First off, let me say the message prompts are on the wrong end of Windows XP backup. What good is it to know that you shouldn’t use a FAT32 partition, or that you don’t have a floppy disk drive, AFTER you’ve made the backup file? Would it really hurt to have messages like that BEFORE the file is created??
Anyways…I have my backup image on an external hard drive. The laptop DOES NOT have a floppy drive, so I was unable to create an ASR diskette. Is this disk absolutely necessary? Can I still recover the data from my backup? It is an “All Information On My Computer” backup…does that make a difference?
Do I really need the ASR diskette when I restore my Windows XP backup?
18
Mar
toforama
March 18, 2010 at 12:51 am
You will be able to recover the data files, ie. the documents, pics, mp3s, vids, etc that you have on your external drive. Not a problem, you’ll be able to read them just fine…. so long as they aren’t stored with the Windows EFS (encrypted file system). Quick way to tell; make sure the file names aren’t green when you look at them.
What the ASR will let you do is to restore Windows, have the same accounts, be able to access encrypted files, etc; bring Windows back to the way it was. Personally, I generally prefer to wipe clean and start over very now and again, and just saving my data files does that just fine. No, you don’t need the ASR disk for that.