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Old 19-10-2017, 09:02 AM
AndrewJ
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Making disk Images

Gday All
After my recent bit of fun with a corrupted registry/dying hard disk, i have taken to making system images vs just backups.
W7 has an inbuilt drive imager so thats OK.
However, i have an old IDE based W2KPro system that does stuff my modern units cant, so i want to keep it going.
I have been looking at all sorts of disk imagers, but most ( other than clonezilla ) appears to require the drive to be mounted, and none of the apps run under W2k.
I have "manually" rebuilt a bootable "clone" W2k by
installing W2k from the boot disk ( to get a proper mbr partition),
wiping out all the files ( via the dos box in the repair utility ),
using Xcopy to copy ALL the data from the old disk to the new.
On rebooting, it detects the new HDD signature and resets itself to suit and all goes well.
However, what i would like to do is create an image.
I can attach the ide drives to my W7 box OK, but nothing ( free ) i can find allows me to make a true clone image of the attached disk.
I found stuff that clones one disk to another, but want something ( simple ) that can image an attached disk, and restore it later.
Any ideas????

Andrew
( still reading the clonezilla instructions )
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  #2  
Old 19-10-2017, 09:27 AM
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RB (Andrew)
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I only use Clonezilla for all my disk cloning needs.
As you know it's free and once you get the hang of the UI, I find, it's perfect for my needs.
I have never imaged a disk, only cloned but I'm very happy with it.
I imagine it's just as good at imaging a disk too.

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Old 19-10-2017, 11:25 AM
AndrewJ
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Gday Andrew
I have been reading the clonezilla tutorials and am still a little confused for what i want to do.
I know i can do a simple clone or simple image of an entire disk in beginner mode, but the disks need to be the same size.
My current disk has a C: and D: partition which has system data loaded and an :E partition with useless backup stuff. Total 120GB
The C: and D: are just below 80GB, and are what i need to image.
Ie I only need to clone :C and D: ( and i have 2off 80GB backup drives ), but from what i read, if i clone the partitions to an image, it wont do the system/mbr section etc that makes the C: partition "bootable" later.
I cant do the full disk as from what i see, as Clonezilla wont let me restore a 120GB image to an 80GB drive.
Sooooo, just looking for the best way other than what i have already done.

Andrew
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Old 19-10-2017, 11:42 AM
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redbeard (Damien)
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Hi Andrew,

I've noticed that for good disk imaging software, I have had to pay for it. I have not found something free that will come close. Like you I also need to create disk images. I use Ghost as it is very reliable and has good features. It will let you do what you want In respect to different sized disks. However if you are trying to put a close to 80gb image onto a 80gb disk then I would say that it's cutting it a bit fine as some backup software may need a little extra space for buffering etc. But hey, can't hurt giving it a go.

Good luck in your search.

Cheers,

Damien
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Old 19-10-2017, 12:53 PM
rally
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Andrew

What about a pair of the USB to IDE/SATA etc external drive controllers and Achronis - at least that is what I think that is what I used unless I did use Ghost.
I use Achronis at home for creating Disk images of my Astro Fit-PCs - I can save that to a USB stick and always have a complete backup of my last system
Only takes up as much space as the actual data - so not actually a true sector/sector disk image. But like you - its just for backup purposes

I bought a pair of them and used my Laptop - less than $20 each on eBay to recover a failed Windows drive out of an old work PC - the data was safe but I was hoping to save myself a days work reinstalling software
I actually only used one in the end - cloned the unbootable drive to a disk image file on my Laptop and then restored that to the new HDD

It was ultimately just a really simple FAT problem - but I couldnt afford to accidentally wreck the drive before I started playing
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Old 19-10-2017, 01:53 PM
AndrewJ
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Gday Damien
Quote:
However if you are trying to put a close to 80gb image onto a 80gb disk then I would say that it's cutting it a bit fine as some backup software may need a little extra space for buffering
Buffering isnt a problem as my W7 box has heaps of space, and i was simply going to attach the W2K ide drive via a USB adapter, and simply clone the image. Also, i have less than 50% usage on each drive, but the cloning software says the partition sizes need to be same or less.
ie stored image size vs required image size can vary depending on how it is imaged. Not sure how smart they are re dumping a couple of MB of unused bits when re imaging. That doesnt bother me as i can always reset the partition sizes after reimaging.
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Old 19-10-2017, 02:00 PM
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Gday Rally
Quote:
But like you - its just for backup purposes
.....
It was ultimately just a really simple FAT problem
In my case, i had backups of all my data, but couldnt boot the drive.
After ages, i finally found a bad cluster on the HDD and it was right where NTUSER.dat was :-), but no recovery apps would work as the recovery disk couldnt use the registry to find the required data.
As such, my external backups didnt help, and i had to rebuild the lot ( incl all the bleedin patches )
Just want to avoid that in future.
I have dual 1TB backup drives, but just need a way to get a "bootable" image of the W2K onto them.
As mentioned, i can do it all manually by creating a new disk with a newly partitoned disk + mbr, then simply copying the files ( vs raw sectors) offline using the W7 box, but its a pain.

Andrew
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Old 19-10-2017, 07:20 PM
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redbeard (Damien)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AndrewJ View Post
Gday Damien

Buffering isnt a problem as my W7 box has heaps of space, and i was simply going to attach the W2K ide drive via a USB adapter, and simply clone the image. Also, i have less than 50% usage on each drive, but the cloning software says the partition sizes need to be same or less.
ie stored image size vs required image size can vary depending on how it is imaged. Not sure how smart they are re dumping a couple of MB of unused bits when re imaging. That doesnt bother me as i can always reset the partition sizes after reimaging.
Ahh, gotcha. Got confused thinking you only had 80GB drives.

FYI, this is how I use Ghost to do pretty much exactly what you want to do.

I have a bootable CD with Ghost on it.
First, you boot from the CD and simply run Ghost which gives a simple menu and my choice is 'Backup entire disk to image'. Then I choose the drive OR partition that I want to backup and it just does it and writes the image to an external USB drive.

Simply repeat the process and choose restore to re create the disk from the image file on the USB drive..

You get some options for compression vs speed and I usually choose compression to save on storage of the image.

This works very well with Win 2000 and XP and when you restore, your computer does have the correct boot sectors in place etc and just starts normally. And the nature of how it backs up also defrags the data!

There are a couple of gotchas with Win7 if you want to image that OS, especially if you have multiple hard disks but quite simple to get around.

15 minutes restore compared with hours of installing.

I'll send you a PM to discuss further.

Cheers,

Damien.
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Old 20-10-2017, 10:57 AM
rally
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Andrew,

Yes - that was my need too - almost the same level of problem, just a simple issue that stopped Win from booting.

99% of the data was on an external NAS which is properly backed up every day, so it was really more a case of the OS and software, mail, web browsing, networking and office productivity stuff etc but the configuration and loading of tables of tooling and cutting information for some of the software was considerable and since most of this wasnt really documented as it evolves over time - I would be discovering settings and missing tool data in the CAD/CAM software for months before I got it all working the way I want it again.
Given the frequency that poeple have to reconfigure these days - it really is high time that the software companies made all their configuration settings transportable and able to be better separated from the OS into the Data - some do it but most dont do it properly if at all.
Plus disabling all the automatic updating etc and turning off all the silly help and automatic correction settings in all the "productivity" software - a real pet hate of mine.

Pretty sure you can now get the same external USB to SATA/IDE. . . hardware adapters with all the cables and power connectors now for under $10
Makes it so easy to deal with new and old internal HDDs for this sort of issue.
And while the PC in question is unbootable and uneseable you can use any old laptop to do it all without needing any extra HDD space

Rally


Quote:
Originally Posted by AndrewJ View Post
Gday Rally

In my case, i had backups of all my data, but couldnt boot the drive.
After ages, i finally found a bad cluster on the HDD and it was right where NTUSER.dat was :-), but no recovery apps would work as the recovery disk couldnt use the registry to find the required data.
As such, my external backups didnt help, and i had to rebuild the lot ( incl all the bleedin patches )
Just want to avoid that in future.
I have dual 1TB backup drives, but just need a way to get a "bootable" image of the W2K onto them.
As mentioned, i can do it all manually by creating a new disk with a newly partitoned disk + mbr, then simply copying the files ( vs raw sectors) offline using the W7 box, but its a pain.

Andrew
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Old 20-10-2017, 11:49 AM
AndrewJ
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Gday Rally
Quote:
it was really more a case of the OS and software, mail, web browsing,
Same for me
I could easily load the faulty HDD via a USB to IDE adapter and see it in my W7 box, so could go in at the last minute and save the Firefox and Thunderbird data ( which was my biggest worry ).
I found there is a sneaky way to just save one directory and one ini file per app and if you are forced to reload the app, you just replace those directories and the ini file, and all your settings come back :-)

Quote:
Pretty sure you can now get the same external USB to SATA/IDE. . . hardware adapters
I had one of those "new" USB3 units, but it died part way through.
Luckily, i had 2 old external USB2.0/Firewire to IDE enclosures so just used them. A bit clumsier, but they just keep working.
I also have some IDE to SATA adapters that allow you to just plug the IDE drive direct to the SATA cabling in the W7 box.
These work well with my old Maxtor drives, but the BIOS wont detect my WesternDigitals when set up the same way, as the Maxtor is SMART enabled but the WDs arent. All gets very finnicky, and i dont want to set the BIOS back to legacy IDE, as then i lose performance on my main drive.

That said, what i did see recently whilst prowling for ways to get out of the poo without doing a full rebuild, ( and will probably buy one to just try ), is a SATA to IDE adapter.
Ie you plug this gizmo onto a SATA drive, and then plug that to the IDE cable in the old box.
Supposedly, it is "invisible" to the O/S or BIOS so should work on a W2K box.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SATA-7-15...38.m2548.l4275
Andrew
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Old 20-10-2017, 12:22 PM
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multiweb (Marc)
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I use Acronis 2015. I stopped upgrading when they introduced cloud backup. I use an eSata base. It's like a USB base but it has a sata connector to an external sata port on my PC. It's great for bare metal restore as you don't need to go through any network or need any driver to connect. You just put a blank drive in the machine, boot from the CD/bluray drive then run the recovery client and load the image. Also you can boot directly from the imaged drive if you want.

PS: Acronis has a sale going on atm.

Last edited by multiweb; 21-10-2017 at 07:27 AM.
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