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BartPE or "Bootable Rescue Media" for disaster recovery?

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Windows XP Pro SP3
TI Home 2009

I can create or download "Bootable Rescue Media" or I can create a bootable BartPE CD containing TI Home.

What's the real difference?

Under what circumstance would one work and the other not?

Will one of them always work?

Should I re-make the recovery media whenever a new build is released (not an issue for TIH 2009, of course)?

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The standard Rescue Media runs from Linux and uses Linux drivers. These generally work well on most systems. The BartPE media must be created manually and is based on XP (requires an XP CD or XP installation files). BartPE generally provides speeds comparable to those in Windows and offers the ability to add standard Windows storage drivers if the ones inlcuded don't recognize the hardware. Either one, if it works, should be fine. Some people prefer the BartPE version because it's usually faster than the Linux version. This matters less if you restore infrequently.

A WinPE-based CD is another option. It's based on Vista or Windows 7 and generally provides better driver support than BartPE if no drivers are added, especially for newer computers.

You should recreate the recovery media for a new build. That way, it will be ready if you need it.

Thanks.

I made a BartPE CD for my older machine. It has an onboard Promise FastTrak pseudo-RAID controller that I just used to get an extra IDE port, so I needed to add the drivers for it so that TIH could see that drive.

My new machine doesn't have any such useless frills, so the standard rescue CD will be fine.

Still, putting the BartPE CD together was an interesting exercise.

Since I'm holding on TIH 2009 (it works!), I won't have to be making new CDs any time soon.