Bootable Rescue Media V10?

Hi all,

I've had V10 build 4942 installed & automatically creating nightly back-up's of my window's XP pro with now SP3 installed for a long time with no problems. The software backs up fine and from time to time, I find a need to recover back and it works (the reason I never upgraded to V11), don't change what works & is tested. The last time I tried to recover recently I tried the rescue CD like 15 times, it finally booted after 15 tries, had me scared (I also have a copy of the CD I tried both couldn't boot until many many tries). So I just recently created two new rescue CD's, I tested both of them & both booted first try each time. My question, do I need to create NEW rescue CD's from time to time, nothing changed except software on my Dell 8400, no new drives, or any hardware. Are the Linux start-up's software dependant?

Any advice will be greaty appreciated, also I never created a BARTPE disk, should I try to do that, can someone send me the instructions please?

Thanks for any advice/guidance/help,

Steve

 

Several options:
Try using a different brand of CD. If you have a choice of burn speeds, choose the slowest speed.
Create yourself an Acronis bootable flashdrive to use iin place of the CD.

 

A CDR or CDR-W or +W should last for several years after being written to provided you keep them out of sunight and from termperature extremes -- each of those can disturb the dye that marks the bits. commerically produced CDs have the data embossed and so are much less susceptible to data loss. The rewriteable disks are the most susceptible to data loss.

If you CDs are becoming unreadable after only a year or so, and storage conditons are not an issue, then as GroveH pints out, the problem could be the the particfular CDs you are using -- although only a few factories pump out all the dozens upon dozens of brands of CDs inthe market, the quality varies widely.

Also, you CD drive could have dust or film over the laser lens and so fails to properly write or read or both. Lastly, the drive speed could be irregular, which also could affect data integrity.

Try the "bad" disks on another machine, and try didsk made on another machine on yours.

If you think you need to repalce the CD drive, you can get very good combo CD/CDRDVD/DVDr/DVDR dual layer drives for about $20 if you buy OEM versions (no booklet or software or rails, just the plain drive). Since Windows has drivers for most of the drives you might buy, the plain drive is all you need for a replacement. If in the market, check out newegg.com and other discount online vendors. No need to spend $50 or two or three times that much to just repalce an optical drive.

 

Hi GroverH,

The USB FLASH drive sounded like a great idea, so I followed your instructions and it was created just fine BUT when I tried to change the boot sequence from the hard drive to a CD or USB device, I choose USB device & the computer couldn't boot from the flash drive Is this a problem with my BIOS, I have a Dell 8400, I looked for an updated BIOS for my system found none OR does the flash drive just need the ACRONIS TI 10 start-up loaded on it with no other programs?

A couple questions, does the USB Flash drive need to be empty, the only thing on it is the Acronis TI recovery disk? If so I messed up and will try again.

I'm using Windows XP PRO SP3 installed so any other pointers on the USB Flash Drive recovery will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all, I'm lost & need guidance
Steve

 

I agree with Grover, but it's also possible that your CD drive is dying or just needs to be cleaned.

Because these are mechanical devices, they fail more often that other computer components. They also get dirty because they open and close frequently. Buy a CD Lens cleaner disk and try that. I've found times when they work miracles.