Backup Options

[SlimRick]

We have a couple of manufacturing machines that are controlled by Siemens industrial PCs. One of these failed to reboot after the Christmas shutdown and it turns out there are no backups or systems in place to take backups.
After a day and a half, I've got the machine running again without losing any of the installed software or settings, but obviously I don't want to go through that again.
These PC's don't have a CD drive, and can't boot from USB stick or drive. They do have a floppy disk drive, so does anyone know any backup / restore options where I can boot from a floppy and backup the whole HDD in the PC to an external USB drive?

 

[Platypus]

We have a couple of manufacturing machines that are controlled by Siemens industrial PCs. One of these failed to reboot after the Christmas shutdown and it turns out there are no backups or systems in place to take backups.
After a day and a half, I've got the machine running again without losing any of the installed software or settings, but obviously I don't want to go through that again.
These PC's don't have a CD drive, and can't boot from USB stick or drive. They do have a floppy disk drive, so does anyone know any backup / restore options where I can boot from a floppy and backup the whole HDD in the PC to an external USB drive?

I'm pretty sure that Norton Ghost lets you do this. At least, it used to.

EDIT: User Manual here

 

[darmstadt]

Do they have network connectivity? If so then g4u might work...

 

[dmini]

boot from floppy would require you to have a floppy disk with usb drivers etc. Not sure how many of those there are. Others may know how to get a disk that does these plus runs windows from a floppy
It does depend what the O/S Windows /***IX is but all these will work
My thoughts - take the disk out - put as secondary (usb attached external drive) in another machine - you then get all advantages of usb, cd-rom etc, and can easily do full ghost disk backup.
Put a second disk inside and back up disk one to disk 2?
Or simpler if it has network and is connectable to - use remote backup tool - back up to your enterprise solution - ntbackup type style if not
Otherwise ask Siemens what they recommend -