Looking for help imaging a partition with BootItNG

[pangea33]

I've been having trouble using BootItNG from the boot cd. It seems to recognize all my IDE drives, with several NTFS partitions, with no problems. My PC has an external 40gig USB drive that I would like to save the images to. I've tried formatting the external with a 32g Fat32 partition leaving the remaining space unallocated. I've formatted with 20gig Fat32 / 20 gig NTFS, as well as the entire 40gigs as NTFS. The BootIt utility always says that there is a problem identifying the partitions on this external drive.

When I attempt to enable USB2.0 support, it always forces me to reboot due to an issue identifying the drive. This strikes me as a seperate problem, but figured it was worth mentioning. Are there any tricks that come to mind? This seems unlikely to be a problem with USB support, since I am booting from my external USB cdrom without any trouble. Could this point to a bios issue since I've got partitions in excess of 8gb? Not sure if a BootIt image can span multiple partitions, but with size constraints would there be an issue with an IDE dvd burner too?

I can juggle files on my IDE drives in order to create enough space for a sufficiently sized empty partition, but resizing partitions on drives with important data always makes me nervous. I've seen mention of some other techniques here, such as a Knoppix boot disk. As I recall they were mainly with respect to things like resizing partitions though. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

*In an earlier post, I promised not to request help until I performed some online virus checking. TrendMicro's online scan came back with no problems* :D

[Sylvander]

I can access my external USB 2.0 connected HDD from within Windows, but not from any DOS based bootable floppy. A "USB for DOS" driver is need to be able to do that, and I haven't been able to make that work despite having a couple of drivers. Don't know enough about how to do it.
Been unable to access it using the EBCD, but successful using Knoppix [both on bootable CD's].

I use "Image for DOS" on the EBCD to make image backups to my G: FAT32 partition on the Primary Master HDD, then copy or move them over to the external HDD [J:] from within Windows or within Knoppix.
If I need to restore an image backup but don't have a suitable ".iso" file on G: I could use Knoppix or Windows to copy it over from J: to G: and then use the EBCD "Image" program to restore it.
I normally keep the latest backup on G: and the older backups on J:

[Paul Komski]

I don't know how recent your version of BiNG is but the latest versions of both BiNG and ImageForDOS do have improved USB support. Having said that there can be a number of inconsistencies with both BiNG and indeed other imaging programs such as Ghost when it comes to USB devices.

The ability in BiNG to choose USB2 support would make one believe that the only thing this would do would be to allow for faster data transfers. However going by what happens in ImageForDOS (with its more simple interface) certain USB drives may be invisible as HDDs but visible as USB2 drives when a USB2 drive is attached to a USB2 port but the situation be reversed when the same drive is attached to a USB1.1 port. I have a situation where I have both 1.1 and 2.0 ports on the same box and so have been able to test out such differences using the same USB2 drive.

I also know that booting to BiNG with USB2 drives attached can alter the "positions" of existing IDE and SATA drives such that what had been HDD0 becomes HDD3 and such like odd events. This aspect I believe to be due to HDD enumeration problems caused by the BIOS.

Three things to try/consider.
(1) First is - can you image to the USB drive if USB2 support is not enabled; I know this will create a slower transfer but would it actually work in your system using BiNG. The different USB1.1 and USB2.0 drivers could be at the heart of such recognition problems.
(2) Next maybe try downloading the latest trial version of ImageForDOS and see if the USB drive is visible under HDD and HDD(bios) and USB2 drives. Let us know if it is seen in one, two or all three options.
(3) I'm sure you could workaround by using ImageForWindows (and Phylock) to create the images; the problem would be restoring them if one couldnt boot into Windows.

[pangea33]

Thanks a lot for the responses. I am off to grab the most recent copy of BootIt available from their site. Regarding the question about USB mode, the app doesn't seem to recognize my drive even without USBv2 support enabled. I remember there was a driver disk included with my mobo with updated drivers for USB2.0. WinXP wouldn't allow the update though, and support was automatically enabled upon upgrading to SP2. Not sure if this would be relevent, but I suppose it could be.

I use the very simple interface from the boot cd. The "BootItNG.exe" file dated 15-AUG-2004 created the image file "BOOTITNG.ISO" which I burned with Nero. I would think this is Image for DOS. After reading the VendInfo.DIZ file, I just noticed it says to not name your temporary folder BootIt or BootItNG, which I did. Not sure why this impacts things, but they took the time to mention it.

The FAQ says Image for DOS can copy a partition image as a file to NTFS drives after v1.49. Did you choose to use FAT32 for any reason other than it seems right for a DOS app, Sylvander?

[Paul Komski]

Not sure if this would be relevent I doubt it. The windows and dos drivers for usb are not the same at all. That business to do with needing a service pack was just a copyright issue.

ImageForDOS (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image.html) is different from BootIt-NG but is included with the ImageForWindows Download.

[Sylvander]

"Did you choose to use FAT32 for any reason other than it seems right for a DOS app, Sylvander?"
I'm running Win98SE, so FAT32 is the best I can use.