BDSolomon Posted June 3, 2004 Report Share Posted June 3, 2004 I had asked about this at the beginning of the year, and there is another thread on this. But I am not getting any official answer, just some comments by users (none of which is encouraging). The program (I believe I have 6.0), can create a file that allows you to recover by booting from a CD. That was great! I used that option, and it created an image file over one gig. A CD has around 650M. Not only that, but I then discovered that I didn't have anything to write an image file to CD. A little info on what I have: XP Pro, backup to external hard disk, optical drive DVD+R/W. So I figured that I could at least write it to the DVD. I bought and returned some software that I found out couldn't write image files created by other programs. I inquired about Nero, and was told that it could, but since I included info on what I wanted to do, they were kind enough to add the info that I could NOT write a CD image to DVD, they were media specific, at least to an extent. I have a boot option to boot off CD, I assumed that a bootable DVD would work if I put it in the drive. SO, is the image file writable to DVD (and still bootable)? If not, then how can you claim to have this disaster recovery avenue when the bootable disk you claim to generate is not in any way usable? Is there an update or download to make a bootable DVD image? If not, how 'bout a way to make it fit on a CD? Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted June 4, 2004 Report Share Posted June 4, 2004 Hi The DR cd is a CD image meaning it is the layout of a CD disk. I'm pretty sure that will not translate to a DVD without conversion software of some kind. (this is a pure guess though...) Retrospect 6.5.336 and above address the too big DR CD issue by excluding the catalog file from the CD image. You may also want to check what version of video driver you are using. International versions of video drivers contain tons of extra documentation that can cause the DR CD to baloon rather quickly. You may want to try installing the most current english driver for your video card and then creating the CD again. Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BDSolomon Posted June 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 5, 2004 Thanks for your reply. If by the catalog files, you mean the retrospect catalogs, mine are each around 10-16M (I had set up a few backup sets, from your reply I would guess that it only includes the current one.) Apparently I do have the international video driver. The .hlp files appear to total about 1M; it also includes .dll's for international support, if I correctly flagged those files, it's about On the other hand, the ISO files, which I can't read, are about 1GIG. And a CD is about 600-700M. Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BDSolomon Posted June 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2004 The point about the languages mag be of some value, it looks like I may have the problem you mentioned. The catalog is by far a small part of the issue. Was this recovery CD just something that used to work, maybe with older operating systems, and it is still built, without any consideration to whether it can be used? I am assuming that somehow spanning CDs is not an option. I had expected that CD or DVD images would be interchangeable, and that's why I bought Nero, because I had discovered that what came with my PC would not burn images. Is there any reason that your program couldn't/wouldn't create DVD images? (I have no idea what the difference is, and from your answer I suspect that you don't, either). In fact, it was an offhand comment in Nero's answer that alerted me to the fact that I prob'ly couldn't burn the CD image to DVD. (By the way, I have version 6.0, which came with my external disk drive. Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted June 14, 2004 Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 I had the same problem with WIN XP using version 6.0. If you haven't upgraded to 6.5, you should try it. I did find a work around by copying the i386 directory to my hard drive, then deleting all the directories within i386 [this leaves all the files that are in i386]. Of course, when Retrospect asks for the location of Win XP install files, point to the i386 directory on your harddrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BDSolomon Posted June 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 14, 2004 I just checked that directory (I386). The directory contains about 900M of files, the subdirectories another 100M, total 1G. It doesn't look like that would make much difference. Beyond that, I would think that they only include on the DR CD what is necessary to run enough to restore, not a fully operational windows system. If I needed the full windows system I'd restore it, but I'm more interested in restoring a backup without having to reinstall things manually. Why would 6.5 make a difference? And why can't I get an answer from Dantz? Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktaggart Posted June 19, 2004 Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 "And why can't I get an answer from Dantz?" Good question. It's no wonder most people don't backup like they are supposed to. I have been looking for good backup software for some time. Judging from the comments of users, there is no reliable, easy to use backup software, at least for Windows XP. The computer magazine editors seem to like Acronis True Image, but consumers say Acronis does a lousy job of support. They only provide email support and give themselves a 48 hour window for response. Can you imagine sitting there for 2 days, chewing your fingernails off, waiting for a response and then find that their solution doesn't work. Then you email again and wait another 2 days. I don't think so. I liked the look of Dantz because they have a knowlege base, a support forum, and 30 day phone support (I think). I was also looking for a system that could make a backup image and an emergency boot disk, but the emergency boot disk seems to be in question. I guess I'll just backup my important data manually, and rebuild the computer from the operating system up if I have a catastrophic failure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted June 21, 2004 Report Share Posted June 21, 2004 Hi The problem is like this: In a DR CD some driver files must be copied to the disk multiple times. This is because some drivers will only install if they are in the exactly right path on the disk. That was fine when drivers were small but now video drivers can be absolutely huge. If you have the international NVIDA driver you have about 45MB of files to work with. Multiply that by the three times it needs to be on the disk and you have magically used up 135 MB of space. The DR CD has to include all of the drivers for the system. It has no way to knowing if a driver is needed for system restore or not so it takes them all. The 6.5.336 update addressed the space issue by removing the catalog file from the DR image. While that helped in some cases, OEM OS users especially suffer from big images. Dantz is looking into the DR process to try and streamline the drivers that are collected. Unfortunately those updates won't be available for some time. In the meantime you can still fully restore your system using the standard restore procedure listed in the Retrospect users guide. Hope that helps Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ktaggart Posted June 23, 2004 Report Share Posted June 23, 2004 Nate, Thanks for explaining that. Does Dantz offer a download of the DR Pro 6.5 manual anywhere on the website? Some publishers do that to allow a prospective customer to better evaluate the product (and for customers who have lost their manuals I suppose). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted June 24, 2004 Report Share Posted June 24, 2004 Hi The Trial version of Retrospect 6.5 is fully functional and will allow you to create a DR CD. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BDSolomon Posted July 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 5, 2004 I managed to get the correct answer by calling support. I thought that we were s'posed to be able to get answers here. It's really quite simple, I don't know why I couldn't get the answer here. I pointed to the I386 directory on my hard disk -- generally when a program requests the windows CD you can avoid it by pointing to that, or to some windows folder on your hard disk. In this case, it apparently included a lot of additional baggage. The tech told me that he was certain that inserting the Windows CD instead would solve my problem. It took me several weeks to get the chance, and now that I did, the 1+ GIG file is 565M, or 592 Million bytes, which nicely fit on my 700M CD-R. Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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