I just wanted to let you know that I did successfully use the XP Pro Backup Wizzard to create what they call an Automatic Recovery Backup Set, which includes the system state backup of the boot disk and a recovery diskette.
I used an external (USB-2) hard drive, which I had to reformat to NTFS in order to create a file larger than the 4 GB limit on FAT32 files. My backup was about 12 GB and took less than 30 minutes to create and verify. That's quite an improvement over my old travan tape backups.
Now, in theory, if anything happens to my drive I can restore it with a complete running system in 2 steps; boot from the floppy and restore from the external HD to the C-drive. You could do the same thing with a 2nd internal drive, but a lightning strike would probably whack both drives. Besides, with the external HD I can backup my daughter's system too. Her's is XP Home. I'll let you know if it supports the advanced backup wizzard I used; might be only in XP Pro.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ron Page on 03 July 2003 at 01:43 PM.]</p></FONT>
PS: It appears that XP Home does not have the backup utility. I can find some info searhing the help files on "ASR" or "Backup", but the program doesn't appear to be there. I don't know if it would be on the XP Home disc or not. I'll now consider upgrading the other box to XP Pro.<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ron Page on 05 July 2003 at 05:27 PM.]</p></FONT>