I wasn't replying to the OP.. I was making some points to those who
answered..

There are many people out there who do not really understand the concept of
backing up, making images, saving data.. they do not know what to programs
to use, or how to recover the data.. they start procedures which are not
applicable to what they are trying to achieve.. they are presented with
options for which there is no obvious answer and most likely at a time when
they can't use the computer to find a good one..

My point was that we are failing these people.. the arcane messages and
instructions that come up on screen are failing these people..


"Vanguard" wrote in message
...
"Mike Hall - MVP" wrote in message
...
Whoa up, y'all. NTBackup is not that bad. It may not be overly useful for
the average home user, but it does have it uses in the right places.

Acronis TrueImage is not always the answer either. How many average users
make an image of a system having just set it up fresh? More often that
not, they don't. They wait until they are having problems.

snip

What has any of that got to do with the OP's question? He wants to use
ASR which performs logical file restore (after installing a minimal
instance of Windows). ASR needs the floppy, the Windows install CD, and
the .bkf backup files. ASR is going to wipe out whatever was there and
perform a restore from the logical file backup files. Okay, and with ANY
backups (logical file or physical sector), the user will lose any changes
or files that were created after the last backup.

You remark about when users save partition images. Well, those same users
don't perform logical file backups on a daily basis, either. Even if the
backups were performed daily, you still lose any files that were changed
after the last backup. Windows (pre-Vista) has no file versioning system;
i.e., when you change or delete files, there is no old copy left around
from which you can recover. I've heard the Vista tries to do a basic file
versioning scheme but it really is just an automatic backup scheme and is
still not the same as a file versioning system. So no matter what scheme
a Windows user uses, they can and probably will lose files, especially the
latest created or modified files.

As far as asking users when they last saved a partition image and getting
a blank look from them, asking them when they last did a [logical file]
backup also gets the "deer caught in headlights" stare from them. If a
user knows about performing backups and does them regularly, if not daily
or before and after every major OS or app change, then they already know
when it is appropriate to do the restores and what they will lose in those
restores.


--


Mike Hall
MS MVP Windows Shell/User
http://msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/