On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Stapleton, Mark wrote:

 > From: ADSM: Dist Stor Manager [mailto:ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU] On 
 > Behalf Of Thomas Denier
 > >We are evaluating ASR as a bare metal recovery tool for Windows.
 > >Most of our installed Intel servers have floppy drives, but we
 > >were not expecting to order future Intel servers with floppy
 > >drives. The last time we did a disaster recovery test, we got
 > >Intel systems with floppy drives from SunGard, but I don't think
 > >our contract guarantees floppy drives in the future.
 > >
 > >Is is possible to use a USB key or a writable CD as a substitute
 > >for the floppy disk mentioned in the ASR documentation?
 > 
 > That would probably be a question better asked to Microsoft support.

The following web page seems to indicate that a floppy disk is required 
(or something that is seen as a floppy disk by the installation process). 
It says explicitly:

  Important
   Before running the ASR restore, you must attach a floppy drive to your 
   computer. 

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_backtrouble.mspx

 Rainer Schöpf