How do I make a backup copy of my XP Recovery Disk?

[Lee43]

My eMachine T5048 came with a Recovery Disk that I've had to reinstall XP (Media Center Edition) with it more than a few times over the past 3-1/2 years and it's become slightly scratched and dirty (smudged) despite my meticulous efforts to keep it in pristine condition. I don't want to clean it for fear of adding more scratches. And now I worry that when the time comes to use it again if need be, it may not work for me and I'll be stuck with a dead computer and no OS to reinstall. I could prevent this if I could make a duplicate copy of my recovery disk to have as a backup in case the original ever fails me in the future.

I've already made many attempts to do this. I put the recovery disk in the drive, exited out of the install when it came up. Using Windows Explorer to see the contents on the disk, I highlighted everything, right-clicked and "copied", then created a folder on my hard drive and in that folder I "pasted" everything from the CD into it.

Then I took the recovery disk out, put a blank DVD in (the total size of everything from the disk is 1.4Gb's so a CD is too small) and tried to copy & paste from the hard drive to the DVD but I kept getting the same error window popping up telling me "Problem Copying" asking me to Retry, Skip, or Cancel. I tried over and over clicking the Retry button but it wouldn't copy anything over. Here's a screenshot of that error window: http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/5294/problemcopyingerror.jpg

And also, I clicked the Properties of the blank DVD and it showed 0 bytes used and 0 bytes free. Shouldn't it be showing 4.7Gb's free? Like if you click the Properties of a blank CD, it shows 0 bytes used and 702Mb's free. Here's a screenshot of that: http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4125/dvdrshowing0bytes.jpg

Could somebody please make sense of this and instruct me on how to accomplish this task? Thank you.

[patio]

Here Ya Go...

[Lee43]

Here Ya Go...

Thank you patio for that link.  I checked it out and what I was reading is a little too advanced for me.
Like I don't know how to extract the boot image from my install disk...nor do I know what slipstreaming is.

But I'm gonna take the time to try and figure it out. It seems to be what I needed though.  Thanx again!

[JJ 3000]

You need an image burning program to make a copy of your disk.
Try imgBurn. http://www.imgburn.com/

[btk1w1]

I have read quite a few examples of people creating a new boot CD off their recovery disk using nLite.

This is a much easier method if you can do it successfully from your eMachines recovery disk.

nLite will create the image and is able to burn the disk also, it is designed to specifically work with XP operating system versions.

If you can isolate the i386 folder using nLite and create the boot disk from it you will escape any bloatware that comes bundled with the original disk.

<edit> It might be an idea to use a program to retrieve your product key for your XP operating system before you nLite so you can include it in the image to create an unattended install. A very good program to do this is SIW, the freeware standalone versionis ideal as it doesn't need to be installed and can be run from a USB flash drive.</edit>

[Lee43]

You need an image burning program to make a copy of your disk.
Try imgBurn. http://www.imgburn.com/

Thanx you JJ 3000.  I used ImgBurn and I was able to use it to "read" the recovery disk and then "write" to a blank dvd.  It took some time and a few attempts but I was finally able to create a duplicate disk!    Thanx again, I appreciate it.

[Lee43]

If you can isolate the i386 folder using nLite and create the boot disk from it you will escape any bloatware that comes bundled with the original disk.

That would be so incredibly awesome to create a replacement recovery disk that didn't have all that unnecessary bloatware! But I have no idea what you mean by "isolating the i386 folder".  Is that something the nLite program can do?  Please educate me on how that's done. I'd love to be able to have a bloatware-free version of Windows installed.   

It might be an idea to use a program to retrieve your product key for your XP operating system before you nLite so you can include it in the image to create an unattended install. A very good program to do this is SIW, the freeware standalone version is ideal as it doesn't need to be installed and can be run from a USB flash drive.

I've reinstalled XP with my recovery disk many times and it never asked me for the product key. I just got done downloading the SIW program and the nLite program.  I'll check them out when I'm done here. Thank you for your help. I appreciate it.

[btk1w1]

Basically you copy the folder off the recovery CD or locate it with nLite whilst the recovery CD is in the optical drive. You can use the new one you created with JJ 3000's answer, as you know this is a good copy.

You can browse through all the configuration options that nLite offers, there are loads, to customise your installation disk. There are loads of nLite tutorials online you can view, the process isn't as daunting as it might sound.

You can add / remove components and update it so all of the hotfixes and service packs are included. Saves installing them everytime you recover the OS plus much more.

Because the product key is already saved to the recovery CD nLite will probably detect it anyways, but as a matter of precaution it will be best to have it handy in case. You will see where the option to include the key in the install disk is, and hopefully it is already there. If not try to copy and paste the key if you can as this will prevent any user input errors.

Remember to highlight the ISO option as this is what makes your cd bootable.

[Lee43]

Basically you copy the folder off the recovery CD or locate it with nLite whilst the recovery CD is in the optical drive. You can use the new one you created with JJ 3000's answer, as you know this is a good copy.

Do you mean that I need to copy the i386 folder from my recovery disk and paste it into a new folder on my hard drive then point nLite to it so it can read from it so it can create an ISO with just those files?  Are all the other folders and files on the disk to be ignored to avoid the bloatware being included?

You can browse through all the configuration options that nLite offers, there are loads, to customise your installation disk. There are loads of nLite tutorials online you can view, the process isn't as daunting as it might sound.

Last night I did some searching on YouTube for tutorial videos on nLite but haven't found any yet of anyone making a backup copy of thier recovery disk but I'll keep looking though. I've burned three dvd's but none of them work.  I think the only way to know for sure if they'll work is if I were to reinstall XP on my system. I can't do that because I reinstalled XP about a month ago when I replaced the original 160Gb drive with a new 500Gb one and I have it all setup and running.

Knowing I can't test the burned duplicates on my current eMachine, I decided to build this old Gateway from parts and put a 40Gb drive in it. I tried all three burned copies on it and the only one that worked did install XP on it but the total drive capacity was only 5.27Gb's which didn't make any sense to me. What if I took out the 500Gb master drive on this system and put a blank 40Gb drive in it to test these disks out on. Would that make a difference to prove they actually work? Were OEM recovery disks specifically designed to only be used with the system that they came with?  I'm grateful for your time to help me. Thanx!

[kristain]

If you use Windows XP Professional, the Windows Backup utility (Ntbackup.exe) should be ready for use. If you use Windows XP Home Edition, you'll need to follow these steps to install the utility:

1. Insert your Windows XP CD into the drive and, if necessary, double-click the CD icon in My Computer.

2. On the Welcome to Microsoft Windows XP screen, click Perform Additional Tasks.

3. Click Browse this CD.

4. In Windows Explorer, double-click the ValueAdd folder, then Msft, and then Ntbackup.

5. Double-click Ntbackup.msi to install the Backup utility.

For more information, see How to Install Backup in Windows XP Home Edition.

With that chore out of the way, you're ready to begin backing up. By default, the Backup utility uses a wizard that makes the process straightforward. To start Backup:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup to start the wizard.

2. Click Next to skip past the opening page, choose Back up files and settings from the second page, and then click Next.

[Lee43]

If you use Windows XP Professional, the Windows Backup utility (Ntbackup.exe) should be ready for use.

Thank you kristain for those great instructions.  I have XP Media Center Edition which is based on XP Pro so I already had the Backup program installed but I've never used it before.  On my system, I have two dvd r/w drives installed. I put the recovery disk in one and a blank dvd in the other and tried backing it up that way thinking it would just copy it all over to the blank dvd but that didn't work.

Then I changed the backup's destination to a folder on my hard drive and was successful at doing that. But the unexpected problem was the program consolidated everything from my recovery disk into one large single file. I thought it was going to backup everything "as-is" like a copy & paste would do.  I tried using the program to restore the recently created backup onto a blank dvd hoping it was going to recreate the original disk...but was stopped when I kept getting the same error message pop up. Here's the screenshot of it  http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/5439/restoringbackuperror.jpg

Not sure of why this is happening...but this is the first time using the Windows Backup program so maybe I was doing it wrong.     I appreciate your giving me that avenue to explore to resolve my issue.  Thanx again!

[BC_Programmer]

Windows backup is for backing up <your> stuff. you cannot use it to make a backup of your recovery disk as kristain implies.

[Lee43]

Windows backup is for backing up <your> stuff. you cannot use it to make a backup of your recovery disk as kristain implies.

Oh I see (said the blind man)    Thank you for pointing that out.  For some reason, I just thought data was data and that you could move it around as seen fit without a problem...but I was apparently mistaken...