About creating and updating recovery media

Before running the IDR Preparation Wizard to create or update the recovery media, run a full backup of the hard drive (unless you are creating bootable tape media).

See Creating a bootable tape image.

The *.dr file is created when a full backup of the entire hard drive is run.

Note:

If you exclude files from backups, the *.dr file is not created.

After the *.dr file is created, Backup Exec automatically updates it with data from all subsequent backups (except copy backups) in its default location on the computer and in the alternate location you specified. You can view the default locations from Tools >Options> Intelligent Disaster Recovery.

For each backup set that is backed up, an alert appears reminding you to use the IDR Preparation Wizard to back up the *.dr files to any location. If you use a diskette, you should label it and then store it with the rest of the disaster recovery media.

If you do not run a full backup before running the IDR Preparation Wizard, you can still create all the media, but the computer-specific *.dr file will not contain the catalog entries for the backup sets, and during the recovery phase, you will have to manually search for and restore the backup sets necessary to recover the computer.

Note:

For the local media server, update the bootable media after every successful full backup, or whenever you patch or upgrade your operating system software. Symantec also recommends that you update the bootable media when you reconfigure or update your storage drivers or network drivers. For remote computers, you do not need to create or update bootable media until a disaster occurs, as long as a *.dr file for the remote computer is available on the media server.

The bootable media contains the system files necessary to make a failed Windows computer operational after a disaster. Create a new bootable image whenever hardware, SCSI drivers, or storage device drivers change on the computer that is protected.

Prepare and test bootable media before a disaster to make sure that the media was prepared correctly.

The bootable media also contains a text file called <computer name>-diskconf.txt, which contains information about the computer's hard disk layout.