New Drive Snapshot build released.

nanana1,

I noticed that as well. The funny thing is that I'm a regular user of DS and I haven't come across any bugs whatsoever, nor do I see any enhancements in the past several releases. The reason for the rather frequent v1.4.0.x builds of late must have to do with features that I don't use!

Aaron

 

I don't face any problem either but I am not sure what changes are there, it's just that the several updates happened in a short period make me worry that the previous version I may be in some way problematic when that may not really be the case.

So, to avoid any problems, I blindly followed the updates.

 

Fwiw, I have backed-up and restored images using each of the past 3 or 4 builds and each time the restored image was perfect. But like you, I figure that Tom knows what he is doing so I update DS whenever he releases a new build.

Aaron

Edit: I should qualify the above comment - I always backup by running DS' Maintenance Mode from WinPE (in order to faithfully backup Rollback Rx and it's snapshots). So I can't really testify to any other backup operation.

 

markymoo
Well I tried everything and I can't restore the DS image without running the Win7 dvd and fixing the Win7 vhd part of the bcd. At least I can but it sure would be nice if we could find the equivalent command that you are using so that it works with vhd's.

You are using -

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot
bcdedit /set {current} device boot
bcdedit /set {current} osdevice boot

So what's the equivalent syntax for vhd's that replaces that word "boot". That would solve everything. Maybe --

bcdedit /set {default} device vhd=[boot]\vhd\win7.vhd

or

bcdedit /set {default} device vhd=[locate]\vhd\win7.vhd


I actually tried that first one but it didn't like it. The [locate] line does work if I use it during the fix, but not when I restore the image.

If anyone knows please tell.

 

tyee,

I doubt those edits will help you. They were introduced in the Vista era before imaging apps became sophisticated enough to manage the BCD correctly. Basically they were needed if you restored an image to a new HD. But not anymore. Imaging apps work without them. Apps such as Ghost 2003 (8 years old) still needs them.

 

tyee, I not had Windows 7 long and i not tried with vhd boot. I still learning myself all the commands. In truth I been busy to get my own to boot dual. I better working out your problem if I could test here. BCD is from Vista days but i not used much either. I was never a fan of booting from NTLDR and boot.ini in the first place because they part of the Windows, which is what BCD essentially replaces. I thought a Vista guru would of helped you more.

Maybe these links can help you for now.
http://thelazyadmin.com/blogs/thelazyadmin/archive/2009/01/12/windows-7-boot-from-vhd.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/72808/windows-7-boot-to-vhd-using-a-vhd-clone-of-the-system-drive
http://onegeekwithalife.blogspot.com/2009/11/booting-from-cloned-vhd-in-win7.html
http://blogs.technet.com/b/fyang/ar...clone-your-pc-with-vhd-boot-on-windows-7.aspx

I can't agree with you Brian. BCD is very much alive in Windows 7 used from Vista. BCD is 3 files on the partition. How can backup software use BCD, if space unallocated or partition wiped and BCD not even there? Drive Snapshot consults MBR partition table to check what drives, partitions are connected soon as you click restore button in Windows.

 

Mark,

I haven't had to use those edits for over a year. Ghost 15 had problems when it was first released but the SP1 update fixed the BCD issues. The TeraByte apps have an Update Boot Partition option for restoring the SRP and Win7 to a new HD. It's not needed when restoring to the same HD and not needed at all if there is no SRP.

Typically, Win7 is installed with two partitions. The SRP which contains the BCD and the Win7 OS partition which is not the active partition and doesn't contain the booting files. Some people don't do image backups on both partitions so they get into trouble when they try and restore a Win7 image to a new HD. They don't have any booting files. But it is relatively easy to fix.

If BitLocker is not needed, a better option is to do away with the SRP and move the BCD inside the Win7 partition. Then you only need to backup and restore one partition. It makes life much simpler.

Apps like Ghost 2003 which aren't BCD aware don't adjust for different partition offsets when restoring images to a new HD and you do get BCD issues. The edits are useful for Ghost 2003. I haven't done much testing with restoring Win7 to a new HD with DS but I can't recall any BCD issues.

I haven't seen any unexpected BCD issues for over a year.

 

@tyree

The problem you having shouldn't be so hard to solve because the vhd are not living together like 2 cloned hard drives. The vhd are self contained files seperate from each other: Unless you are trying to run 2 system clones inside 1 bootable vhd.

Best thing to do is start a new thread for yourself. Boot off each vhd seperatly as c from virtualpc and copy down the bcd entry from each.

 

Brian, I am referring to cloning. which is a different kettle of fish. As tyee responded he trying to do same. I assumed cloning but I not so sure now as I lost focus trying to solve my own dual boot quandry with limited time, which I now solved. Updating the bcd with the right commands is a way to solve the cloning issue.

Image software is not so smart it updates bcd with optional Win 7 MBR restore is making it boot to Win 7 standards. It doesnt mess with BCD as there files. Alignment is another thing. I don't see a big issue, 100MB is not much space on a big drive and auto solves the alignment.

I still successfully restored a cloned image with large offset, partition structure MBR and image with Drive Snapshot by ignoring it telling me it faulty. Backing up c drive only and not the SRP it still restores the SRP anyway when you select pstructure because that is the pstructure in the MBR. Drive Snapshot, Ghost might not have alignment and Win7 manual options but can still be made to work with abit of knowhow and automated if need be thanks to the commandline options.

 

Mark, what do you mean by cloning? I use the term to refer to copying a partition without using the intermediate stage of creating an image. By this definition, DS cannot clone. It can only image/restore. The final result may be the same but cloning is a one stage process as opposed to the two stage process of image/restore.

I no longer have BCD issues with cloning or image/restore. Everything works on the first attempt.

 

Strictly cloning, is 1 drive exactly the same as the other, right down to the last byte. I talking about cloning the OS. That is imaging everything off the first drive in one shot, to make it run as it was setup, on the second drive. The partition sizes don't have to be the same size, If you take a image of the OS partition then that is a clone of the OS. If drive has a partition before the OS, then that has to be imaged as well for it to boot, as you know. IFW and few others let you select individually the partitions of a drive to restore. You can tick a box for the SRP and another for C, as you know. Drive Snapshot can't do that from it's GUI. It restores the whole partiition structure of a drive, so you get back the SRP anyway. Whatever imaging software you have, it is very useful or necessary to have full partitioning software as well. Using diskpart and DS commands I can do everything a GUI image software and partitoning software can do together and quicker.

If you are able to image and restore a OS in 1 process so that it runs, works and functions fully on that drive for all your purposes, that is close enough. It might not be a clone in the strictest sense, as the partiton structure is different. Whatever image software you use, the problem remains runnning them together means they clash as the disk signature the same. It can be solved by running a batch file before image to make the OS generic with bcd commands so it still a 1 step process.

 

True, but there is no time lost either way. and the end result is the same, where's the problem? You can easily make DS a one stage practical process by using it's command line. Restoring the partition structure followed by the image is automatic.

 

I agree. I prefer image/restore when upgrading to a new HD but others prefer a direct clone as it can be an easier process and it takes half the time of an image/restore. You have to be aware of how the app is doing the clone. Some do partition clones and others do whole drive clones. For example, Ghost 15 does the former and the TeraByte products can do both. For a beginner, a whole drive clone is least likely to cause problems.

 

Hey Brian
Can I do that whole drive clone with DS? I think it's called all sectors or something like that in the options window. That will probably solve my boot problem from what I've been reading, however it copies the whole HD and if it's 1TB and my windows partition is only 150GB I'll be waiting a long time for nothing won't I??

 

Brian, you are coming from a different angle with regards to cloning. I don't need cloning software to simply copy SRP and Windows partition together. And how is cloning any quicker?? Cloning is grabbing every byte off the drive including free space written as a zero byte. If you saying cloning is quicker because image software is set on compression then fine. Cloning software usually ends up backing up more sectors than you actually need. I could clone what I need with image software just by turning off compression.

If you know exactly what you want, which you will do having established a backup plan. Then you need software control, setup to automation in the end. It just needs alittle time to setup but save time and stress in the end. That is why made Drive Snap in first place.

The decent backup and restore plan I prescribed, it's taking differential images off a full backup, so cloning wouldnt help, needs a full backup in the first place. Of course you can backup faster without compression if you got the space. But the method is as good as can be.

 

Guys,

I think we have a terminology issue and we aren't speaking the same language. I'm not talking about backing up or copying freespace in a partition.

Let me describe a simple example with WinXP (but it applies to all OS). Say you have a 500 GB HD with a single WinXP partition taking up the whole HD. Say there is 10 GB of data in the WinXP partition. You want to upgrade to a 1000 GB HD and have the new partition fill the HD.

Using Ghost 15 in Copy Drive mode you clone the partition from the old HD to the new HD. But only the 10 GB of data is copied across. Not the 490 GB of freespace. So it is a one step procedure. Data is copied from one HD directly to another HD. Image/restore is a two step process. The image is created and then the image is restored. That is why it can take roughly twice as long as a direct clone procedure.

After the clone process has completed the old HD is removed from the computer and the new HD is booted on its own. After the first boot from the new HD, the old HD can be reinstalled in the computer, if desired.

 

Cloning is good for 1 off jobs when the prepared source is exactly as you want, otherwise it creates more work later regards to partitions.

Imaging is a backup and restore solution for data as well as system. If you cloned all your data, it be more expensive.

If Ghost 15 has cloning and imaging in one then that is helpful.

My plan idea stores many backups using differental images taken at a frequent time in the background. If not take long to restore as it slimmed down with User's data. A differental takes less than 5 mins. You keep many differentials.

If I cloned Windows they still have to be stored as images for daily differentials say. You cannot afford to keep 7 cloned hard drives for every day of the week.

If you clone Windows once a week and store that clone hard drive backup, then that's a affordable possibility. But a entire hard drive used to shave a min or two off a already fast image restore time isn't worth it. Not when you can keep so many full images and differentials in same space.

The beauty of my method is the recent differential backup taken is restored before the system drive fails. You can use the backup drive as new system drive, soon as you boot it up. No time waiting to restore.

 

I'm not trying to sell cloning. Like you I prefer image/restore as it is more flexible. But a lot of people buy apps like Ghost because they have heard it is of use when they want to upgrade to a new larger HD. And for a beginner it is certainly easier than image/restore.

 

Hi Aaron Here:

Have you tried Paragon? If so. Does it take a long time to make an image compared to say Drive Snapshot?


Regards,

mc

 

Hey mc,

I tested the Free Edition of Paragon Backup & Recovery when they first released it back in '09. The end result was that it did the job fairly well in backing up and recovering my system partition (with a Rollback Rx environment). Compared to DS it was much more cumbersome to use and somewhat slower. The first release had a file-splitting bug which I'm sure is remedied by now and it's probably more refined.

Aaron

 

Sure thing Brian . I see IFW already has a clone copy feature built in. I think you find IFW Copy will do the same thing as Ghost 15 for cheaper and probably more without the bloat. Ghost 15 is a very heavy install. There is some excellent options in IFW Copy, such as update boot.ini and just copy the partition table.

 

Me too. I'm very impressed with IFW Copy. You can choose to copy individual partitions or copy the whole drive which will include the First Track.

 

It is good to set the cloning/image software to auto resize the partition(s) for the bigger drive.

I refer to the term cloning, from the old days. Cloning software that clones every sector of the drive, that didn't differentiate betwen space or data. The term is used somewhat differently nowadays.

 

@tyee

You can only boot vhd with Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise editions.

Try using the exact GUID instead of using current and boot. bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Boot description"

That command will return the GUID. Copy and paste this GUID. eg. the GUID is 16bde0ca-8d10-11de-8997-da4aa4476c8e. Use the following example commands to add the device and osdevice boot entry options to point to the VHD and to direct the loader to detect the right HAL to load upon first boot.

bcdedit /set {16bde0ca-8d10-11de-8997-da4aa4476c8e} device vhd=[c:]\boot2vhds\win7.vhd
bcdedit /set {16bde0ca-8d10-11de-8997-da4aa4476c8e} osdevice vhd=[c:]\boot2vhds\win7.vhd
bcdedit /set {16bde0ca-8d10-11de-8997-da4aa4476c8e} detecthal on

Confirm the entries with bcdedit /v.

There is a good tool from sysinternals to create vhd.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

 

Hi Mark
Yes, I have seen that also but that GUID is specific to the main HD you are using I think. When I image/clone to a new one that main HD GUID, which is in the image, will not match the new HD GUID so that's when I get my boot menu error. I believe that is how it works. That is why I wanted to use "boot" so it would mean any HD that boots, not a specific HD. I could be wrong but if you can please try it.

I'm am using Win7 Ultimate.