BartPE vs VistaPE and which plugin (plus a few other qs)

[James_H]

Hello All.

I have a similar situation to a thread by Loox about a week ago, with an Abit IP35 Pro motherboard with the ICH9R chipset and SATA drives in AHCI mode. Therefore, I cannot use an ADDS recovery disc to boot the system.

I'll need to go for either a BartPE or VistaPE disc, but have a few questions that I hope someone can answer.

First, some background. I plan to have the following partition structure on a single drive:
[OSS boot][Temp][Vista main][Vista clean][XP][Data partition 1][Data partition 2][Data partition 3]
There are some useful threads around that help describe the process of setting up the multi booting, which I should be able to follow. My current position is that I only have XP installed to E: (although I don't have the partitions in the right order right now), no Vista or OSS installed yet and can afford to start afresh if need be.

The Vista installs will be generic OEM 64 Ultimate, while XP is generic OEM 32 Home. I have access to Vista 32 Ultimate on my laptop. The Acronis builds I am using are: DD 10.0 2160 & TI 11.0 8053.

My questions are:
:) Since I'm installing both XP and Vista, yet both BartPE and VistaPE would need the ICH9R AHCI drivers adding, is there more benefit using one over the other?

I'm happy to buy Mustang's plugins, of which the BartPE ones are cheaper, and have already bought the beginners guide to BartPE.
:) I'm unsure which ATI plugin I would need, the normal or 64-bit version? I presume that going with BartPE I would need the 32-bit version, but if using the 64-bit Vista DVD as a source for VistaPE, I would need the 64-bit version i.e. not to do with the fact that I will eventually have both 32 bit and 64 bit OSs installed.
:) If the above is true, as the Bart builder does not support 64-bit, what would be the purpose of the 64-bit BartPE plugin? I get the impression it's for building a 32-bit BartPE from a 64-bit XP install - I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.
:) Is there a way of doing a single Paypal payment to save Mustang facing multiple Paypal fees from buying each plugin individually? (Does not matter much for me now that I have bought one and only need to buy two more but may save fees from others.)

In relation to the planned setup:
:) I would like all the data partitions (and Temp) visible from each OS, though the other OS partitions hidden. Would people recommend prescribing the drive letters for the data partitions? A second HD will be connected only some of the time and I don't want to break the link to the partition that the Documents etc folders live on.

Thanks in advance,

James

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "First, some background. I plan to have the following partition structure on a single drive:
[OSS boot][Temp][Vista main][Vista clean][XP][Data partition 1][Data partition 2][Data partition 3]" }-

-{ Quote: "My current position is that I only have XP installed to E: (although I don't have the partitions in the right order right now), no Vista or OSS installed yet and can afford to start afresh if need be." }-
Usually people want the "Windows Drive" to have the C: drive letter. You would have to reinstall to get this if it's currently assigned as E:.

-{ Quote: "The Vista installs will be generic OEM 64 Ultimate, while XP is generic OEM 32 Home. I have access to Vista 32 Ultimate on my laptop. The Acronis builds I am using are: DD 10.0 2160 & TI 11.0 8053." }-
I don't have any experience with the 64bit versions, but if you have the 32bit versions available, I would use those as it's less complicated and sometimes you have to use 32bit drivers anyway.

-{ Quote: "Since I'm installing both XP and Vista, yet both BartPE and VistaPE would need the ICH9R AHCI drivers adding, is there more benefit using one over the other?" }-
VistaPE may be easier and is most likely going to replace BartPE. VistaPE has a lot of support for newer computers built in and BartPE needs to have added. That being said, VistaPE/WinBuilder still have some bugs to work out. There are a few "quirks" with booting from USB devices and some of the other plugins/shells have various errors. You may want to build a BartPE and VistaPE CD. You may find that one works better than the other. From my tests, VistaPE seems to run faster and run TI faster than BartPE.

-{ Quote: "I'm unsure which ATI plugin I would need, the normal or 64-bit version? I presume that going with BartPE I would need the 32-bit version, but if using the 64-bit Vista DVD as a source for VistaPE, I would need the 64-bit version i.e. not to do with the fact that I will eventually have both 32 bit and 64 bit OSs installed." }-
I would use the 32bit version for BartPE and use your XP 32bit as the source. For Vista (if you must use a 64bit source), you'll need to copy the files necessary from the 32bit version to get it to work. I think you'll also need to download and install the WAIK.

-{ Quote: "If the above is true, as the Bart builder does not support 64-bit, what would be the purpose of the 64-bit BartPE plugin? I get the impression it's for building a 32-bit BartPE from a 64-bit XP install - I just want to make sure I'm not missing something." }-
I'm not quite sure on this. I would think that since you have the 32bit version of XP, you shouldn't need the 64bit plugin.

-{ Quote: "Is there a way of doing a single Paypal payment to save Mustang facing multiple Paypal fees from buying each plugin individually? (Does not matter much for me now that I have bought one and only need to buy two more but may save fees from others.)" }-
Yes. Just click the very top PayPal Donate button (first one on the page) and you can specify the amount (the total of the plugins/guide you're purchasing). Let mustang know what you want and he'll email them to you. I'm sure he appreciates the consideration.

-{ Quote: "In relation to the planned setup:
I would like all the data partitions (and Temp) visible from each OS, though the other OS partitions hidden. Would people recommend prescribing the drive letters for the data partitions?" }-
This would depend on how you did the setup. I prefer to have the partitions have the same driver letters in each Windows. For example: Windows=C:, Data=D: and Temp=E: (or whatever you decide). That way it's easy to keep them straight.

-{ Quote: "A second HD will be connected only some of the time and I don't want to break the link to the partition that the Documents etc folders live on." }-
An external or second internal that is not connected during the installation will get assigned the next drive letter after all other drives connected including CD/DVD drives. I'm not sure what "link" you are referring to unless you plan to "move" your "My Documents" to the "sometimes" connected drive, which I would not recommend.

[James_H]

Mudcrab, thanks for the quick reply.

I went with BartPE and added Mustang's DD and TI plugins and now have a working recovery solution, especially effective off a USB key. I may give VistaPE a try at another time.

A point I'll make for the benefit of anyone finding this thread in a search is not to use a Driverpacked XP disc for BartPE, since it couldn't find certain files (e.g. ATIIDE.sys). I had only used DriverPacks for the Chipset and Mass Storage, but it was easy enough to add the individual Mass Storage drivers to PE Builder and use the SP2 slipstreamed pre-DriverPacked XP Home.

I'm happy to have Windows installed to something other than C. It does make sense to assign fixed letters the the data partitions. My point about the link was that the My Documents shortcut was pointing to I:. On that partition being changed to M:, XP could not find My Docs (although was a quick fix). I have now assigned the letters so that the second drive coming and going doesn't disrupt the letters and therefore shortcuts on the first drive.