Homemade DR and Client Restore

[khopton]

Hi folks, I have an extensive home network but I have two issues that are problematic.

 

1) Offsite data for disaster recovery

 

- The Retrospect Disaster Recovery Addon costs way way more than my Retro Pro 7.5 for Windows so I don't own it. I am thinking of saving drive images from my Retro Server to an external USB drive and storing that external drive offsite (cycling between two external drives so that one is always offsite while the other is here being updated). Presently my Retro Backup Server computer has a simple drive controller and I suspect I can get the info onto the external drives with Acronis TrueImage or maybe even Norton Partition Magic.

 

- QUESTION: How should I get these images onto the external drive once I upgrade my server to something with RAID controller (I will mirror - RAID 1)?

 

2) Client Restore

 

- I simply cannot bear to look at the XP Setup screens again. I want to restore a drive image and run the Retro client to update it to a current state. My clients mostly have ICH9R RAID controllers and that messes up most if not all of the 'Boot from CD/DVD' options I have explored.

 

- QUESTION: How can I boot from something external/removable and run the Retro client to restore from snapshots? AFAIK, True Image does not cope with the ICH9R controller.

 

Thanks

[SHnee]

"Retrospect Professional edition includes disaster recovery (DR) capabilities for the backup computer."

http://www.emcinsignia.com/en/products/homeandoffice/retroforwindows/addons/

 

This doesn't cover your clients, though.

 

Hope this helps somehow.

[khopton]

Thanks, I was assuming otherwise.