Situation: You’re running Windows XP Professional on a computer without a floppy drive, and you want to use the Automated System Recovery tool to generate a system backup.

Windows Automated System Recovery writes to a pair of drives: One of them is user-selectable and is where the system backup is stored. This can be another drive on the computer itself, (It is possible to actually write the backup to the same disk as the original files; but that’s almost totally pointless.) a drive on another computer, or a USB drive. The other one of them is Drive A: on the local computer; which is the floppy drive if you have one fitted. If you don’t then a problem arises as the ASR wizard asks to write to a floppy-disk in drive A: . The floppy lists the system files that are installed on the PC; and without it you can’t even begin a restore operation using ASR.

If you don’t have a floppy drive fitted to that particular computer then there are ways round the situation. None of the available methods are able to get away from having a floppy drive installed on a computer at some point. To save the reader time I’ll state here that there appears to be no way out of having to have a floppy drive installed somewhere, on the computer in question or on another computer. In short, if you’re using Windows XP and want to use ASR but don’t have and can’t get hold of a floppy-drive then in short you’re screwed.

You can write the floppy that goes with your backup on the computer in question without having a floppy drive installed on that particular computer. However you will require a second networked computer with a floppy drive installed on it: -

After running the ASR wizard without writing the floppy as per the machine’s instructions, navigate to C:\windows\repair\asr.sif and C:\windows\repair\asrpnp.sif . Copy these files across to a location on your networked computer that has a floppy drive installed, and then copy them from that location to a floppy disk.

You now have a floppy to go with the backup, but if you want to reinstall the backup at any point you’ll need a floppy drive fitted to your original computer in order to be able to do so: In this case of reinstallation a networked computer with a floppy drive installed can’t help. – That means that, if you can’t get hold of a spare floppy drive, you’ll have to uninstall the floppy drive from your networked computer and at least plug it in to the original computer; both power lead and data cable.

The last sentence of the paragraph directly above is in all honesty the only solid solution to the problem: Plug in or fully install an old floppy drive. If you don’t have any floppy disks and can’t get hold of any then there is a device available that adapts a floppy drive for a flash card, and I see no reason why it won’t work with ASR. At $25.00 USD you might think it to be a trifle too expensive to bother with.

That’s about it then: If you don’t have a floppy drive anywhere then you won’t be able to use Windows ASR. – End of story. There are other backup solutions available though; some will cost you money, others are free. personally I recommend Acronis True Image and Paragon Drive Backup, in that order. Neither are free, but if you don’t want to pay then I suggest searching on Google for free backup programs.

Do you know different? Do you have a better solution to the issue? If so then comment.

Further Reading: See this article, and this article also.