[philtivvy]

Hi
I have just found this facility and would like to make a recovery disk for my laptop, I get concerned about this computer having mislaid the original disks.
When I experimented on another computer I was prompted to create a floppy disk, easy enough on a PC but no good on the laptop which does not have a floppy drive.
Is there a way to persuade "Backup" to write a bootable CD ?
Is there anything special about the automated recovery floppy or is it an ordinary boot disk with a few extra lines something like COPY from the backup folder to C:\
regards
phil

[etaf]

make and model of the PC you want to make the recovery CDs from - some have a hidden partition, you can access that partition through a program on the PC
Recovery Manager - type of name, and has a facility to create recovery CD / DVDs

[philtivvy]

Hi etaf
I should imagine this laptop is too old for such refinements.
The name and various numbers on the bottom are:-
TINY
0001-503-80173
80173TLJ03T8
11211 serial No 000209508/010
TINY N24

There is a further number on the Windows sticker:- X10-60264
Is this sufficient ?
Where do I find ths <Recovery Manager> ?
regards
phil

[TheOutcaste]

The Automated System Recovery (ASR) Restore requires you to use a floppy drive, so you would need a USB floppy drive to do the restore. It won't work with a CD or flash drive.

You can make the backup without having a floppy drive, just ignore the prompt to insert a floppy disk. You would need to copy the asr.sif and asrpnp.sif files from the %systemroot%\repair folder to another PC that does have a floppy drive, and then copy them to a floppy disk.

[philtivvy]

Hi TheOutcaste
Are these two files you name all that is on the floppy?
I have several floppy drives and power supplies lying around but no patch lead floppy~USB. What is the proper name of the connection used by a floppy, and while we're on, the proper name for the ribbon connection for the HD?
regards
phil

[TheOutcaste]

There is also a setup.log file placed on the floppy, but from what I can find that isn't needed, just the asr.sif and asrpnp.sif files. The setup.log file appears to just be a list of files and a hex number that seems related to the file size.

The interface is just called the Floppy Disk Interface. The old style Ribbon cable for hard drives is called an IDE cable, named after the drive type actually. IDE stands for Integrated Device Electronics, which by common usage means the PATA/ATAPI drives, though technically, SCSI and SATA are also IDE drives. It's a 40 contact cable that has either 40 or 80 conductors. The 80 conductor cables is needed for Ultra DMA mode 3 or faster connections.

The floppy drive uses a similar cable, but it's only 34 conductor.

Both HD and Floppy cables can be found using a round cable rather than the flat ribbon type cable.

A USB floppy has to have a converter to convert the Floppy interface to USB, so you can't just get a cable to connect an standard floppy drive to a USB port.

[philtivvy]

Hi TheOutcaste
That seems to answer most of my queries.
I have just ordered a floppy drive for USB. When it arrives I will give ASR a whirl and start a new post if I run into trouble.
I will mark this post "solved"
Thank you
phil