Accessing USB files when using Floppy Boot

Problem: How to boot from a TI floppy and mount a usb to supply the files.

All of the bootable products TI v8 creates, run well for me.

But on occassion I have to access computers that don't boot with the USB, but do have a USB port.
Besides using TI, I have a boot floppy that installs the drives to mount the a USB device.

The problem with the TI Floppy boot is that it requires 3 to 7 disks to hold the timage.bin. 3 for safe and 7 for full. The safe version does not have the networkdrivers, so I can export the image or import a restore image.

That is too many floppies to play around with, and if one of them goes bad, the whole process is shot and you have to redo it from scratch. It is also very slow, compared to the USB boot.

Some of the pcs I am dealing with, also do not have a CD device.

In the DOS config.sys, I just load the usb device with
DEVICEhigh = USBASPI.SYS
DEVICEhigh = DI1000DD.SYS /DU

these 2 files use about 42kb on the floppy disk. /DU mounts a usb at U:

The bootwiz.cfg did not recognize the 2 lines above (not linux syntax) which I put right under the [bootmnger] section
but when I tried different wordings,
I was able to get the .cfg to look like it was loading the USB (I think because it's light went on and stayed on.)
RUN USBASPI.SYS
may have been the line that worked

but I would still have to know where the drive was located, so I can direct the timage.bin load

TIs boot config varies depending on the boot type, but the floppy and usb boot have commands in it like.

RUN ramdisk.exe /d timage.bin (odd, as the real file name is timage1.bin)
INITRD y:\ramdisk.dat /S
KERNEL y:\kernel.dat quiet

so I would need to have one line that would read:

RUN ramdisk.exe /d U:\Acronis\TI\timage.bin
for which I would have had to load the USB driver first.

I am also confused, for in studying linux systems for the last 2 says, I thought their drv letters were like sd1 (for usb), so why is TI using y:\ as a drv designation?

If I do a DOS boot, then try to run TI from the USB, it says can't be run from DOS.

=========

In the last 2 days, I have tried over 100 combinations, which all fail with "can't find or load image - reboot" and being there is no option to test the enviornment I can't figure out what's going on.

Ideally a config like:

[BootMgr]
RUN USBASPI.SYS
RUN DI1000DD.SYS /DU

[TrueImage]
ECHO Acronis True Image Floppy Cfg
RUN splash.run
RUN mouse.com
RUN ramdisk.exe U:\Acronis\TI\timage.bin
RESTART

or some variation would be nice. The question is what is the correct sequence and syntax of the commands needed to mount a usb to supply the needed files, once the floppy has established a boot.

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other:
It would have been nice if Acronis had made the program runnable from DOS (Disk Managment parter & oss select.exes do)
and
for the floppy boot allowed devices to load that contain larger data files, like the cardbus, usb stick, usb cd or hd, or network service.

There are plenty of older computers out there that have a non-bootable usb or bus-card.

 

The TrueImage boot CD or floppies boot a Linux environment. They do not boot into DOS. Therefore, your DOS solutions are useless.

If you want an alternative to the Linux environment, you could try the Bart PE Windows environment, but that requires a boot CD.

In short, it's not possible to boot a computer and run TI without either a CD boot disk or a bunch of floppies.

 

My Question essentially was "What are the proper linux commands (syntax and order) needed to access a Thumb drive"
If you don't know the answer you need not reply!

I have seen a DOS solution, where you start in a DOS enviorn, to load your device drivers, then load a lnux enviorn from there. The cmdline program is called loadlin.exe which does then create a linux enviorn on top of the DOS, with the drivers/devices still operating.

In the past, I have had little experience with Linux, but after 2 days of reading I am begining to learn it. I see how that it is possible for linux, which uses a different file architecture, to undercut a running system to backup files (or sectors) which are in use. Which raises 2 questions: Is that is how it works when running with windows (background Linux)? And why the absoultue need for linux from boot, where the other operating system is not in play?

This is slightly off subject, but I got an idea, that if you partition a small section of a thumb drive to linux (ext2 ?) then you could give linux OS a place for swap, root, etc files; especially for when you havn't had the opportunity to put that fill structure on one of the system HDs.

This is probably not needed for TI which only needs about 10-11 mbs for its enviorn, which will easily fit in RAMdrv.

As I stated earlier, in the Acronis Disk Manger recovery system, which I also have on a usb, once I loaded the DOS enviorn, I ran parter.exe in that system, which did load, and where I was able to partition and resize partitions. The interfaced is very similar to TI. The DM program oss-select.exe also loaded (requires the key code)


Finally, I know this can be done and am hoping some linux savvy programmers can help me thru the learning curve.
Answers like "that cmd won't work because ...", "I haven't been able to do that..." I consider valid and useful.

Answers that say: "It can't be done" or that ignore the initial question, are useless and just clutter the thread(s). if your answers fall under this category, (no matter how knowlegeable you may be), please withhold yourself.

 

Hello Clearline,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

First of all, please be aware that the "Safe" loader version is based on DOS and doesn't have USB, PC card (formerly called PCMCIA) or SCSI drivers and is useful only in case the "Full" version (Linux based one) doesn’t work (see section 10.2 of Acronis True Image 8.0 User's Guide).

Please also note that currently there are three officially supported methods for booting the computer into Acronis Rescue Environment:

- Create Bootable Rescue Media on a pack of floppy disks;

As far as I can understand, you are familiar with this method.

- Create Bootable Rescue Media on CD or DVD;

Please see this previous thread for further information on how to create Bootable Rescue DVD.

Note that Acronis True Image versions 9.X has a capability of writing to DVD directly and so can create Bootable Rescue DVD without taking any additional steps.

- Create Bootable Rescue Media on a USB Flash drive;

Please take a look at the thread titled boot from usk key for further information on how to create Bootable Rescue Media on a USB Flash drive.

One can also use BartPE based bootable CD created with Acronis True Image plug-in for BartPE. It allows booting the computer into a Windows-like environment loading the appropriate drivers for any hardware devices installed in the computer at startup.

I'm afraid that there are no other officially supported methods for booting the computer into Acronis Rescue Environment. We therefore cannot guarantee that any other method will work.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov