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Turls
Level 6

In Part 1 of this TechTip, we discussed why it is important to use a Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) containing the correct drivers to ensure the success of a system restore operation. In Part 2, we will talk about how to create a customized SRD.

From the Backup Exec System Recovery home page, select Create Recovery Disk from the Tasks menu to launch the Symantec Recovery Disk Wizard, shown in the screen shot below.

The wizard will identify the storage controllers, network interface cards, and other critical hardware on the system where it’s running and then compare them to the driver database on the default SRD that comes with Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8.0. If it finds drivers on your computer that aren’t included on the default SRD, you can choose to create a customized SRD automatically or manually. The screen shot below illustrates the Automatic and Custom options:

If you select the Automatic option, your custom SRD will include all the additional drivers the wizard found during the comparison.

If you select the Custom option, the wizard will display a list of all the additional drivers found during the comparison. To remove a driver from the list, select it and click the Remove button. If the list doesn’t include drivers that you want included on your custom SRD—for example, drivers from another server or workstation that you may need to recover using the SRD—click the Add button to browse to the folder where you can select those drivers to add to the list.

  • Be sure you have the drivers needed for your system, as well as any drivers you’ll need in order to restore to different hardware if you use the Restore Anyware feature of Backup Exec System Recovery. (For more information about Restore Anyware, click here.)

Test Your SRD

After creating a custom SRD, it is critical that you test it to be sure it functions properly. Boot your systems from the SRD to confirm that you can access the network and the local hard drives, there are no defective drivers on the disk, and you have all the drivers you need. You may want to also test the SRD on a different computer than the one where you created it, to be sure you have all the required drivers if you ever need to use Restore Anyware.

Hopefully you’ll never need to use your SRD to recover from a catastrophic failure. But if you’ve created a custom SRD ahead of time that contains all the required drivers for your system, you can get back up and running quickly and efficiently. For more information on using the System Recovery Disk, click here.

Comments
bert_geiger
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Hi Swathi,

I am using BESR 2010 Workstation Edition.

You write "network interface cards" - i.e. plural, but I have  massive problem: The motherboard of my workstation (with Windows-7 Ultimate) has two NICs, and that seems to be a problem; I can't get it to load NIC information when booting into the recovery menu, no matter whether I create a customized RD or use the standard one. When I try to load the drivers extra, it does not bring an error, but ipconfig shows no entries except the loopback. I send my backups to a NAS, and now I can't recover because there is no network. I tried disabling one port in the BIOS, but that didn't help either. Any advice? I couldn't findanything in the KB.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Hi Bert,

Can you please test again using the latest (10.0.2) SRD for SSR 2011? You can download it from our trialware site:

http://www.symantec.com/products/trialware.jsp?pcid=pcat_business_cont&pvid=1602_1

Also note that the SRD is WinPE 2.1 so the drivers you use must be 32bit and based on Windows Vista/2008.

Hope that helps.

Version history
Last update:
‎02-26-2009 04:13 PM
Updated by: