Drive SnapShot - Restoring an OS image

Thanks Brian. The only drawback with this is that I've got to be in a Windows environment to actually switch. I was trying to boot from CD and quickly select a partition to boot.

I have found an excellent free utility which gets me tanatalisingly close to my ideal . GAG, which can be found here is intended to use the MBR for the purpose but it also allows you to do this from a floppy as well. I've now got it booting from floppy and thought that the next phase would be to burn a CD from the floppy image but the floppy files are hidden and I haven't yet found a way to transfer them. I've emailed the author in the hope that there might be a way.

The utility is freeware and might fit someone else's criteria though.

Graham

 

If you have Partition Magic you can make a Boot Magic floppy or CD and use this to choose the bootable partition.

The Partition Magic boot CD allows you to enter Boot Magic.

Acronis DDS allows you to choose the next bootable OS but it's not quick and easy like Boot Magic.

 

This is how I do it. Using WinImage, make an .ima of the floppy. Now open UltraISO, choose File, New, Bootable CD/DVD image. Navigate to and choose your .ima. File, Save As, an .iso. Burn the .iso.

 

Graham et al:
If you have the time to reply:
I'm a bit of a "one good tool for one job" in my simple set-up.
IE: I use BING from floppy or CD for "direct" boot manager

I can see the utility of the pqboot32 as an option and a nice one at that
The other boot managers are good tools: GAG looks interesting.

My knowledge of the HD and MBR architecture is very limited.

Why are you looking for other tools?
( the various PE boot discs are good for all the extras of course)

It sounds like you want to use RBack as an option on a multiboot set-up with PE type boot managers: is that even possible ??

If you want to use RollbackRx as a snapshot manager: there may be issues with anything else that needs the MBR. That is one of the many reasons I don't use Rollback.

Heh: "rules out Linux" I'd prefer to keep that option. !!
Get a VM ?

regards
Thx for all these config tips.

You are textbooks in yourselves

 

I was trying to set up a second non-Rollbacked partition which I could boot into to do backups of the RB partition and other non-RB testing. As RB/EF take over the MBR then a CD-based boot manager was favourite.

I got floppy-based setups for both BootMagic and GAG but I could only get GAG to work for me. It's probably something I did in the BM setup but GAG was so much more flexible (and free ).

To cut a lot of testing down to a quick sentence. You can use GAG to multi-boot with a RB/EF installation but you have to use RB/EF v7.2.1. Version 8.1 protects the whole drive more and hides any other installations. I only tried it with multiple XP installations but GAG supports a lot of OSes so should work ok with Linux.

Graham

 

@nexstar
OK, I see.
That is another interesting combo !!
XP with RB/EF, Linux, XP... cant believe you haven't drooped a BSDos in there too, lol, I've got a spare around here somewhere if you want.
How many bootloaders can one HD cope with !!??

My brain hurting.
Heh heh: I suspect you are way beyond any "reasonable usage guarantees"

SO: is it actually working??

 

Well....actually....yes . It works as I'd hoped it would but it's all down to the GAG software which I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who wants to dabble in multi-booting, with or without RB/EF.

I've now got it set up so that it will, by default, boot to the main system partition. If I put in the GAG boot CD then it will pop up a nice menu in seconds which gives me the option to boot to another partition. I've set one of them up as the 'recovery' partition and it will default to that one in a specified time. So, the CD being inserted is enough to boot another environment. You could, I guess, set up some task to run automatically in that environment as Brian has done with his automated Drive Snapshot restore.

Graham

 

No complaints with Gag. I not too keen on the Dos Icons of Gag but thats a personal opinion. The bootloader Grub4Dos can also be used. It's a boot loader that isn't restricted like other bootloaders. Before it was frightening for new users to install it to the MBR but nowadays you don't have to touch the MBR you can load it from the Boot.ini file and it will load other MBR's which are stored as files in the root of C: which loads up the O/S you want. It can boot MBR's or floppy images (img) or even other NTLDR or Linux. If you interested i can post details how to do.

 

That would be good but I thought that GAG deserved its own thread rather than hijacking this one so I've just started up a new one here .

Graham

 

From https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=199994&page=4#89

I tried -W and it didn't work.

 

@Brian

As i am understanding you when DS comes to a stop and it says OK to finish using the -W in windows it auto closes the window so that OK never pops up but that not so good as you want to read the output if it was successful or not. Is this what you mean? it works for windows so if this is what you want then it sounds it don't work for dos. try -Y meaning yes to confirm instead.

 

No, after running the verify line and when it's time to start the restore you are asked if it's OK to over-write the partition. The end of the restore is fine.

 

then use -Y as i suggested to auto confirm. that will do it

it looks like -Y only works for windows too not dos how annoying.

you can use the pipe character.

put this in front of your command line the Y will be autosent straight after.

echo Y | your command line..........

 

markymoo,

You are a genius. The -Y switch worked.

The Drive SnapShot restore is completely unattended now.

 

great it still good to know dos and batch as that is what is still sitting behind xp .

so you now just stuck which to use IFW/D or DS - great to have 2 reliable automated backups systems in place. it be good to have your restore batch files on cd or usb stick to restore from the hidden just in case something goes corrupt etc then you covered. what happens if your drive goes kaput does your restore routine break down? ideally don't keep the images on the same drive. i have a external usb drive which has an slimmed down version of xp for speed and that is handy an alternative way to yours i could change the bios( F8 ) for it to boot first at a moments notice. not so automated of course but kept on a drive off the pc.

 

Sure does. In this situation you just restore your image in the conventional way. My method can't be used if there is a HD failure. It's for restoring when you have software problems with your OS. I'd do 100 of these restores for every one restore due to HD failure.

 

I'm trying to create an unattended restore using a MS-DOS partition instead of a second WinXP partition. It can be done with IFD.

See... https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=195318&page=7#153

Can anyone help out with a SnapShot command line to restore a WinXP OS from a backup image stored in a NTFS partition? Can SnapShot read files in NTFS partitions from DOS?

 

@Brian

no you will need a NTFS driver loaded beforehand like what Snapshot uses on its network bootdisk. If you want to write to NTFS as well..Avira Personal http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_ntfs4dos.html and an iso cd ready to burn http://www.360mods.net/Downloads/details/id=56.html Active also do an NTFS reader in a menu http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk-dos.htm they also do Active Disk Image on there boot utils but wont read NTFS partitions.

ntfs4dos commands
/lX - defines the first drive letter used by NTFS4DOS.
/rX - defines the size of the RAM-Disk. dont include if you don't want Ram Disk.

 

The problem is not compression (images are always compressed).
The problem is that the filesystem is unknown (to the current operating system), so this does (implicitely) a maintanance mode backup (not excluding unused sectors, pagefile,...).

Sure we could implement our own free space detection, which wouldn't be a big deal.
OTOH we prefer to use the buildin 'GetUsedClusterBitmap' funktion; Windows understands NTFS pretty well

Tom

 

Good to see your involvement Tom.

 

the problem isn't compression, images are always compressed.

The problem is that Drive Snapshot relies on the operating system to provide the bitmap for used/unused clusters. As a hidden partition is 'unknown' to the current operating system, a backup of a hidden partition is implicitely maintanance mode. (only for Linux Ext2/3/Reiser we did the free space detection ourself)

Sure, writing NTFS and FAT routines to detect the clusters in use wouldn't be a big deal. OTOH Windows is pretty reliable in doing that

TOm

 

Here is a recovery disk image i created using grub4dos. It auto inserts a menu entry into boot.ini then on startup loads a recovery menu that can be selected to restore snapshot images. It includes ntfs4dos to be able to read NTFS partititons. ntfsdos will be loaded whatever menu selection is made and the first partition will always be mounted as D.

The advantage of this method is that it doesn't need no seperate partition, cd, floppy or usb because the image is loaded into memory. It doesn't touch the MBR so it's safe to use with Eaz-fix. The disk image lives in the root of c which is the size of a floppy. There are times when the windows gone corrupt or want to restore anew and the partition is still ok to easy access the restore menu.

The file recovery.exe when run will copy 4 files which includes the disk image to the root of c and auto insert an entry into boot.ini When you reboot you can select Recovery as well as your Windows. You can test it straightaway after running recovery.exe by rebooting.

The simple dos menu needs to be edited to include your snapshot restore command lines. To edit all you need to do is edit config.sys and autoexec.bat inside c:\recovery.ima using WinImage http://europa.winimage.com/download/winima81.exe

Double click recovery.ima and once loaded into WinImage drag the config.sys and autoexec.bat to a folder so you can edit and then once edited drag them back into WinImage to update the previous and then click the save disk icon. Done. You can reboot to test.

The entries are labelled A B C etc. both in config.sys and in autoexec.bat. So just match A to A and B to B in both etc.

Example: config.sys

MENUITEM=A, Restore Snapshot Image 1

Rename 'Restore Snapshot Image 1' to any name corresponding to the first image need to be restored.

Example: autoexec.bat

:A
snapshot restore HD1 auto filename

Rename 'snapshot restore HD1 auto filename' to the command line of the first restore image
eg. snapshot restore HD1 auto D:\backups\backup.sna -Y -V

Note: if you use batch files then you need to include the batch files in the image and replace the line with your batch file instead using call. double check your batch files have the right drive letters as the partitions might be different now that you using this menu.
eg. call mybatch.bat

There's 7 snapshot entries available to edit to your choice. I've also included a useful partition utility Testdisk(freeware)

I've included the latest trial of Drive Snapshot. If you have a registered version delete the trial version in the disk image thats open with WinImage and copy your registered version and save the image.

It needs an operating system with a boot.ini such as Xp or 2000 to work.

To install - run recovery.exe and select Install
To uninstall - run recovery.exe and select Remove

Any existing files from a previous install will not be overwritten.
If installed a previous time select Uninstall then run again and select Install.

Download Here - Double click to install self extracting rar - silent install
http://artco.adsl24.co.uk/markymoo/recovery.exe 1.29Mb

 

Mark,

I receive an error message about not being able to mount my OS partition (0x80:1) on C: drive. It mounts my data partitions OK.

 

@Brian

are you getting that error when you select 1 of the 9 menu options? if so it be ntfsdos not mounting your drive. what drives/ptns are in your pc?

try editing autoexec.bat inside recovery.ima and change the C to D in the line. it could be it cant grab C as something else is.

ntfsdos /L:C

It been mounting my 4 NTFS partitions fine C D E F. How many partitions have you got?

It could be you don't need to mount you C: Primary as ntfsdos only needs to mount the data partitions for DS to read the image. DS could read c internally on its own. I can't test this here but i look at other possibles.

Edit: I think i know why i didn't include Himem.sys. Its probably running out of memory and can't mount all your partitions.

Try using this for now. uses less memory and disables compression.

ntfsdos /L:C /N

also

NTFSDOS does not handle cluster sizes > 4K on NT 4.0 formatted drives.

 

You were correct. DOS was using the C: drive.

In the autoexec.bat I now use ntfsdos /L (that came out wrongly. It was /L : D without the spaces)

All 3 of my NTFS partitions were mounted but underneath the last partition was "Bad command or file name" (Does this refer to my XP1.sna file?)

Then A:\> was the next line.



(the OS was mounted as D: drive)

What next?