Win ME back up to CD

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After a crash, I went out and bought a 100 pack of CD-R, determined to back up my whole hard drive.
(The system restore got me back–thanks Dell). I figured I would use my CD-RW drive to do something other than write music. Problem is = using the Roxio CD Creator 5, the back up seems to halt on the 2nd disk, saying that there are open programs. Used ctrl+alt+del and there is about 15 programs running. Most of which I do not know. I decided to leave alone. Tried using the Philips program (came with the drive). It does not have a complete back up like CD Creator. I then went to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools to look for “Back Up”. It is not to be found. I figured if I used the Win ME back up it might keep going with the back up.
Anyone know where it went ? (Back-up) Any better ideas for backing up ?
Thanks, Tim

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don’t know if it will help or not but i did a seach on my hard drive for msbackup.exe
it was in the c:program filesaccessoriesbackup
folder i tried to run it but got an error that some dll was missing
sorry i know this is not much but maybe it will work for you

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Hi,

Bill Gates hid the backup utility on the Windows ME CD-ROM. On my copy of the CD-ROM it’s in the folder d:add-onsMSBackup. Here’s a clip from the file backup.txt in this folder:

QUOTE
INSTALLION AND SETUP OF MICROSOFT BACKUP
========================================

In previous editions of Microsoft Windows, Backup was
available as an optional component located in System
Tools. Microsoft Backup is now available as an iexpress
package (named msbexp.exe, installed from the Add-on
folder on the Windows Millennium CD-ROM. Backup requires
at least 5.1 megabytes of free disk space on the hard
drive for installation.

To install Microsoft Backup on your system, browse to
the Add-onsMsbackup folder in the Windows Millennium Edition
CD-ROM. Locate the Backup Iexpress installation package
(msbexp.exe). Double click on msbexp.exe. The package
will open and provide instructions for completing
the installation.
UNQUOTE.

Good luck

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Thanks for the info. I went back to the CD and found the program.
I will give it a try. Wish me luck in backing up a whole hard drive without crashing.
CD Creator doesnt work.
Tim

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Well, here we go again. The MS back up program is now loaded but it doesn’t know anything about the CD-RW drive. I went thru the normal stuff, find new hardware, etc. but it found nothing. Device mngr knows about the drive but Backup does not. The Philips program knows about the drive. The CD Creator knows about the drive.
Any ideas ?
Tim

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You could read this:
Q303106 “This Media Is Write Protected” Error Message When You Use Microsoft Backup with CD-RW
but to save you bothering, I quote from the article:
“CAUSE
This behavior occurs because Microsoft Backup does not support CD-RW.”

Another article you could read is
Q264541 Microsoft Backup Tool Is Not Installed by Windows Millennium Edition
again I quote:
“IMPORTANT: Unlike programs such as ScanDisk, Disk Defragmenter, Paint, and so on, the Microsoft Backup tool is not a core component of Windows Millennium Edition (Me). The Microsoft Backup tool has been included with the retail, released version of Windows Me to help maintain the functionality of Microsoft Backup after an upgrade to Windows Me. It is important to note that the Microsoft Backup tool cannot provide extensive backup functionality. Because of this, if you need to backup data, Microsoft recommends you obtain and install a third-party backup program.”

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Thanks for the reply. Oh well. MS strikes again. I had my hopes….
Has anyone out there successfully used any back up program (for full hd back up) ?
Have we finally arrived at the point that the only way to keep a back up is to put in a second drive and mirror it ?

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I’m afraid I’ve never used any backup software that wasn’t running on NT, and the one I use (which can backup an entire drive) won’t run on ME.

It may be worth persuing the Roxio angle. Have you checked their website?
The link above should take you to the knowledgebase, search as below and look for an article called “General troubleshooting steps for Windows ME and Easy Creator Suite”

Good luck.

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Thanks for the help. I am running Win2k at the office. Maybe it is time to switch to this OS at home.
I will check further on Roxio page. Last visit I did not find too much help.
I will keep plugging away. I read some interesting articles on backing up to another hard drive.
Also found some info on Iomega Quick Sync. I will research that further.
Tim

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PowerQuest Drive Image or Norton Ghost will do the job nicely and both support CD-RW.

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Thanks Sparky. The office just got a copy of Norton Ghost 2002. We have yet to try it. Maybe next week I can see how it works. Thanks for the tip.

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I would be interested to know if you got Ghost to create an image in a CD-RW. I have not been able to accomplish this. Ghost will recognize my CD-RW, suggest I need two dsks then come back with error writing to disk. Yes I am using as instructed an unformatted CD-RW disk. I have been able to create a ghost image of one partition and saved to another partition, but that does on litle good if the whole drive goes. I have aslo gotten an image saved from one hardisk to another. Acutally I think the safest is a backup to another hardisk. I have one system that is dual disk in removable trays. The other later system is a Dell 4100 (which was a majpr mistake) which does not permit trays as there are only two 5 1/2 bays and the first hardisk is located (get this) in a cage at the bottom of the box. I will never buy anything other than a generic screwdriver system again. I may end up installing another non-removable hd in the Dell.

I bought a copy of Easy CD Creator Platinum yesteday specifically to get the Take.Two softwarr. But I’m not going to open it now based on your experience. I don’t need to spend $99.00 for something that won’t do what it adversises.

Let me know if you solved your problem. My next experiment is using PKZip or one of the other zip programs to make a series of 500 meg spanned zip backups for copying to CD’s or one full backup file that can be split into appropiate segments for copying.

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No, I have not yet tried the Ghost to back up the HD. I glad you posted your response. It may save me a lot of time. I have tried the “BackUp” program (bun9x_v2227_trial_NTI.exe) and that also does NOT work. I gave the Roxio programs another try and still no luck. I have downloaded a trial version of Iomega Quick Sync to try. Someone out there must have a better way. For the time being, I am dragging & dropping on to a CD-R just for some back up capability.
If I get anything that works, I will post it. If you or anyone else does, hopefully they will also post it.
Tim

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Your problem has certainly found an echo in the public. Please keep this alive with your experiences. I am having exactly the same problems.

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Easy CD Creator 5 Platium mentions “Back up your computer to CD in three easy steps.” Has anyone used this program? A minimum version come bundled with Dell. It does not include the backup.

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Edited by DaveA on 17-Nov-01 14:44.

Added url code

Well, here we go with some more programs that DON’T seem to do what they say.
Found this one in a newsletter. Thought I would try it out. (You can read about it here : http://hotfiles.zdnet.com/cgi-bin/texis/sw…385&b=adesk
When I told it to write to the CD-RW drive with a fresh CD-R in it, it gave me the following message:
“Can’t create E:……….” E: is my CD-RW drive.
I was going to include a picture of the desktop at the time, but the snapshot is over 1meg.
I tried several times to make it go to the CD-RW, but it refuses.
I guess I will scratch off another “back up program”. If you get brave, give it a try. Maybe you can make it work on your machine.
I have one more program to report about and I will do that one in the next message……..
the saga continues…..
TimC

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Here’s another one: AIS Backup. It is real “fancy” and WILL back up to your hard drive. Of course, that is not what we are looking for. There is a nice sidebar that tells you what you must do. Each time you do that step, it puts a check mark next to the step. At the beginning, you select the name and destination of the backup. I again, selected my E: drive (CD-RW), using a CD-R disk. It will allow you to select from a tree, all the files and folders you want. I chose to keep it small (about 20 meg) this time. I went through, selecting a bunch of files and folders and got to the end where it says “run back up”. I clicked the OK and up pops a picture of a CD disk. Since I already had a fresh disk in there, I chose “use loaded CD”. It came back with “Not enough room”. ????? I selected Abort. I ran the script again and this time it said it completed in 0 seconds. Pretty good ! considering it never accessed the CD-RW at all. Needless to say, another program that doesn’t seem to do what they say it will. Someone else can give it a try and report to the forum here.
Here is the webpage:
http://www.aiscl.co.uk/
Good Luck.
TimC

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Hello Everyone again:
Here is an update to the AIS Backup program. http://www.aiscl.co.uk/
I had numerous emails with the author (Barry) about the problems I was having with the program. He was very helpful in resolving my questions and problems.
The program will create a script file based on your selection of folders and files. When building the script file, you tell it where to save the data (HD, Floppy, CD, network drive). Once you have selected the data to back up, you run the script file and away it goes. One important item: You must first format the CD-R (or CD-RW). I used the Roxio CD Creator program for that. It would be nice if the AIS program could do that for you !
I have not yet tried to mark the C: drive for total backup and let it run and span multiple CD’s. I have posed this question to Barry at AIS but have not yet had his reply. By the way, he is monitoring this forum.
If the program can span multiple CD’s and keep going (without crashes), this might be the backup program we are all looking for. I will be back with further information when I get it.
If someone else would like to try it out and report to the forum, that would be helpful.
TimC

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Another update to AIS Backup.
I received a reply from Barry regarding spanning media for back up. I will include it below.
As he is stating, he is fixing some things in the next version which should be up next week.
Ok, who out there is going to do a multiple media back up ?
Here is Barry’s response:
Hi Tim,

I’ve put check in the program for resource usage, this seems to work as long
as you do not start working with AISBackup and then start working with other
programs – which really you should not when working with Backup programs. In
summary AISBackup will refuse to run options until resources are made
available.

The program’s only (known) limitation at the moment is that is cannot span
individual files that are larger than the capacity of the destination media.
It does otherwise span media, remember to give CD a unique name e.g.
BACK001, BACK002. The next release of AISBackup’s cue card will remind Users
of this.

There is a bug introduced from version 115 that prevents the Emergency
System Restore from working, this is because a dll (that is on the backup
media) is not copied to the temporary restore folder (The dll would have
been restored to C:WindowsSystem for Users of AISBackup prior to version
1.0.115, BTW the dll is Unzdll.dll – the bit that does the unzipping). The
work around is to do this manually (in DOS!). The problem has been fixed in
the ‘work in hand version’ which will be uploaded next week (1.0.4.118). I
thought I’d mention this in case you were about to recommend the program to
1000’s of your forum contributors

Regards

Barry Morris
Aquarius I.S. Consultancy Limited

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Another update from AIS on back up. The author has posted a newer version with some fixes.
http://www.aiscl.co.uk/DownloadAISBackup.htm
I have downloaded it but not yet tried it out. Anyone else trying this ?

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