KVR Audio

dreaddd · Post by **dreaddd** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:59 pm

i just used Bart PE with Drive Image to back up the whole network of machines here...
initially i was scared, mostly because i generally fear appz not made for the dumbskilled

....

it was a BREEZE instead!

built my own BART PE build adding the DriveImage Bart plugin, and really it was quick and easy, no headache at all..
i had even considered buying Ghost, before ...now i wont ever install again that mammouth, sitting on my CPU only for doing a back up once every X months..
bye bye Norton, welcome in my tech life DriveImage

Peace

Jidis · Post by **Jidis** » Sun May 11, 2008 6:20 pm

Hi,

(this is related I guess)

I've been putting off installing the main drive in my new machine, which is my first SATA drive. I've been using a big regular IDE chopped into two fat32 parts and do my imaging onto the 2nd one from DOS. I run a nice simple older Ghost (v6) which I like.

Is my usual method going to give me a hassle dumping from old IDE, or an image, to SATA (or will DOS even see the SATA drive)? Also, do all the traditional 98 bootdisk DOS drive utilities work on those?

I grabbed that "Save Partition" app a while back but I've grown to trust the old Ghost and haven't tried it yet. I can haul it out there with me if needed.

Thanks!

shamca · Post by **shamca** » Sun May 11, 2008 7:44 pm

I used Acronis to image my [filled up] XP system drive to a larger drive. I then had to use Partition Magic to expand the partition so windows recognized the new, larger disk size.

Easy and worked well.

Shaun

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Thu May 29, 2008 12:09 am

metamorphosis wrote: There isn't any software which can backup an active (ie. system or virtual memory) partition inside of windows, so get used to it. It can backup full discs fine.

Not true. Two or three of the options in this thread do just that apparently.

Anyways, I'm getting ready to try ghosting for the first time ever. My laptop shipped with a hard drive that went bad after about a month, so HP sent me a new one today for free. Luckily, I have an external Seagate drive that I use for samples on the road. So I've been looking at the free Acronis-based software that Manytone suggested and it seems dead simple. Now to just hit the button to actually DO the backup.

Luckily I won't be erasing the current drive so if I have problems I can always put it back in. But since this program makes a boot CD and everything, I think it will be easy enough. And it can do the backup while you work and it lets you select how much priority it takes to other processes.

Here goes!

Brent

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Fri May 30, 2008 2:51 am

Well, everything worked without a single issue. The bootable CD is great. It allowed me to not have to use a different computer booted to Windows. But I ended up hooking the new drive to the inside connections of my desktop since it did the restoring about four times faster. Probably because the desktop disk controller was faster?

Anyways, I put the new restored drive in my laptop and my system is exactly as I left it! Haven't checked all my authorizations yet, but I'm sure I'll need to redo a few.

I'm a happy man though. Thanks SO MUCH for the link to the Seagate utility Manytone! It was DROP DEAD easy and better than I thought it would be.

Brent

manytone · Post by **manytone** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:04 am

koolkeys wrote:Well, everything worked without a single issue. The bootable CD is great. It allowed me to not have to use a different computer booted to Windows. But I ended up hooking the new drive to the inside connections of my desktop since it did the restoring about four times faster. Probably because the desktop disk controller was faster?

Anyways, I put the new restored drive in my laptop and my system is exactly as I left it! Haven't checked all my authorizations yet, but I'm sure I'll need to redo a few.

I'm a happy man though. Thanks SO MUCH for the link to the Seagate utility Manytone! It was DROP DEAD easy and better than I thought it would be.

Brent

Hi Brent
Well, thanks for the kudos

So you actually did a restore from an archive and booted to it? If so that is awesome. I have also found this utility to be a godsend so far. I am glad that you referenced my recommendation, and that it all worked simple and effective.

As for your comment about it working faster if the drive is connected to the computer direct and not USB..... Yes.... I have found the same thing but only on 1 of my systems. On my newer system, USB imaging is fast, but on my older system, it is dreadfully slow via usb. In fact an image takes forever on my old system via usb,(24 hrs for 100 or so Gig) .... but it is only a couple hours (3 hrs) when I connect the drive internally. I think this is due to the fact that my old system, even though it says USB 2, is in fact communicating at USB 1 speeds.

The new system on USB, images as fast as the internal on my old system (3 hrs for 100+ gig)
So ....blame it on USB or external issues as I have seen both fail in speed, or excel.

Either way ...this is a great free resource for owners of Maxtor or Seagate Hard-drives.

Glad the info helped you! Makes my day too

Paul

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:20 am

Yep, restored an image from one drive onto another drive and booted to it perfectly!

Just so people can know what I did, I basically took my bad drive with sectors going bad(only 90 days old) that is on my hard drive and made an image of it. It's a 250GB drive 5400 speed SATAII that had about 75GB of data on it. That took less than two hours to create the image on my external Seagate USB drive. The image was about 47GB.

I originally took the new blank drive and put it in the laptop and used the bootable version of the software(I was happy it actually looked like Windows and not a command line thing) with my USB drive connected and told it to restore the image to that drive. But it was going to take around 8 hours! After about an hour I cancelled it and used the bootable CD to zero out the drive again(another nifty feature if you want to sell a drive and permanently delete the data).

So I hooked my new hard drive to my desktop. No special connections needed, just hooked it right into the SATA connectors inside the case and booted the desktop to the bootable CD. I then told it to take the image from the external drive and restore it to the blank drive. Two hours later, it was done.

I put the drive back into my laptop, and it works PERFECTLY. The only thing it needed to do was install drivers since it must have been a slightly different drive. But everything works and is in the same place as it was before making the image.

Well, it took many words to explain, but it really was drop dead simple. Just follow the instructions and it's done. And you don't NEED to have another system to use to boot up or anything. All is self contained.

So anyways, yes Manytone I restored to a new blank drive and it is like I never switched drives(except for any authorizations connected to HD serial numbers). I was actually pretty excited about how easy it was and won't have to use that darn system restore to original condition stuff. Thanks again!

Brent

Cordelia · Post by **Cordelia** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:24 am

All right, I'm about to take the plunge. Seagate drives all around, so thanks very much for that link, Manytone.

I've never done this before. I bought my comp from a DAW maker and this is how it is set up now-

80GB drive, partitioned. C: for OS, E: for program files.
(D: is my DVD drive. Separate F and G drives for audio and samples, I'm not going to ghost those.)

Will I need to ghost to a backup drive that is at least 80GB? I mean, is it a bit for bit copy? Will I have any problems with the partition?

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:30 am

If you have both drives connected, the utility can directly copy a drive, yes. But I didn't try the direct copy so I can't say if it has to be the same size. I do know that with the image method it doesn't have to be. It just has to have enough room and will gray out any drives that won't be enough. You can work with full drives, individual partitions, or just certain files and folders. Plus, it does incremental backups!

Brent

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:36 am

dreaddd wrote:i just used Bart PE with Drive Image to back up the whole network of machines here...
initially i was scared, mostly because i generally fear appz not made for the dumbskilled ....

it was a BREEZE instead!
built my own BART PE build adding the DriveImage Bart plugin, and really it was quick and easy, no headache at all..

I can only second this.
While I haven't tried the other suggestions in this thread yet (will have a look into what Paul/manytone posted), Bart PE with the Driveimage plugin has always been working absolutely perfect for me.
Takes a little longer to boot up than "raw" imaging utility boot discs (well, it's loading a rather complete OS, so what would you expect...) but it's entirely free and absolutely safe (at least so far).
And fwiw, I have been using all sorts of imaging tools in the past (including commercial ones) - none of them worked as reliable as Bart/DriveImage.

There might be other solutions, perhaps some of them get you done a little quicker, but this combination is defenitely getting 5 stars from me (and I'd rarely ever rate anything above 3 stars).

Btw, this is raising a question: Does anybody know whether I could set up Bart PE on a bootable partition of some USB drive? That'd just be perfect as I usually don't carry any CDs/DVDs around with me anymore (but I always do have one or two USB drives with me). In that case I'd just use some of my smaller, aging USB drives solely for image backup purposes - one partition for Bart PE, another for backup data, done.

Cordelia · Post by **Cordelia** » Fri May 30, 2008 3:39 am

Cool koolkeys!
Thanks for the detailed report. You have given me confidence.

dreaddd · Post by **dreaddd** » Fri May 30, 2008 12:41 pm

Sascha Franck wrote: Btw, this is raising a question: Does anybody know whether I could set up Bart PE on a bootable partition of some USB drive? That'd just be perfect as I usually don't carry any CDs/DVDs around with me anymore (but I always do have one or two USB drives with me). In that case I'd just use some of my smaller, aging USB drives solely for image backup purposes - one partition for Bart PE, another for backup data, done.

as far as i (think) read on the some sites with tutorials and tips for BartPE (sorry aint got the URL handy

), yes it is possible...i was considering in fact even only having a USB HD only for booting and imaging purposes, myself..
if you still need the URLs for tutorials, let me know, in case, since i dont have em here
Peace

TOTAL · Post by **TOTAL** » Sat May 31, 2008 2:38 am

An external USB disk can be baked in case the processor, ram or an internad hd has a breakdown. Can anyone confirm this?

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:19 pm

koolkeys wrote:
metamorphosis wrote: There isn't any software which can backup an active (ie. system or virtual memory) partition inside of windows, so get used to it. It can backup full discs fine.
Not true. Two or three of the options in this thread do just that apparently.

Name one.
(that doesn't reboot into a dos-mode/linux-mode equivalent in order to do the backup of an -active- partition).
And not 'apparently' - verify it -
Matt

Sascha Franck · Post by **Sascha Franck** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:46 pm

metamorphosis wrote: Name one.
(that doesn't reboot into a dos-mode/linux-mode equivalent in order to do the backup of an -active- partition).
And not 'apparently' - verify it -
Matt

Drive Image XML is supposed to do so. Haven't tried it myself yet (I'm usually running the plugin from Bart PE), so I can't tell whether it's actually working indeed. DIXML itself is a really reliable imaging tool, I have backed up machines (and replayed the images, even if usually only for tests) numerous times. But as said, that's using Bart PE.

Recommend a good free Ghost program.