EmptyCrate Software. Travel. Stuff.

We previously covered options for backup and recovery on systems with no CDROM drive. I've since moved my netbook to Windows 7 and have come across a few more options.

After a recent problem with my master boot record on my netbook, I decided it was time to make sure I had a backup and recovery option.

Generally speaking, I'm not too worried about backups. All of the files I'm concerned about either exist on my network drive or on the internet. However, in the case of a catastrophic failure where I am not concerned about getting the data missing but and more concerned about actually getting the notebook booting again, a netbook offers few options. Netbooks do not come with CD/DVD burners. External ones may not be readily accessible. Even if you did have a CD drive available, your netbook probably did not ship with a factory restore CD.

This process only worked with Windows XP at the time this article was written. Use these instructions at your own risk.

Last night I messed up my GRUB boot loader and spent the better part of 4 hours trying to get the Windows Recovery Console booting off of a USB drive on my Acer Aspire One. The goal was the use the Recovery Console to run the tools fixmbr and fixboot to get Windows booting again.

I couldn't find a single simple resource on how to do it, but it is really very simple: