Don't have a floppy drive to use with ASR

I'm trying to back up my ThinkPad T30 before installing XP Service Pack 3, as
the installation instructions suggest. Unfortunately, while I've been able
to back up the C: hard drive's files to a USB drive, I can't create a D:
recovery partition or an ASR "system settings" disk without a floppy drive.
(I also don't have a Windows XP Professional CD--it came pre-loaded on the
machine--but I think that creating D: would make the CD unnecessary?)

The only mentions I've been able to find about this problem state that,
since XP Pro's BIOS doesn't recognize anything but C: or a floppy disk drive
(E: I think??) as bootable, one can't use ASR to save the system settings to
a CD or USB drive, for example. I can't help but think this is obsolete;
after all, there were plenty of laptops and desktops shipped with XP Pro and
CD drives rather than floppy disk drives!

Can anyone point me to a solution to this problem? BIG bonus good karma
points for procedures or products that are free/cheap and really simple to
do/use. I've been unemployed for a while & this ThinkPad came to me by good
fortune, so upgrading to modern hardware or software really isn't an option.
I want to use it with as little chance of malware/microorganisms as possible,
but I don't have the OS background knowledge to understand anything technical
(yet).

Many thanks!