PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I have been looking for a new disk imaging solution for my scope system but wanted something that would boot off a cdrom rather than install itself on the system. I found something that can be used this way and is also FREE.

So for making an image backup for free use driveimage XML
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

and follow the instructions to setup a cdrom using BartPE
http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

You just need the driveimage xml plugin when you setup the PE boot disk.

It's simple to use and works like a charm.

The steps to create a disk are:
1. Download pebuilder from here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder
2. Download Driveimage XML 1.18 from here http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

At this point, the version of pebuilder I used was 3.1.10.a so the directory names will reflect this.

5. Install pebuilder using the default directory for installation C:\pebuilder3110a
6. Insert a WindowsXP SP1 or SP2 Disk (If you don't have a SP2 or SP1 disk then you need to "slipstream". Run pebuilder, select Source/Slipstream. "Source" is your WinXP install Disk. Tick the "Source is readonly...." box. "Servicepack" points to the location of SP2 or SP2 file. Click OK. This will then become your Builder source)
7. Run pebuilder.
8. In the "Builder" section select your XP SP2 or SP2 disk as your Source *or* select c:\pebuilder3110a\win-slipstreamed if you had to slipstream.
9. In the "Builder" section type in "WinPE" for Output.
10. In the "Media output" section select "Create ISO image" and enter C:\pebuilder3110a\winpe.iso
11. Click Plugins then Add and locate the Driveimage XML cab file. Once this is done, make sure it is enabled by clicking on Driveimage XML in the plugin list and clicking Enable.
12. Click Close then Build. You should now have a winpe.iso file in the C:\pebuilder3110a directory. There will also be a WinPE directory which you can build other ISO's from.
13. Burn the iso image to a cd and you now have a bootable windows recovery disk with the ability to create disk images.

To create a version that loads into RAM (so you can eject the CD if needed) see post below. I have both versions. This version will run wihin windows so you can use Driveimage XML to browse to a particular file of a backup image and then restore it without having to shutdown (as long as it is not a file that is locked of course!). Whereas you can't do that with the RAM version.

I have always been happy with Acronis. It is not free though but does a great job. I too hate having unnecessary stuff installed so use a boot CD with Acronis so the program doesn't need to be installed. However, this free one you mentioned looks good and the fact it is free is great. Pity it wasn't around (that I know of) when I was looking around for an imaging program.

I've been testing it on a couple of old and new systems including server 2003 and it works really well. Once you set this disk up you have a great set of utilities for system repair (WindowsPE) and a disk imaging tool as well (driveimageXML) all on one disk. DriveimageXML will also allow you to browse images and restore individual files which is pretty handy.

An update:-

BartPE works off the cdrom so once you have booted up with the BartPE disc in the cdrom drive, you can't eject it!
Chances are most people won't want to eject the cdrom anyway as they would just :-
a) plug a usb drive in and write system images to that
b) write an image to a second drive/partition on the system itself then copy later

But I like everything to work as it should so I went the extra mile!

There is a solution which involves loading the whole BartPE environment into RAM here:-
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php? ... 10482&st=0

This is a bit trickier to setup. The instructions aren't very well written and I needed to work out a few extra steps to get it to work properly, however, once done, it works very well. I can write up a brief How-To if any one needs help setting this up.

The great thing about this setup is you can image your scope system without installing any software on the system itself

bassdude wrote: BartPE works off the cdrom so once you have booted up with the BartPE disc in the cdrom drive, you can't eject it!

this comes most ugly when you just want to do a firmware upgrade (windows binary) on a linux box and it refuses to reprogram the drive with a cdrom inside...
btw, has anyone managed to put bartpe onto an usb-stick?

Chances are most people won't want to eject the cdrom anyway as they would just :-
a) plug a usb drive in and write system images to that
b) write an image to a second drive/partition on the system itself then copy later

c) write the image to a network share. keep in mind that you have to split the resulting file to pieces <2gb then.

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php? ... 10482&st=0

This is a bit trickier to setup. The instructions aren't very well written and I needed to work out a few extra steps to get it to work properly, however, once done, it works very well. I can write up a brief How-To if any one needs help setting this up.

well, I'd appreciate that, if you could give us the missing information. sounds very interesting, and could be a solution for my problem mentioned above

-greetings, markus-

Ok, stay tuned. I'll put something together soon.

As promised, instructions to build a RAM Version:-

**EDIT** In the interest of simplicity I have re-done this post to make the process easier. 12/01/07

These instructions are adapted from the original post which is here:- http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php? ... 10482&st=0

1. Download pebuilder from here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder
2. Download Driveimage XML 1.18 from here http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm
3. Download ToUpper from here http://www.paraglidernc.com/12142.html and extract the ToUpper.exe file into your C:\WINDOWS directory.
4. Download Server 2003 SP1 from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Sear ... laylang=en

At this point, the version of pebuilder I used was 3.1.10.a so the directory names will reflect this.

5. Install pebuilder using the default directory for installation C:\pebuilder3110a
6. Insert a WindowsXP SP2 Disk **Note - You NEED SP2 for this version** (If you don't have a XP SP2 disk then you need to "slipstream" SP2 within pebuilder. Run pebuilder, select Source/Slipstream. "Source" is your WinXP install Disk. Tick the "Source is readonly...." box. "Servicepack" points to the location of SP2 file. Click OK. This will then become your Builder source)
7. Run pebuilder.
8. In the "Builder" section select your XP SP2 disk as your Source *or* select c:\pebuilder3110a\win-slipstreamed if you had to slipstream SP2
9. In the "Builder" section type in "WinPE" for Output.
10. In the "Media output" section select "None" because we *don't* want to build an iso image just yet.
11. Click Plugins then Add and locate the Driveimage XML cab file. Once this is done, make sure it is enabled by clicking on Driveimage XML in the plugin list and clicking Enable.
12. Click Close then Build. You should now have a directory C:\pebuilder3110a\WinPE with files inside it.
13. Create an extra directory called C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files
14. Use WinRAR to open the Server 2003 SP1 ".exe" file and extract the ramdisk.sy_ and setupldr.bin file from the i386 directory of the archive and put them in C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files.
15. Expand the RAMDISK.SY_ file, at a command prompt type "expand ramdisk.sy_".
16. Use notepad to create a winnt.sif file and add the folowing text including the "[SetupData]" bit.

[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=winpe.iso"

Save this file as "winnt.sif" in C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files
17. Create a batch file by copying the following code into notepad and save it as create.bat in C:\pebuilder3110a

@ECHO OFF
cd c:\pebuilder3110a
md c:\RamPE
md c:\RamPE\i386
copy C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files\ramdisk.sys c:\pebuilder3110a\winpe\i386\system32\drivers
copy C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files\winnt.sif c:\rampe
copy C:\pebuilder3110a\InRAM_Files\setupldr.bin c:\rampe\i386
copy C:\pebuilder3110a\winpe\bootsect.bin c:\rampe
copy C:\pebuilder3110a\winpe\i386\ntdetect.com c:\rampe\i386
toupper /s c:\pebuilder3110a\winpe\*.*
mkisofs.exe -iso-level 4 -volid "WinPE" -b BOOTSECT.BIN -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -hide BOOTSECT.BIN -hide boot.catalog -o "c:\rampe\winpe.iso" "C:\pebuilder3110a\winpe"
toupper /s c:\rampe\*.*
mkisofs.exe -iso-level 4 -volid "WinPE" -A PEBUILDER/MKISOFS -sysid "Win32" -no-emul-boot -b BOOTSECT.BIN -hide BOOTSECT.BIN -o WinPE_InRAM.iso "C:\rampe"
REM Cleanup
rd /s/q c:\rampe
rd /s/q c:\pebuilder3110a\winpe

18. Double click the create.bat file from within explorer *or* open a command prompt and run "create".
19. If all goes well you should see an iso image called WinPE_InRAM.iso in the C:\pebuilder3110a directory. Burn this image to a cdrom and away you go.


A couple of points:-

1. The toupper utility changes filenames to uppercase. This is necessary otherwise your recovery disk won't work. If you want, remove the file after you've finished.
2. If you want to use a usb drive, make sure you plug it in *before* booting the cd. Also pay attention to how drive names are assigned once you have booted into the recovery environment. You may find your usb drive is now c:!
3. Driveimage XML doesn't do RAID! But most people don't use RAID anyway. I don't! I'm actually looking in to a version that supports RAID for other purposes but it will probably be less user friendly.

BTW, I also made some modifications as I didn't like the look of the splash screen and other bits and pieces. Of course you have to redo the whole process again when doing this sort of thing.

Good luck!

How does this compare to Acronis (which is what I've used the last few years) in terms of speed & level of compression? Acronis does a ~10Gb backup in 1-2 mins with just under 2:1 compression (Light compression option) (from my SCSI boot drive to a 200Gb IDE ATA100). Restore doesn't take much longer & incrimental backups are nice.

If Driveimage works at least that well this sounds like a great solution to me as well. Not only do I really like BartPE but Runtime Software also makes GetDataBack, which I've found to be reliable enough to use even on deleted NTFS partions that have been quick formatted again.

I have never used Acronis so I can't make the comparison. And I haven't used the compression option yet so I don't know how well that works. It seems quite speedy to me though.

I put this together for people who don't already have imageing software and want a great solution that doesn't cost them anything. If you already have Acronis and it works for you then you probably don't need this! But you might be interested in setting up a BartPE anyway as there is a plugin for Acronis as well.




PS I should also probably put words in here such as cloning, clone, drive snapshot for searching later when this post disappears into obscurity.

bassdude wrote: If you already have Acronis and it works for you then you probably don't need this! But you might be interested in setting up a BartPE anyway as there is a plugin for Acronis as well.

you should be able to download the plugin once you registered your copy of trueimage. yeah, you remind me that I still want to try that...

-greetings, markus-

ps:

bassdude wrote: PS I should also probably put words in here such as cloning, clone, drive snapshot for searching later when this post disappears into obscurity.

nice of you not to disguise those keywords by changing the font color to match the background (like it's done on ebay all the time )

Also, for a totally free solution you can use a knoppix boot CD

www.knoppix.de

and either dd (disk dump) the drive with or without compression, or just copy the files. XP is pretty stupid about how it boots, if ntdetect.com and ntldr are at the root of C: and the boot.ini points to a valid Windows directory it will work. You can just copy the files from one disk to another, tag the partition as bootable and you're off.

Some copy protection schemes, though, will barf if you move an install to a new drive. Don't know about SFP but I'll be finding out soon enough when my 500GB boot drive arrives to replace the one I have now.

Also, Symantec Ghost can be (quite easily) run off of BartPE. I use it to image machines all the time at work.

TCB

Will dd handle RAID configurations? The above Driveimage XML solution is free and the application itself is very user friendly. Plus it seems to work very well without any problems at all. The only problem is it does not handle RAID. So now I'm looking at g4u as a possible solution. Although it won't be as user friendly.

bassdude wrote:Will dd handle RAID configurations? The above Driveimage XML solution is free and the application itself is very user friendly. Plus it seems to work very well without any problems at all. The only problem is it does not handle RAID. So now I'm looking at g4u as a possible solution. Although it won't be as user friendly.

If your RAID controller needs a driver (which essentially all of them do) and that driver isn't part of the base XP SP2 driver set that can load at the earliest stage of bootup (and essentially none of them are) then it won't work. But the issue isn't whether dd will work, but whether any bootable CD will see your RAID controller. The BartPE boot CD can be set up to load RAID drivers, both SCSI and SATA, at startup like a repair/install XP CD. The Knoppix CD is a linux boot disk so it may or more likely may not see your RAID controller, and if it does it may or may not see the RAID configuration correctly depending on the card/drive/RAID.

A further question might be how often you need to do a backup image. If you are set up with a RAID I'm guessing you're using 1 or 5 so data integrity should be pretty good. Personally I don't backup my XP install ever, though on occasion I'll do a registry backup if I think of it. I really only back up data, so the ability to take a full snapshot of everything.

One more thing, you should also look into a M$oft utility called NTBackup. It can do 'warm' backups of everything including 'system state' which is another way to say your registry and such. It can spit that off to a compressed file that can be backed up almost anywhere.

TCB

TCB wrote:Also, for a totally free solution you can use a knoppix boot CD

www.knoppix.de

and either dd (disk dump) the drive with or without compression, or just copy the files.

well, dd does a sector-by sector copy. you are not able to extract single files from such a dump. mounting nfts readonly and copying files is sufficient if it's just a file backup and permissions do not matter.

dd is closer to imaging, but lacks some features like selective recovery...
but there is something called ntfsclone within the ntfsprogs package. I didn't test it yet, but the manual looks promising. you can loopmount the image later and read from that...

-greetings, markus-