Can you "test" the disaster recovery cd & process?

[jd91651]

History: Retrospect Backup Express 5.6.132, CD-R or CD-RW media for backup.

 

 

 

My question is:

 

Can you "test" the disaster recovery cd & process and what is the safe method?

 

 

 

I've seen conflicting things regarding this in these forums and in my experience.

 

 

 

1) I know it is safe to boot from the cd and go as far as the screen that asks you to select

 

a partition to restore to. So you can at least see if it will boot.

 

 

 

2) I know that RBExpress (5.6.132 at least) creates a "different" windows dir on your HD

 

called DRWINNT.TMP (or something like that) and "appears" to boot "into" that tree during

 

the restore process.

 

 

 

3. This leads me to believe that it does not restore any files into your original windows dir

 

until you get past the 1st reboot where RBExpress comes up and you've gone past the

 

1st couple screens to select files then it wants to start reading the media (in my case

 

CD-R). At that point it would start over writing stuff onto the disk and windows dir.

 

Note:I know nothing is restored up to this point IF your disk is blank and newly formatted.

 

but am unsure if the original files are still there (but perhaps damaged or something).

 

 

 

My "THEORY" is that if item # 2 and #3 are true that you could even go as far in "testing"

 

your disaster recovery set, as to select one unimportant file rather than the whole disk and

 

restore it to see if this thing is going to work!

 

 

 

Can anyone confirm this?

 

-------------------------------------

 

 

 

I found out the hard way yesterday that I could not restore anything when I arrived at that

 

point (#2). So now I will have to do it the hard way.

 

I don't want to go through this again.

 

FYI: this is not angry or critical I just want to be sure next time (and there will always be a

 

next time if you work with computers long enough.

 

 

jd

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lv2ski]

#1 is the correct one.

 

 

 

At that point it will want you to reformat or to restore over top the entire Windows System. You do not want to continue from that point. All you can test is if it will boot from the disk. Unless you want to restore your entire machine. (Windows will get reinstalled, then the complete restore from media).

[jd91651]

Hi,

 

I didn't explain point #2 as well as I could I don't think.

 

What I was trying to say was it does NOT appear that anything has been written to your

 

windows dir right up to the very end when you select "go ahead and restore" (adlib here).

 

 

 

Here is why I say that:

 

 

 

When I started a DRecovery Sun. this is what happened.

 

Booted from cd and went through process until restore process wanted to reboot.

 

Removed cd. after reboot it came to screen to create accts.

 

Created one acct. and logged into it.

 

RBE came up. Went through setup and at the exact point where it wanted to

 

start copying files to my hard drive it failed to find the backup device and I had

 

to abort the whole thing.

 

NOW here is the point: The only thing on my hard drive at this point was the DRWINNT.TMP

 

dir because I had formatted prior to even starting the DRecovery.

 

In other words right up to the very end nothing had been written to my original windows

 

dir because there wasn't one.

 

 

 

If #1 is the correct one then this means that RBE exhibits different behavior under different

 

circumstances and frankly that doesn't make sense.

 

 

 

Furthermore: After the reboot when RBE is now running, in the screen where you have to select different criteria what is to stop you from selecting just 1 file instead of all of them and

 

restoring only that.

 

NOW what I don't know is if RBE also automatically restores the registry at this point. That

 

could be a problem UNLESS you did this test immediately after creating the recovery set.

 

Of course that is the best time to do it

 

 

 

?Maybe everyone else is seeing something different than me during the process or something

 

because what I saw didn't exactly match the directions I printed out either.

 

 

 

jd