Jo.

Just found this on my computer when I was poking around the Help and Support option.

Automated System Recovery overviewYou should create Automated System Recovery (ASR) sets on a regular basis as part of an overall plan for system recovery in case of system failure. ASR should be a last resort for system recovery, used only after you have exhausted other options, such as Safe Mode Boot and Last Known Good. For more information about other recovery options, see Repair overview.

ASR is a two-part system of recovery: ASR backup and ASR restore. The backup portion is accomplished through the ASR Wizard located in Backup. The wizard backs up the system state, system services, and all disks associated with the operating system components. It also creates a file containing information about the backup, the disk configurations (including basic and dynamic volumes) and how to accomplish a restore.

You can access the restore portion by pressing F2 when prompted in the text-mode portion of setup. ASR will read the disk configurations from the file that it creates and restore all of the disk signatures, volumes and partitions on, at a minimum, the disks required to start the computer. (It will attempt to restore all of the disk configurations, but under some circumstances, it might not be able to.) ASR then installs a simple installation of Windows and automatically starts a restoration using the backup created by the ASR wizard.

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Now here is where I get my confusion. This ASR, this is done BEFORE one re-formats the hard drive. Or does one do this BEFORE and because they are doing the ASR, it's reformats the hard drive and literally makes your computer like new. I wish I knew more than I do but this is very confusing.

this is really over my head but if you could please just say:

Melody, these are where your back up files are" then say: "melody, this is how you do ASR"

If this is possible, then when I get the new computer, I'll just move this big one over a few feet onto the dining room table (pull out an old monitor ) and I'll play with this one. If I know what I'm doing, then I know what I'm doing, but if not, I'll just chalk it up to not knowing what I'm doing. But I really want to learn this back up thing.

If you can do this and if it doesn't take too much typing on your part, I just need it made simple. I can't get over how you people KNOW so much about backing up files, flash drives, etc. etc.

I just got a new Vitamix and of course I screwed up my first attempt.

lol
Melody