CANT CREATE DISASTER RECOVERY DISK WITH DELL SYSTEMS

[abradaxis]

Retrospoect works great, but as a Dell User I've come across a problem I can't get past. I just started a disaster recovery process since I'm moving all my disk contents of my laptop's 40 GB disk to a larger one. Retrospect, during the disaster recovery phase, asks for the original system disk, looking to pick up some files (from the I386 folder I think) that are not on the system. I have all the original system disks, and I was able to even squeeze an XP SP2 disk out of Dell, since my original system was just SP. However, these are all system restore disks, self booting without individual files or directories. My guess is that they are self booting image restore disks. So now I can't read anything from the I386 diectory, and the disaster recovery won't complete the recoceery disk.

 

Now Dell provides many computers to users, so you would think that Dantz would have encoutered this problem from many users. However, there is nothing in the knowledge base about it, excepr for one obscure article that doesn't directly relate to this problem. Does anyone have any suggestions? Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanss. :headslap :headslap :headslap :headslap :headslap

[RonaldL]

So when you put in one of Dell's restore discs within Windows, you're unable to see the contents of it? That's strange...The i386 folder is a requirement for making the DR cd.

 

The other option you have is to do a live restore. You would restore your system from the Dell restore discs, make sure you're at the same service pack level as your backed up system (run a Windows Update if not) and then perform the restore on top of that system.

[mlts22]

One idea is to create a temporary directory to a hard disk, copy the whole CD to it, download the SP2 upgrade if needed and slipstream the files, then try to use that for the install source. It may or may not work, though.

[abradaxis]

No, you can't see anything, even with explorer. It's a bootable disk, meant to restore the entire operating system, and NO files or directories are visible on it. Nut I did find a way to get around it. I had an IOMEGA 120 GB backup external drive attached, and I let the disk autorun from there and then you can browse the files, and lo, the I386 directory is there. Kind of an expensive way to go about it, wouldn't youi say. And the way you suggested, about recreating the operating system and then upgrading is a very time consuming project; I did it a number of times. TShanks for the help!

[PeterSwiss]

Usually restores of this type are Symantec Ghost. I can't speak for Dell restore disks, but about the restore partition on my Dell (boots in with some magic ctrl-griff, confirm, it recreates C:\ I've done it when my Dell was new and no data on it). I might assume the restore CD has the same structure as the restore partition:

The restore partition is hidden, contains a bootable DOS, an autoexec.bat, the DOS version of Ghost (mostly V8), and an image file containing the original C:\ .

The image , named .GHO (first split) and .GHS (if additional splits), can be opened with the Ghost Explorer right from the restore partition (made unhidden previously of course) and files extracted with Ghost Explorer. Does your restore CD look different?

 

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the other option, or better a suggestion, is to store the C:\I386 on a CD and make retrospect happy.

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the third option, and what I have always done for restores, are to install an OS and restore over it. I even had a Ghost image ready to get a running OS.

But today I would restore from the Dell-delivered Restore partition, install Retrospect in it, and then restore over it.