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Some Windows disaster recovery approaches
It is entirely possible to create a Windows XP boot disk with
applications on it. One approach that works is BartPE.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
It takes several hours and some careful work to create it, and since
you will be running off a CD, it is slower while running than Windows
installed on a faster hard drive.
I have installed various versions of Windows at least a couple hundred
times, and I don't favor the approach of having the install media on a
CD or DVD, or on a flash drive to restore a working system, especially
in a hurry, or especially in an emergency.
Practical approaches for the individual, as opposed to a larger
corporation include the following, ranked from number 1 down in my
approximate order of preference.
1. An imaging program that you use each time you make a substantial
change to your computer, applications, or settings. I have used
several imaging products for the last 8 years, and successfully imaged
and restored hundreds of copies of images in an IT training
environment and production environment. Imaging programs copy and
restore all of the settings and applications and operating system
files that otherwise take many hours to rebuild. Everything is in
place and ready to operate. Commercial imaging programs copy only the
files and sectors needed to replace a working machine, and are
different from a forensic image, which duplicates every sector of a
hard drive. A small hard drive, like a 40 GB, with only 6-8 GB
actually used, can be restored from a DVD or network drive in a few
minutes. This assumes the hardware hasn't changed since the image was
made.
2. Some new machines include the capability to make your own restore
CDs/DVD while the machine is new. It's a shame to pass this up, since
it can save hours of work later, pulling drivers from the
manufacturers' sites.
3. Most new laptop and desktop computers have the operating system and
original applications (including trial versions) in a special
partition already on a hard drive. They are normally available
through a special key combination or booting from a restore CD. This
type of restore can sometimes be better than a fresh installation from
a Windows OS CD/DVD, since it includes a version of driver files for
all the hardware that is good enough to make it all work. Many
drivers get changed to correct bugs during the year or two after the
machine is sold, and often need to be updated after the machine is
running again.
4. Put important utility and radio software copies on an SD, flash
thumb drive, or pocket hard drive. If you can find another Windows
machine, but don't have an Internet connection, you could still be
back in business on digital modes in a few minutes. You may also want
to store the pdf version of manuals for complicated equipment on the
same media, or in an iPhone, iPod, or other PDA or smartphone where
they are available in an emergency.
5. If you have a Windows XP installation disk to boot from, using the
repair process can leave you with a working OS and all your installed
applications in a few minutes, if the reason for failure is a
corrupted Windows OS file or two.
6. As others have pointed out, a crashed Windows machine can be a
Linux machine booted from a flash thumb drive or CD/DVD in about 3
minutes if you have one of the many bootable Linux distributions,
which are often free.
7. You can run Windows as a virtual machine, in a virtual environment
such as VMware under Linux, Fusion or Parallels on a Mac with OS X, or
VMware under Windows. Because your virtual Windows XP machine is
really just one (large) file, or several files, you can keep a copy of
it available. You can start and run it on another PC (Intel to Intel,
or AMD to AMD processors) with all your applications intact, using a
copy of the same virtual environment. VMware Player is free, to use on
the Windows host machine that will run your virtual machine. The
advantage of a virtual machine is that all you have to get running on
your crashed machine, or another machine, is a copy of the virtual
environment, and your whole "machine" will then be running.
You may find that some of the "radioware" applications have issues
running in a virtual machine, although I have run some successfully.
An advantage to a virtual machine is that you can have several
versions of it, if there are applications that don't get along well
when installed with each other, due to driver conflicts and similar
problems.
Thank you.
Charles Preston
KL7OA
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> Messages in this topic (10)
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> 2a. Boot discs for emcomm/ham radio
>Posted by: "Andrew O'Brien" k3uka...@gmail.com obrienaj
>Date: Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:14 am ((PDT))
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