Booting from PCI IDE

[bevills1]

Well in all this as a to-go-you-one-better I took my PCI IDE adapter (I have one of those too) and plugged it into the PCI slot and into that of those IDE to SATA cards which designed to plug directly into the motherboard. The reason for this was I had/have a doubt as to how well on board IDE is working anymore.

What gets me is the modern day M$ product is supposed to be plug and play but with things like VIA, so rarely is.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, or you missed my point which is that my PCI IDE adapter with VIA chipset failed to boot to Windows CD while the PCI IDE adapter with Silicone Image chipset worked well. The problem I believe is with VIA chipset, not with Microsoft. Slipstreaming is really quite easy, and they even have a how to on the nLite/vLite site. Note vLite was designed for Vista, but it works for Win7 too.

[loninappleton]

One of my cards is a Startech and yes they supplied good drivers and helped me with injecting them.

The PCI card was bought 'bare" with nothing.

But just now which if any is a better version of Acronis than another? I have the one available from the
Western Digital website which, as I recall will work with other drives. I have to retest. But I need some other option than Ghost and this is not the first difficulty I've had with it.

[bevills1]

That download from Western Digital is a limited version of Acronis very similar to Seagate Discwizard and should work as well as Discwizard. Discwizard has worked very well for me, and I'd not hesitate to try the Western Digital program if I didn't already have DiscWizard especially if it works with other drives and does not require a workaround like Discwizard does.

[loninappleton]

Ok, well I've looked at a wiki comparison chart. I know Acronis which is Linux based has a user friendly look
but data safety is a concern. There are none of these prog.s I know of that are boot-fail proof. And when that happens I run in what seem to be deadly problems of data recovery.

I'll get the WD package going since it should be the most recent.

[bevills1]

You need to create a boot CD of whichever backup program you choose and always verify any backup you create. Seagate Discwizard has option to create a boot CD of the program, and Western Digital should too. Running one of these programs from Windows may result in disaster if the system fails to boot to Windows. I usually create 2 backup images on different drives for extra recovery protection in case one backup image may become corrupt.

[loninappleton]

I am not too smoothe on partitioning-- nor do my HDs have the room.

On the WD I'll follow the directions and see where it takes me. Had some other meltdowns today so I didn't pursue it much. This time it was my old mWave.

[loninappleton]

I did note that the Seagate 'workaround link' seems to be down for days if not unavailable.
Perhaps you could give the details.

[bevills1]

Copied and pasted below from the link before ir became unavailable is the solution followed by the symptom one sees. I've used the workaround on desktops and laptops with no Seagate drives, and it's worked without fail.

Solution

At the Error screen, hold down the Alt key while you type t then o (for tech override), and then click OK.

Credit

Mike D., Seagate Tech Support

Symptom
When booting the DiscWizard / MaxBlast boot CD to image a non-Seagate/Maxtor hard drive to the FreeAgent Go, the following screen is displayed:

Error

To use the products at least one Seagate or Maxtor device should be installed in your system.
...
and there is only an OK button; clicking that powers off the machine.

[loninappleton]

And this works with all the Seagate Sea Tools (I have some old ones) or new Download? I just registered a 1Tb a couple months ago.

[loninappleton]

Thinking this over (I'm still going to get the Discwizard) I couldn't help but wonder if this Technical Overide keystroke trick could foul both source and target drives if done incorrectly. Is there any sort of failsafe for that?

Conversely with these product specific tools I noted that all 3 of the drives including my one bootable HD (to use to clone) are Western Digital. So the order of business may change a bit and I have to see what exactly is the current tool offered by WD.

[bevills1]

Sea Tools includes tools other than Discwizard which is a separate download, but it may be included on some Seagate utility disks. There have been various versions of Discwizard with latest version 13 that works for Vista and Win7 and version 11 being the latest version that both includes a BartPE plugin and works for WinXP. Version 13 is supposed to work for WinXP as well, but I've been unable to get it to work on my 2 PCs. I notified Seagate support about this, but they've not yet fixed the WinXP issue I experienced with version 13.

The workaround has nothing to do with the way Discwizard works but simply allows the program to run. If done incorrectly, Discwizard simply will not run. If you have sufficient space, I suggest creating a backup image of the OS drive on 2 separate drives for extra backup security which is what I do. For my data on the non OS drives I simply have the same data on the 2 separate PCs so that data could be copied from 1 PC to the other if a drive had to be replaced on 1 of the PCs. Alternatively you could get 1 or more external drives for backup if you don't have enough space on your current drives. FYI Discwizard compresses the back image from the 20GB on my OS drive down to 12.6GB.

[loninappleton]

Your advice has been very helpful. I downloaded both the WD version and Seagate version.
Over the years I have Maxtor, Seagate and WD drives accumulated. The Seagate prog. is running with a Maxtor Source and and WD target which I hope will complete to secure at least one backup.

As preparation, I low levelled the target and 'manually' put on NTFS and XP from my install disk. I did this
to check if a BIOS upgrade I did would interrupt the install (the source of all these problems.)

Seagate seems to work much more quickly than the old Norton Ghost. One thing I found odd was that the Linux setup routine on which Acronis is based would only take input from a corded mouse to get the program going.

Do you know why Norton Ghost demanded that chkdsk be run all the time before it ran? Something about buffer flush or other things it demanded to be cleared with chkdsk. Seagate does not require that.

I downloaded from the site but how do I check the version. It only appears to have one screen to start and the .exe installer does not give anything on the version.

I have made the live disk and am running from that.

[bevills1]

My Norton Ghost 2003 never demanded chkdsk be run when run from boot CD. You must have a different version or run it in some manner other than boot CD. In tests I did Discwizard created, verified and restored images at least twice as fast as Ghost 2003. Using the standard compression in Discwizard it compresses to smaller image file than Ghost thus saving disk space to store the image. Discwizard creates image in a single file regardless of size versus Ghost which created a number of 4GB files to accommodate total image size.

I have Discwizard version 10 and 11 exe files, and they show that version when the mouse is hovered over the file icon. I don't currently have version 13, but I downloaded it from http://www.intowindows.com/download-seagate-discwizard-13-0-free-now/ which shows on that page it is version 13. Version 13 is the latest version, and I'm sure that's what you downloaded if it didn't state another version. Additionally you may right click the icon for the installed program and select properties to see the version if you install it in Windows. If you have any problems with version 13 for XP images as I did, you may need to get version 11 from 1 of the links at https://www.google.com/#q=seagate+discwizard+version+11.0

[loninappleton]

What problems did you have?

[bevills1]

Discwizard 13 was unable to restore WinXP images that it created. Discwizard restore is a 2 step process; first step is to delete the target partition, and second step is to restore the image to target partition. Discwizard 13 would complete the first step but give error message that image restore could not be completed. However, Discwizard 11 was able to restore any Discwizard image regardless of which version created the image.

[Nelson37]

Ghost would require CHKDSK to be run when the source drive had serious errors. Fairly sure the word "dirty" or "error" was used in the msg.

Does the target drive need to be bootable? If not, then you don't need a clone program and a simple file copy or standard backup program will work just fine. Cloning programs are really only needed to make a bootable drive.

The "F6 RAID routine in Windows XP" has absolutely nothing to do with your PCI card being recognized, the ONLY time this is used is during initial install of XP when booting from an add-on card, if you had the drivers in the first place, you could just install them on a functioning XP drive and all is good. AFTER doing this, you could clone your XP to a drive on the pci card and boot to it, and MAYBE be able to move the existing, bootable XP drive to the card and boot to it. These cards often do funky things with sector mapping.

[loninappleton]

Yes, a bootable drive for backup is necessary. I really only know one way to do it. And if a drive fails I want to be able to grab the backup and run it.

Norton seemingly requests Chkdsk on everything I have, not the occasional dirty drive.

F6 is a nightmare. I had the drivers on a floppy, I executed F6 at the proper time and afterward, other errors popped up during install-- asking for files which I could not locate on the setup disk or anywhere else. It is as if M$ doesn't _want_ you to do that sort of thing. And it's all the more difficult with old floppy drives which are not made very 'robust.'

[Nelson37]

MS did not create the disk you have, and the only floppy drivers you stated you were in possession of were for the RAID controller on the motherboard, and to answer your previous question, NO, these are NOT the same as the ones needed for the PCI card. The requested files are there, guaranteed. You are just not able to find them. Likely in a subdirectory or within a cab file.

It is a fairly simple procedure, I've done it dozens of times. Pointless without the correct drivers. I already told you this is WORTHLESS without the correct driver disk, and the floppy you got from Biostar for you mobo AIN'T IT. Accidently create a shiny new RAID array and you will come to understand what a problem truly is. Can you say bye-bye data?

Note - normally I would agree this would be somewhat difficult to do without realizing it, but then I would say that what you are doing already is something I find difficult to believe.

I will repeat - The ONLY time I have seen ghost request a chkdsk is when the source drive had serious errors. Also when an abnormal shutdown has occurred. Strongly recommend a chkdsk and defrag be run on all connected drives, combined with a standard, normal shutdown. This should be done on the standard controller and NOT the PCI card.

You seem to be working hard to look for problems, and to misunderstand the messages the software is giving you. If a major manufacturer's drive clone program tells you to run a drive repair, stop bitching about it and run the friggin drive repair.

[nic2k4]

Do you know why Norton Ghost demanded that chkdsk be run all the time before it ran? Something about buffer flush or other things it demanded to be cleared with chkdsk

Did you format the drive with Windows 7? There are some differences between NTFS with XP and Win7 and unless you have a recent version of Ghost it won't know how to handle them.

I see Acronis on sale for $20 every now and then, I got True Image 2012 from Staples at that price; just keep an eye on sale flyers. At that price it's way better than any of the freebies, you don't even need to install it the disc is bootable. Setup the secure zone on your boot drive, add True Image to it and the program will be available just by hitting F11 at boot time. I keep a basic image in the secure zone and do regular backups to a USB drive. The basic image lets me restore a PC to "factory defaults" before selling it and Acronis can also wipe the free space.

Just a note, no modern HDD can be low level formatted, all that does is tell the drive's controller to write 0's to all sectors. The manufacturer's diagnostic utility does the same thing, this is why they require running the utility to get the RMA #. When a bad sector is encountered its LBA address is moved to a reserve block on the drive, that's why refurbished drives don't have a smooth transfer rate over the full range.

[bevills1]

Do you know why Norton Ghost demanded that chkdsk be run all the time before it ran? Something about buffer flush or other things it demanded to be cleared with chkdsk

Setup the secure zone on your boot drive, add True Image to it and the program will be available just by hitting F11 at boot time. I keep a basic image in the secure zone and do regular backups to a USB drive. The basic image lets me restore a PC to "factory defaults" before selling it and Acronis can also wipe the free space.

That will work satisfactorily as long as there is not a complete failure of the boot drive which I have had happen. In the event of boot drive failure a boot version of of the bakcup program will be needed.

[Nelson37]

Putting a backup image of your primary, boot hard drive ON the primary, boot hard drive is like keeping your only copy of your fire insurance policy inside the house.

This makes absolutely no sense to me, whatsoever. You backup your critical data onto something OUTSIDE THE BOX, and ideally store it somewhere outside the building. Fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, major electrical storm - any of these could render this backup strategy a useless waste of time, not to mention your standard, run-of-the-mill hd failure.

Now if you just mess it up yourself and can't fix it without an image restore, fine but then you still need an incremental backup for data changes or make very regular image backups to a separate drive that can be easily disconnected.

[nic2k4]

Tell that to HP, Gateway... I agree with you and that's why I only put a base image on there; I never have to re-install Windows when I want to start over and the transfer rate is only second to eSATA and USB 3.0. Plus, it's nice to have access to Acronis just by hitting one key, but the secure zone isn't well suited to incremental backups. Once you set the size of the zone it's very inconvenient to change it and since any type of backup size will grow over time you would have to waste a lot of space just to accommodate that.

IMO, although incremental backups seem very convenient, they're like deleting the previous backup every time you create a new one, you lose access to some files that transit on your drive over time (or some files you wish weren't there). I have lots of storage and no qualms about keeping six 30 GB backup files. Keeping more backups also improves your chances of fixing OS issues with your PC, better than restore points. You can also reduce the amount of space reserved for restore points.

One thing about programs like Acronis, I think they're great at backing up an OS partition (drive), but should not be used for personal (sensitive) data. Anything that manipulates files (compress, amalgamate, encrypts...) will greatly reduce your chances of recovering the files should the backup media fail (all media eventually fails). The best way to backup data is direct file copy on dedicated external drives. This implies that you have at least two drives in your PC and that you change the target for your My Document folder to the D drive. Synching software can make this very efficient, plug a USB drive in and it automatically copies the files.

It's sad that most people have no backup strategy for their personal data, but even before the digital age things weren't much different. Kodachromes would end up in a shoebox didn't seem to matter, they last longer than the average human being's lifespan, until disaster strikes. You could argue it's not easy to make copies of Kodachrome, but the excuse doesn't fly with digital. The obvious solution is to copy everything to a cloud drive, but that requires a fast connection and it's going to cost you on bandwidth. Next best thing could be a mutual drive rotation with a close relative, you need at least two portable drives each, one stays with you the other with your relative and you regularly alternate drives.

The main problem with backups is they require dedication and the more people involved the less there is.

[hello_hello]

I have lots of storage and no qualms about keeping six 30 GB backup files. Keeping more backups also improves your chances of fixing OS issues with your PC, better than restore points. You can also reduce the amount of space reserved for restore points.

I think someone mentioned earlier their images are around 12GB. Yours might be 30GB by the sound of it.

Another reason why I'll miss XP. Windows and all my regularly installed programs occupy around 11GB worth of hard drive space on my C partition. The last Norton Ghost image I created compressed down to a tad more than 3GB.

Like you, I don't image "user files" if I can help it. I move the Documents folder to a second partition on the drive and that partition is used for file storage. Not only does it keep the size of the image files down, but if you have a C partition containing nothing but Windows and programs, you don't need to fuss with defragmenting it much.

I'll miss Norton Ghost. I'm still using an old "corporate" version. It's a single exe which can run from within Windows. I have a second copy of Windows installed on a second drive. I boot to the second drive, run Ghost and image the C partition while saving the image to the second drive. I can't remember exactly, but at a guess it takes about 5 minutes to create the image, and even less to restore it. Unfortunately that old version of Ghost doesn't play well with newer Windows flavours. Time for some new imaging software soon.... no wonder I resist upgrading Windows....

So what's everyone using to image their drives these days? Something as simple, easy and fast as my current Norton Ghost method would be ideal. I don't really need incremental backups. Just an image of a whole partition.
Ghost comes with Ghost Explorer for opening image files in a Windows Explorer type fashion. It's not something I do often but you can open an image and copy any files inside and paste them to your hard drive. Once or twice at least, that's been handy. Is that sort of functionality standard in imaging software?

[bevills1]

As stated in my reply #29 I switched from Ghost 2003 to Seagate Discwizard and found Discwizard to be at least twice as fast as Ghost 2003. I too need only whole partition imaging and don't need incremental backups. Also I've resisted Windows upgrades for the same reasons you give. I used Win2k for about 4 years past its discontinued support by Microsoft and was finally forced to upgrade to XP due to some of my apps no longer working in 2k, and I plan to use XP a while longer until I'm forced to upgrade. I never had any malware or hacking issues with 2k before or after Microsoft support stopped, but I do run an up to date anti-virus and firewaill. I don't know if Discwizard ability to open image files as I've never had a need to do that.