Is BartPE Needed?

If this has already been addressed, my apologies for not being able to find it. I received my ATI 10 a couple of weeks ago and have been making nothing but full backup images every couple of days and storing them on a spare internal drive. Once I get three backups, I delete my oldest. And so on. Here's my question, I hear ya'll talking about the BartPE disk to boot from. But what if I can already boot into Windows and ATI 10, do I still need anything other than doing a Recovery from within ATI 10? Say I tried some new software and it messes up my system. Can't I just do a recovery from within ATI? I'm asking now so I won't find out a little too late. Thanks in advance.

 

Either of those should work just fine.

 

No, you do not need BartPE if you can boot the TI CD and restore your archives. Naturally, the only way you can know 100% if this will work when you need it is to do a restore to a spare disk using the TI CD.

You may find that it works but is very (very) slow. This usually means that the Linux drivers on the CD (the TI recovery environment is a memory-resident Linux system) aren't the best for your hardware. In this case, making a BartPE which uses Windows components will likely speed things up.

It is not uncommon for a TI CD operation to take about twice as long as the same thing in Windows so I wouldn't be concerned about that reduction in speed at all.

 

Thanks for the fast response. Seekforever, I have already tried to boot from the ATI cd, but when I get the gui, I can't move my mouse pointer. I've already noticed that it says it's not usb compatible or something like that, which is what my mouse is. So, here's my second question. If I'm on the mark so far from what you said earlier, would it be better to build a BartPE cd, which doesn't look like a very fun thing to do, or use a ps2 converter on my mouse (if that'll even work), if I ever need to do a recovery? If I may quote a famous line - "There's no such thing as a stupid question, they're just the easiest to answer." Thanks in advance.

 

BartPE CD with ATI login provides:

- more hardware connectivity
- will recognize same drive letters as the internal Windows
- is near 3 times faster, for a USB external drive, than ATI Rescue CD to execute a backup or restore.

If you have a Windows CD for your computer, that is much simpler but mustang tells you how to create a windows file to replace this, if need be.

 

You will need to do one or the other, before you actually have to use the Boot CD. Try a ps2 converter and if that doesn't solve the mouse problem, you will have to create the Bart cd.
In fact just buy a ps2 mouse, sometimes those converters may not work.

 

Once again, thanks for the fast responses. I come to this website and the Tech Support Guy site pretty much EVERY day, just to listen and learn as much as I can. What I'm still confused about is if I'm in Windows and I'm at the ATI 10 Home gui, and I decide to do a recovery, won't ATI just take over on it's own? Or am I still gonna need some sort of cd? The way I'm understanding ya'll so far is that some sort of cd is needed no matter what. If that's the case, I think that really sucks. That's why when I bought ATI Home, I also bought a 120 gig Maxtor internal drive who's sole purpose in life was to store my backups. And the only reason I'm asking so many questions is I was going to use my latest full image to do a "test" run and see what happened. But of course I don't want to lose everything. Any more suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

When I purchased ATI 10 Home, I made a full image backup to an external HDD and restored my internal drive both tasks within Windows XP.

Every week I do a full image backup and keep the latest plus 2 earlier ones on my external drive. This is always done within Windows.

The Rescue CD or the BartPE CD is required if one day Windows cannot boot.

 

Thank you very much. That is what I was looking for. We do about the same except my drive is an internal one. I also have an external drive that I was gonna set aside a partition for my images, but I was afraid ATI would fail to see it when I needed it most. If anyone has anymore suggestions?

 

This is why it is essential that you make sure you can do a restore - buy, beg, or borrow a spare drive to use for the test. You already found you have a mouse problem with the CD.

Until you have done a successful restore you do not have a secure backup method.

Storing backups on the same physical drive as your OS/data is virtually worthless if the drive goes bad. A second internal drive is not a bad place to store backups but doesn't protect against the machine catching fire or being stolen. By far most disk failures are the drive itself and not the controller which would cause a bad backup to be written. An external allows you to remove the backup from the machine and disconnect it from the power-line (in case of a power surge/lightning strike) and thus provides better backup security.

I write may backups to a second internal drive for convenience and speed and then copy selected ones to an external drive for extra protection.

 

I write may backups to a second internal drive for convenience and speed and then copy selected ones to an external drive for extra protection.[/QUOTE]

You make a very good point. What I'm gonna do is copy my second newest backup to my external drive and then see if I can do a restore with it. If this is not the right way to check with what I have(2 internal and one external drive), please advise. I know that when I do a full backup to my internal drive, the operation completes very fast. Now I'll see how fast it'll copy to my external.

 

You make a very good point. What I'm gonna do is copy my second newest backup to my external drive and then see if I can do a restore with it. If this is not the right way to check with what I have(2 internal and one external drive), please advise. I know that when I do a full backup to my internal drive, the operation completes very fast. Now I'll see how fast it'll copy to my external.

 

Make sure that you check the MDS sum or verify the image from the CD after copying the image to your external, some chipsets do not play nice with the large files TI produces.

Re your mouse problem check the sticky at the top of the forum and do a search for USB mouse problems on the forum, you will find that there is a command you can enter when booting from the CD which may help.

Also be aware that when restoring from within Windows the computer will reboot into a Linux environment which is the same as the CD, if the CD can’t see you’re external or mouse you won’t be able to from Windows after the reboot.

 

Thanks for the info, como. I'm gonna look for the mouse fix. I do have a question though. What is the MDS sum? Thanks again.

 

It is a typo of MD5. This is a hashing (or digest function) which takes every byte of a file (or stream of data) and produces a 16 byte output. If you perform an MD5 hash of a file at the server, download the file and do a hash locally, the two 16 byte numbers should be the same. If they are not then the files are not identical.

MD5 is also an important part of authentication and encryption and is one of the algorithms used during SSL, i.e. whenever you do a secure online transaction.

F.

 

Thanks, foghorne.

 

When you boot the Acronis CD hit F11 at the screen where you select what to do.. Then in the command line make sure it says
quiet usbmouse=off

Then continue to load the full TI. That fixes most USB mouse issues. Also, see if your BIOS is set to enable usb legacy support.

 

Great news!!! I did just what ya'll said, but first I made a new boot cd of the latest build(4942). I booted from the cd, hit f11, did the mouse fix, loaded the full version, then verified the image that I'd copied to my external drive. Talk about a slow process!!! When I verify an image through windows, it takes no time compared to what I just went through. But anyway, thanks to everyone for all of the much needed help. I really do appreciate it. Thanks again!!!

P.S.- How do I close this thread, or mark it as solved?

 

Just leave it. The only threads that get marked closed are the ones the moderators close usually because they have strayed far from the topic or have gotten nasty.

 

You're the man(woman?)!!!

 

You know...this usbmouse=off "fix" should be made a sticky. Hardly a week goes by without someone needing this. Even someone from where I used to work called me as he needed the info, and many don't know about hitting F11.

 

Very good idea. Another post just popped up about the same thing.

 

I think there should be a sticky in the appropriate place that lists not only the usbmouse=off but all the other possible linux commands and what they are intended to correct.

 

Yes, as some (most) here do not know Linux.

P.S. Going to Lenny (Debian) as soon as the weekly update takes place tomorrow!

 

Sorry for the lack of a reply but I have been busy on other things and not had time to visit the forum. Pleased you are sorted. Re the rescue CD being slow this is why I and many more here build a BartPE disk.