too much time trying to figure out/explain how to get an (ISO) image from the harddrive to a burned CDR using one of many other programs. There's a technical article, or knowledge base article, at the Dantz web site that gives instructions for creating the CD using several of the common CD recording programs. And I do not agree that Retrospect should include the capability to create the CD. Anybody having a CD recorder also will have the necessary software, each of which makes it not too difficult to plop the image to CD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_gb Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Howard, Whilst I agree about Dantz not including the facility to burn the iso image to CD-R within Retrospect, what I do think is pretty bad is that, as far as I remember, the instructions about how to do this are in a readme file, rather than in the user manual. That is not good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilaar39 Posted October 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Quote: Can you tell us what you see on the CDR after you burn it? When you say it "didn't work" what happens--nothing burns, it's blank, it won't boot, etc.? Yes, the CDs are created, seemingly without problem. The following image illusatrates what I have attempted.. the first image is the EasyCD selection for bootable disk. Then, I have 4 options.. obviously the two floppy disk options are out of the question. I first tried 'no emulation', then HD emulation, then (as someone suggested) just copying the ISO file to the CD as data. Below that you will see the actual contents of the 3 CDs. None of them will boot. (well, let me qualify that... the only one that attempts to boot is the one created with HD emulation.. however it fails with the message: ) Instead, the OS on the HD boots. And yes, I have set my Bios to boot from CD before attempting to boot from HD Note.. if you browser automatically scales down the images, click on the button in the lower right corner to see the full size image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhal Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 You need to choose the bottom option, "record disk from image" on the file menu (not create a data disk). Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilaar39 Posted October 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 YESSS!!! THANK YOU Mr. Hamilton.. that seems to have done it. One question: when I boot up with this "disaster recovery" CD, it appears to be very similar to booting from a nornal Windows XP install CD. Now, I must admit, I did not go all the way, since I did not want to trash my existing windows system, and chose to exit the process with F3 when I had the option (rather than reformatting my drive). Since this recovery CD was produced using the I386 folder from my original XP instlall CD, I am wondering if I ever have to use it, will it restore the original windows installation? You see, I have since installed SP2, and it does not look like this would be installed, if it copied the original system files from I386. Or is does that just lay the base, and will it later prompt me for the retrospect backup DVDs I had created earlier, and use them to restore the system with SP 2 installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 Quote: Howard, Whilst I agree about Dantz not including the facility to burn the iso image to CD-R within Retrospect, what I do think is pretty bad is that, as far as I remember, the instructions about how to do this are in a readme file, rather than in the user manual. That is not good! The info needs to be in a separate document as it has nothing to do thith Retrospect itself, and may often change due to: 1. Added/deleted CD writing products. 2. Changes in how particular products are used in different versions of the CD writing product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awnews Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 Or, Retrospect, a program that *claims* to burn CDs, could also burn a CD with the DR image file (wouldn't even have to generate an intermediate ISO in this case, although it should still be an option given the many burners not supported by the program) and be done with it. *Or* we can endlessly go on dealing with users who don't know what an ISO is our how to burn one or are rightly annoyed at being expected to buy another product to implement a feature that Retrospect claims to have (creating a DR CD). As a side note, I really wish that Retrospect would also stop burning CDs with its own proprietary format and just burn the needed backup files to CDs in a normal format. This would make it easier to see that the program has done its job and cut back on those questions as well. Yet another reason I don't use Retro & CDs/DVDs for long-term backup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhal Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 So out of curiosity, GoAWest, what media and program do you use for longterm backup? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awnews Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 Probably belongs in a new thread but... Most of my backups are "short-term" -- weeks, months, a year or so. This deals with almost anything I'd consider a disaster--how likely is that I'll need something over a year old *right now!*?. And the bigger point is that I can recover the state of my harddisks where I keep almost all data on-line all the time (40G/80G/120G/200G/250G... etc. HDs) I do have some stuff I consider important for long-term and off-site or firesafe backup. Some personal examples are tax returns (in PDF format) or family photos taken with digital cameras (mine, friends, family's, etc.). I use CDRs and occasionally DVDRs for this (usually two backups) and consider it pretty safe. Note, however, that even CDRs don't last forever--based on the ink and other issues, I think they're expected to last 40yrs or so. I have paper family photos (e.g. great-grand-parents) older than that, passed down thru the family tree. The problem I have with using Retrospect for this is that it saves its data in a proprietary format. This is true of the files themselves *and* the way it formats CDRs. So if/when I need to access the data N (5, 10, 20?) years from now, I have to count on Retrospect still being around, running on a then-machine, and being able to read the "old" format. So, I'm doing two things here: 1) just dragging the folders & files to a CDR using any common CDRW program (I use Nero). I'm counting on Windows 2015 being able to read CDs and its and common "old" file formats (e.g. JPEGs) many years from now. 2) I also use another program (which I won't mention here. The last time I did my post got purged) which allows automated backups and has a very nice GUI for selecting what to back up (much easier than Retro's sub-volumes and selectors for "easy" stuff). One really nice thing about this backup program is that it saves its backup files in ZIP format. So you can open and read them with *any* program that handles zips (including Windows XP). I think I'm safe that the zip format & reader programs will still be around 10+ years from now even if yet another compression format comes along or another becomes dominant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 Quote: Or, Retrospect, a program that *claims* to burn CDs, could also burn a CD with the DR image file (wouldn't even have to generate an intermediate ISO in this case, although it should still be an option given the many burners not supported by the program) and be done with it. *Or* we can endlessly go on dealing with users who don't know what an ISO is our how to burn one or are rightly annoyed at being expected to buy another product to implement a feature that Retrospect claims to have (creating a DR CD). As a side note, I really wish that Retrospect would also stop burning CDs with its own proprietary format and just burn the needed backup files to CDs in a normal format. This would make it easier to see that the program has done its job and cut back on those questions as well. Yet another reason I don't use Retro & CDs/DVDs for long-term backup. It is better to record the CD with other than Retrospect if only because that gives you the capability of recording the cD on a drive that Retrospect might not otherwise support. The Retrospect DR CD is a "normal" format, i.e., it is alleged to conform to ISO 9660, using the El Torito spec. Heck, if it didn't, the CD could not be used to boot the system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awnews Posted October 19, 2004 Report Share Posted October 19, 2004 It is better to record the CD with other than Retrospect if only because that gives you the capability of recording the cD on a drive that Retrospect might not otherwise support. The Retrospect DR CD is a "normal" format, i.e., it is alleged to conform to ISO 9660, using the El Torito spec. Heck, if it didn't, the CD could not be used to boot the system. I don't mind Dantz *also* providing a way to generate an ISO, esp. since their support of the many CDRW drives is relatively sparse. What I'd like to see them provide is direct burn of a DR CD on any recorder that they *do* support. And my comments about the "normal format" were not directed at the DR CD but rather a CD used as a backup destination. This is formatted in a proprietary way (along with the proprietary format of the backup file itself) that is not readable by Windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaikow Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Quote: I don't mind Dantz *also* providing a way to generate an ISO, esp. since their support of the many CDRW drives is relatively sparse. What I'd like to see them provide is direct burn of a DR CD on any recorder that they *do* support. One of the problems with usingh CD/DVD recording software has been that too many products try to roll their own version of recording media that allegedly comply with ISO 9660, ISO/IEC 13346, etc. We would ALL be better off if such recording were done ONLY via the OS, at worst via centralized programs such as those produced by Roxio and Ahead. We have to suffer enough incompatibilities among the centralized programs, if other apps get into the picture, matters can only get worse. Quote: And my comments about the "normal format" were not directed at the DR CD but rather a CD used as a backup destination. This is formatted in a proprietary way (along with the proprietary format of the backup file itself) that is not readable by Windows. I agree that the backup media should conform to ISO 9660 or ISO/IEC 13346, but the format of the backup files has to be proprietary, otherwise, backup/restore functionality gets lost. If you want "backup" CD/DVDs that have all files avaiklable via windoze explorer, then do not use a backup program, just copy then to th CD/DVD using the windoze file system or programs such as those from Roxio and Ahead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awnews Posted October 20, 2004 Report Share Posted October 20, 2004 Quote: One of the problems with using CD/DVD recording software has been that too many products try to roll their own version of recording media that allegedly comply with ISO 9660, ISO/IEC 13346, etc. We would ALL be better off if such recording were done ONLY via the OS, at worst via centralized programs such as those produced by Roxio and Ahead. We have to suffer enough incompatibilities among the centralized programs, if other apps get into the picture, matters can only get worse. I don't agree. Dantz Retrospect is in the *business* of burning CDRs since it's a backup program. Since the OS isn't doing the job right now, the equivalent version for backup CDRs (as opposed to DR CDRs) would be to have Retro save all the backup files to .ISOs and then use another program (Ahead, Roxio) burn the CDRs--this would be very slow and annoying. Retro should use the same method (ISO 9660, etc. instead of it's proprietary format) to burn these CDRs *and* it's DR CD. Quote: I agree that the backup media should conform to ISO 9660 or ISO/IEC 13346, but the format of the backup files has to be proprietary, otherwise, backup/restore functionality gets lost. I don't agree here either. Although Retrospect may have to save *additional* information (e.g. that contained in the snapshots, info related to individual files, etc.), the *files themselves* don't *have* to be saved in a proprietary format. So, for example, save the data files in a standard (windoze) format and save some *additional* Retro-specific (i.e. proprietary) files in one or more big .zips, .rars, .tars, etc. Quote: If you want "backup" CD/DVDs that have all files available via windoze explorer, then do not use a backup program, just copy then to th CD/DVD using the windoze file system or programs such as those from Roxio and Ahead. As I mentioned, I do do that, but it becomes a manual and painful effort (e.g. trying to figure out which files are new, how much I can save to each CDR, ala BurnToTheBrim, etc.). A backup program can and should do this more quickly and more efficiently *but* with Retro you lose the ability to recover/extract the files with any other program. As I also mentioned, I am using another program that does what I need (incremental backups, to .zip files) so I'll at least acknowledge that Retro isn't the all-in-one program for backups since it does some things well and some things poorly or not at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.