• From: Harrisburg, PA
  • Registered: 2009-01-10
  • Posts: 188

Topic: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

I have nice universal images for XP Home, Pro, and Media Center, and have been fooling around with various ways to make a "Restore Disc" on DVD media.  Normally I install my images by slaving the target hard drive to my workstation, occasionally (as infrequent as possible) I will Ghostcast them, but having a single DVD for when I'm away would be nice.   My images contain no pirated software, everything preloaded is freeware, and I want to do the same with the imaging software I use for this project.  I really thought Macrium Reflect was the ticket - it looks nice, runs fast, and has pretty good compression, but the restore function just....sucks!  I tried DriveImage XML, the image was too large, and I tried PING which compressed the heck out of the image, by far the smallest even compared to Ghost, but "clunky" isn't even close to a good word for it.   I suppose using a command line to automate the restoration with PING should be doable and not look like a total joke, but still, seems like it could be done better.

So that leads me to ask, who here has done this, and what FREE imaging apps have worked out well?  I would prefer to keep this as a PE plugin and automate the task through AutoIt since Bart has such broad Mass Storage support as DriverPacks has made available, but am open to suggestions.  I am not Linux-savvy, but between some pointers and a few Google searches I can bumble my way around.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Ian

PS - Oh, my images are about 3.7GB with Ghost, 3.2GB with Ping, and 3.9GB with Reflect if the amount of space available for tools is an issue.....

  • OverFlow
  • DriverPacks Administrator & BASE Developer
  • Offline
  • From: Cincinnati
  • Registered: 2006-12-02
  • Posts: 6,730

Re: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

Lets assume the partition is valid

You could simply 7zip the HDD to a file and then use 7zip to restore the file system.
You will not get better compression from any utility that I am aware of.

If the partition needs help diskpart, fixboot, fixmbr and format can be scripted and i belive are found on the PE disc.

simple and effective wink

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  • From: Harrisburg, PA
  • Registered: 2009-01-10
  • Posts: 188

Re: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

heh, heck of an idea.  My man, you once again have an easy solution to a problem that I have been pulling my hair out on.  Just run a quick format on the target drive and dump in the archive.....

A fountain of knowledge you are!   big_smile

Thanks!  Tomorrow I'll 7zip the source and see what size it is, the image once dumped out is about 10GB before Sysprep runs, so I'll look forward to seeing what size it comes out.

Ian

  • From: Sydney, Australia
  • Registered: 2007-10-23
  • Posts: 175

Re: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

Could also try:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/ … manager-se
http://kb.paragon-software.com/paragon/ … ct_id=3804

I can supply you with a BartPE plugin or WinBuilder script if you so desire.

Regards,
Galapo.

  • OverFlow
  • DriverPacks Administrator & BASE Developer
  • Offline
  • From: Cincinnati
  • Registered: 2006-12-02
  • Posts: 6,730

Re: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

you might want to take advantage of the "split" feature when you archive wink

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  • From: Harrisburg, PA
  • Registered: 2009-01-10
  • Posts: 188

Re: What app/BartPE plugin do you like for making a Restore Disc?

HAHAHA, just HAD to reply to this, Jeff you ROCK man!!  7Zip crushed my image down to 2.2GB using maximum compression, not even ultra, so I may at some point back it down to normal for time sake.  All I had to do to "restore" it was the following diskpart script:

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
assign

Followed by formatting as NTFS

I unziped it and bing, worked like a champ!

Too funny!!!!!!!!!

Thanks again

Ian