Create an Emergency Repair Disk in 2003 Server

[Steve Kadish]

Hello,

Does the Emergency Repair Disk still exist in the world of Windows 2003 Server? If so, how would I create one?

I know that "Backup" now has an option for creating ASR materials where the old W2K ERD option used to be. However, it wants to back up my entire server, which we use Arcserve for.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks,
- Steve Kadish

[Paul Sperry]

ASR is a recovery option that has two parts: ASR backup and ASR restore. You can access the backup portion through the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard located in Backup. The Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard backs up the System State data, system services, and all disks associated with the operating system components. It also creates a floppy disk, which contains information about the backup, the disk configurations (including basic and dynamic volumes), and how to accomplish a restore.

You can access the restore part of ASR by pressing F2 when prompted in the text mode portion of setup. ASR reads the disk configurations from the floppy disk and restores all of the disk signatures, volumes and partitions on the disks required to start your computer (at a minimum). (It will attempt to restore all of the disk configurations, but under some circumstances, it may not be able to). ASR then installs a simple installation of Windows and automatically starts to restore from backup using the backup ASR set created by the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard.

[Steve Kadish]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the contribution, but it doesn't really answer my question. Our systems, including System State, are backed up every night by Arcserve, and I can do full disaster recovery ASR using Arcserve.

How do I create JUST the floppy disk in Windows ASR without doing a full backup? And is there even a point in doing so?

Thanks,
- Steve

[Jay Bollyn]

Hi Steve,

Here are the instructions:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325879

I created one, mainly just to see if it would work, and it does.

- Jay

[Steve Kadish]

Hi Jay,

Thanks to you also. However, these are the instructions for creating a BOOT disk, not an Emergency Repair Disk.

In the world of Windows 2000 and earlier, an Emergency Repair Disk would be used with the repair utilities on the Windows 2000 CDs to read information about the server. It is not a bootable floppy.

Thanks,
- Steve

[Paul Sperry]

The floppy would be useless without the backup

[Steve Kadish]

Thanks. So, I guess it sounds like the Emergency Response Disk doesn't exist in the context of Windows 2003 Server.

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

Windows 2003 does not provides ERD disquete.

The ASR disk is usefull only with a full backup of the system files, created also with the ASR.

You use the ASR and as a sort of "disaster recovery" solution.

The backup of the system state, does in some way the function of the ERD.

If you want to create the ASR disk, copy to a floppy the contents of the c:\windows\repair folder.

[Steve Kadish]

Thanks for the info.

- Steve

[Shu-Chuan Lin]

we do 'regback' on all windows 2000 and windows 2003 servers everynight - which backs up registries to a remote server. if needed, you can run 'regrest' to restore the necessary registry from previous night. or if a system rebuild is required, you can reinstall os, restore all files from the backup, the run 'regrest' to restore the registries to bring the system back to previous night's stat.

the plan works for us.

Shu

[thomas stilinovich]

Steve

I think everyone has missed your point. No I dont think you can create an ERD automatically however I believe that the later versions of arcserve allow the ability to create a recovery disk from the arcserve CD. you use this disk in place of the ASR disk when recovering 2003.

depending on your version of arcserve you may need to upgrade to a later version