HDD failure and recovery from external archive

Any comments;

There has bee a lot of tooing and froing about FDISR and HDD failure.
I fully understand "ISR" concept.

However ,and correct me if I am wrong, I have been working on assumption that it is possible to recover a crashed HD using archive (or even snapshot)stored on external HD.

I think we may have discussed this before.

Scenario:
Normal working in Primary HD... single 'C' partition for OS and apps, other partitions for photos, videos etc

-Image 'C'weekly to External HD with IFD/BING ( copy other partitions as req.)

-Daily or more frequent refresh of secondaries on Primary HD and .arx file to External HD.

-Have copies of photos, videos, old work data etc on External hd.

AARRGGH; Primary HD software catastrophe

NO OS !
No data!

SO THEN:
Boot into primary internal HD with BING
-partition (if req Pete ) nothing fancy just storage options.
-restore image from external HD to 'C' but having forgotten to image last week now; 3 weeks out of date.

BUT:
-Now have functional OS and FDISR.
-Fire up FDISR and go to .arx file on external HD which is <24hrs old.
-Create new primary with .arx file.
-Reboot.
Yay.

Is this plausible?
I hope so. I have been sort of relying on this as a concept but not tested it yet. ( I probably could test a variant of this with BING and creating new boot partition to check restore with .arx; but too lazy )

Please comment.
Regards.

Ps in event of real hardware failure on Primary HD I suspect this may not be so simple! More like migrating to new HD and might require very different reinstalls of drivers and new mobo etc...., but in essence it may work even then?

 

Yep, your concept of disaster plan should work.
Hard disk replacement might only be a problem if you switch from PATA to SATA drives, but if the interface is identical, then no big deal.
MOBO change most likely means a complete startover, but you still can restore all your personal data.

Basically,
step one: get Windows running again from image of from re-install. Make sure that you can access the FD-ISR archives.
step two: Install FD-ISR.
step three: restore snapshots.
step four: [move]sit back and have a drink[/move]

Are you ready to put the plan to test?

 

@wilbertnl
Thanks.

Do you think we could develop a concept/protocol for recovery after mobo/HDD meltdown that could include a role for FDISR?
Will FDISR stretch that far?
Would FDISR have a role to play in that event?

?Would need some help from imaging utility

Gulp
Yes will come up with a plan.

Lbd.

 

Cool

 

Peter is right.
It's very unlikely that you can load your current image in a different computer and boot with success.
That only works when the hardware is identical.

My practical test would be more drastic:
If I want to check a functional plan, I would (after backing up) erase the partition table and go from there.
This is also the way to find out how much time your disaster plan takes.
Don't you want to know that?

 

@Peter 2150

Excellent!

I have just been doing similar test:

Restored image of usual working partition 'C' (with FdISR installed) from external drive to purpose created partition on internal drive with BING.
Booted into that partition; no problem.
Created snapshot from preexisting .arx on external drive .
Booted to that new snapshot.

Remarkable.
Then wiped that partition.
Booted back to usual 'C'.
Love it.

Apart from total destruction of both HD, would seem to have workable solution for most disaster recovery scenarios.

Peter I see you have may also done the slight whoopsy with the FDISR preboot and yet with IFD/IFW/BING there is only a reboot for FDISR to find the $isr folder. Note that I do not install BING which may limit some functionality but does not mess with the MBR.

Thanks to PW and you guys for introducing me to this utility

Heh, also V. happy to have found Terabyte. You guys may have known about it for some time but I'm pleased that others here have been willing to step outside the usual suspects and check it out.

Regards

 

Dont you ever sleep?

 

I can tell that you are both relieved and excited, now you finished the test with success.
It's so important to have that experience, and that way you even discover little unexpected things, like Peter's location of the archives.

Bravo!

 

If IFW/IFD is like ATI you can restore any image with or without FDISR on it.
It doesn't matter what is on your actual system partition, it will be overwritten by the restoration.
Even a formatted or wiped out with zeroes harddisk doesn't make a difference, IFW/IFD will restore it back as it was.
I never touch the Preboot in FDISR either, it's always enabled.
The more tests you do, the more confidence you get in IFW/IFD.

EDIT:
I just noticed that you need IFD to restore an IFW-image. I thought you could use IFW for both.
In fact I needed PHYLOCK also to make an image with IFW. So you need three pieces of software.
So I had to edit my post a little bit.

 

Only if you want to restore over your system partition, and cannot access any OS.
BING will do this from floppy, like IFD.

(Yes PHYLock is a remarkable app. Can even continue working while image underway, obviously none of the new work would be in the image.)

IFW Can restore any other partition to any other partition as long as you can access OS.
Can restore system partition to another partition and then you can rearrange boot.ini sequence or with BING move that restored partition to correspond to current boot.ini sequence. CAn crreate bootable rescue discs that will write to system partition.

If you have mult-os setup then IFW can work from within any of the other OSs to restore your other system partitions.

I think some of the original concepts with the Terabyte apps was based on smaller partitions with OS only (like you have) and then basically permanent boot CDcopies could be kept and or refreshed easily and very quickly.

Fortunately they work with big fat partitions too

 

Well, I don't like to use floppies and CD's to do a backup or restoration, too many inserts and forgotten ejects.

I also don't like exceptions in backup/restoration and different ways to backup and restore either.
I use the very same procedure for backup/restoration of my system partition and data partition, all programmed in scheduled tasks in order to avoid any manual mistake in choosing the source and/or target of backup or restoration. I start each scheduled task manually, which requires two mouse clicks.

I also use FDISR as second backup solution, so I don't need IFW/IFD/PHYLock. Too primitive.

 

IFD is on a floppy. The images made by IFW or IFD are on a HD or a CD -- wherever YOU decided to put them. In my case, I put images on an external HD.

Bottom line- Other than the IFD program disk itself (ONE single self-contained floppy) there are NO "inserts and forgotten ejects" that are inherent to use of IFD or IFW.

It's so simple even a caveman can do it

/s/ Alley Oop

 

Can someone explain to me why I would want IFW/IFD if I have FD-ISR & ATI? I also use Genie Back Up for data.
Is there an advantage to adding IFW/IFD?

...screamer

 

For me, it was a matter of circumstance. ATI, for some time, was unreliable for me and I couldn't afford the time going back through prior builds figuring out which build worked reliably for me. So, I dropped the $35 or whatever it was for the BING/IFW/IFD combination package.

ATI has been straightened out somewhat since then but, too late, IFD/IFW has it's hooks into me. As I posted elsewhere, I use IFD/IFW on this laptop while away from home on assignment but still will use ATI on my home desktop, even though now I use Retrospect to nightly back up all of my home network (2 laptops+4 desktops).

 

You hit the nail on the head, Bellgamin.

Some people just don't like simple and straight ahead, they want to be challenged and be required to think.

I'm impressed with the fact that IFD fits on a single floppy, Acronis TrueImage takes five floppies to do the same.

 

@peter2150

What? Is that possible? Restore from system partition to same system partition?

@screamer

Probably not if everything is working for you.
Just decide what you like and go for it.
LOL Get caught in endless loop of backups ofthebackupsofthebackupsoftheback..........

 

OK thanks Guys

During my latest disaster (2 weeks ago) ATI & Genie came to the rescue and made my re-install that much easier. Guess I'll stick w/ what I've got for the time being.

...screamer

 

Do you really think, I forgot to test my Acronis Recovery CD ? I mentioned this often at Wilders. Each time I create a new one, based on the latest build, I try it again, but after that I don't use it anymore.
Anything can fail, floppy drive can fail, DVD/CD-drive can fail, internal harddisk can fail, external harddisk can fail, image backup file can be corrupted, archived snapshots can be corrupted, etc...
You can scare everybody with these remarks, ...