BootitNG trial failure

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

I just tried trial of BING today.
It is a bit difficult to use but after watching the tutorial videos, it was as easy as IFW/ IFD. I did two successful backups on my main laptop. I did not try to do a restore as it is my primary laptop. BING seems almost as fast as IFW/ IFD, though navigation in between menues is a bit slow as compared to IFD but it does not matter much.

But to my surprise, BING failed om my second laptop. It failed to recognize the HD. I never expectede this from BING?

I will prefer to buy BING instead of IFD as BING has more functions but the above problem makes me to re-think.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Create ANOTHER BING boot disc/CD. Make sure the drive containing BING boot disc/CD is set as the 1st boot in the BIOS, and the HDD as the 2nd boot in the BIOS. Reboot PC. If BING does not see your HDD, then your BIOS is incompatible with BING.

How old is this PC? Model and name of mfr?

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Why to create another CD while the CD I already made is working in my toshiba satllite M 70?

The other laptop where it is not working is Fujitsu siemens amilo Pro v2035 with celeron processor.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

That puzzles me too, it sounded to me like your laptop booted OK, it just didn't see the hard drive, right ? That can also be worked on but, if it booted from the disk, no need to alter boot order.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Do you see the HDD in the BIOS?

Create another BING boot disc from the 2nd PC and reboot with the boot disc (use the CD burner). Make sure the ROM drive is set as 1st boot and HDD as 2nd boot in BIOS.

You may have another program that has altered the MBR on the 2nd computer. Many HDD manufacturers provide a free application to reset the MBR to FACTORY default (single boot PC).

The BIOS may not be able to communicate properly with BING. Update to the latest BIOS from the mfr website may help. There's not much you can do if BING does not see your HDD.

Does BING recognize the ROM drive? Is the HDD box grayed-out?

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

This is where I end.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Normally, resetting BIOS to default AND/OR upgrade to the latest BIOS should fix the problem.


Additional tips from Terabyte:

# Ensure the BIOS has the correct settings for the device on that controller/channel. If it's set to none then BING won't be able to see the drive. So be sure that the HDD is set to AUTO detect in the BIOS.

# Some system BIOSes require addtional settings. One such setting is reportedly something similar to "Enable advanced ATAPI".

# Some add-in adapters and BIOSes conflict which cause the hard drive count in the BIOS to be incorrect. You can remedy this by moving all drives to the same controllers (either on-board or add-in).

# If you're using a SCSI adapter then you'll need to ensure the SCSI BIOS is enabled. This setting is typically found in the SCSI adapters built-in configuration menus which you access by pressing a special key combination when it tells you to (provided the setting to display the key combination hasn't been disabled).

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Click on VIEW MBR and post results.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

I am not sure what u mean by this. It is a working laptop. How it can boot if BIOS can,t see the HD.

The disk I created before was created by the other laptop. And the boot options were as u said.

No such software at all. BTW, even if there is such a software, why it should cause the problem? We are working out of MBR while booting with BING CD. The other laptop has RollbackRx installed and BING was able to take the image successfuly.

I will check but I think the BIOS will be up-to-date as this is newly bought laptop. I have never done it and have no idea how to do it.

Not sure what u mean by this

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

At this stage, I can move the mouse cursor but clicking anything is not possible. It does not work. Even the Close option will not work. I think the BING stops working here. I have to press power rest button to reboot here.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

1.You should be able to access the BIOS in your PC. Check with the mfr of the PC to find out which key you must hit during PC boot to access the BIOS (this is independent of BING). One you're in the BIOS, go to the section that display the HDD. Make sure the AUTO detect option is ON. Save this info, and exit BIOS.

2.If a program has altered the MBR, then BING may not be able to read the BIOS. Resetting the MBR to factory default will ensure proper operation.

3.The PC mfr website should have instructions for updating a BIOS. Check your current BIOS version vs what's on the web for your PC. You can also reset BIOS to OPTIMIZED DEFAULT, save and reboot PC. Again confirm that the HDD is set to AUTO detect in the BIOS.

4.If you are using the ROM drive to run BING, then BING can "see" the ROM drive.

 

Re: Alternative to True Image (nervous nellie)

Hi, just found out, it,s working. While typing the messages, I left the laptop working in BING where it was stopped and after about 3 minutes i noticed that it had recognized the HD. Tried again, same results. Now i got it. It was just very slow to work.
As I posted erlier navigation in between menues is a bit slow in BING as compared to IFD, however it was not so slow on my toshiba laptop and was not so on the Siemens laptop also until I clicked Partition work. From here it takes a long time to recognize the HD, about 3 minutes. It is not the case with toshiba laptop where it recognizes the HD immediately.
It,s bit strange. Might be due to low ram(256 MB) on this machine! But it,s a bug as u have no indication on the screen that BING is still working and trying to recognize the HD, so that u can wait. IFD is pretty super fast here.

 

It is possible that the 2nd PC has problem reading the BING boot disc. That's why I wanted you to reburn the data using the 2nd PC. The slow navigation with the 2nd PC confirms that your optical drive has difficulty reading the data on the BING boot disc.

Memory is NOT the issue because BING is not a memory intensive application. It is possible that the 2nd HDD is just slow (need to defrag). You can download the FREE utilitly HDTUNE to check the speed of both PCs.

If the HDD is working properly, then installing BING to your HDD may fix the slow read problem. The BING program is under 1MB.

I still believe that you may benefit by resetting the BIOS to optimized default, save, exit. Now confirm that the HDD is set to AUTO detect. Perhaps there is a newer BIOS at the mfr website.

Are you sure that you did not install another application on the 2nd PC that may alter the MBR?

 

Ok, i am able to restore image by BING on two systems more than once, no problems.
However I have found few thing strange.

1- I imaged my C- partition( about 12GB with 4 GB data) and when I tried to restore it on another empty partition ( about 8GB), I fund the Paste option greyed out. I was able to do Paste only if destination partition was equal to C-partition or larger than this( it,s strange for me as data on C partition was very small- just 4 GB).

2- When I restored my C- partition on another partition E that was about 12 GB, after restore BING automatically didvided this D partition into one 8
GB part with the restored image( thus making it the same size as the original imaged partition C) and another raw 4 GB part. I can,t understand this behaviour. I repeated this and got same results.

 

Are these partitions located on the same HDD? Are we dealing with multiple primary and logical partitions? DO NOT randomly restore a partition to any other partition because this can royally foul up the MBR.

 

BING does not resize the partition. Therefore, you need to make sure the destination partition is of the same size. Another problem with imaging is the location of the last used cluster. If it's located at the END of the partition, then you will need the FULL size of the source partition.

The old Drive Image 5 will resize the destination partition.

 

ya, actually i have no spare drive, just an extra laptop. I tried on it in different partitions of same disk.

 

Avoid restoring a primary partition to a logical partition (or vice versa).

BING also comes with a partitioning tool to non-destructively resize any partition.

 

@furballi

Not quite

Correct
@aigle

Bing preserves the disc/partition architecture in the image file.

IE: your partition may have only 4G data but may be spread over 10g space on the drive. In which case you will need a 10g partition to restore to:
From the manual for IFD/IFW:

This behaviour applies to IFD/IFW/BING

Equally BING et all will restore the same disc architetcure to your partition.
If there is free space left over you can expand the partition or use it elswhere. Most restores outside a "test" environment will be to free space and so the restore will be the same as the imaged partition, file format (NTFS, FAT etc) and data.

These functions have profound implications for the integrity of the data and use of utilities and apps when rebooting in the restored partition as many apps require specific locations on the partition to function properly eg FDISR.
Or with extended partitions!

If you want to restore to a smaller partition, shrink the partition to be backed up with BING: this will give a smaller image file. Use the "Proprties" button for the partition in question in BING to see the actual amount of data on the partition to enable a "shrink to fit" if you want...

HOWEVER: the data blocks created by utilities on that partition will have been altered and you may need to reboot several times for those utilities or their data blocks to be "found".

IN ADDITION: for some utilities such as FDISR there needs to be sufficient free space for the snapshot functions to be used.

BING will not know what utilities you have! Just does exactly what it is told

BUT: IFW/IFD from the manual:

See page 26 of the manual.
I haven't used this , I just resize to requirements with BING.

You can get an idea of the "spread " of the data on the partition to be imaged by looking with any defrag utility.

Perfect disc has a function to allow you to see "where on the disc" certain files are located.
(One of the free partition managers does this also; cant remember which one.)

Regards.

 

Thanks for clarifying my post.

The most important thing to remember is to label each image file so you will know where to restore the image file. I like to keep my OS partition as small as possible to facilitate backup. The 3GB OS partition is about 1/3 full. 40 seconds to create or restore the image file. I can quickly return the PC to a "fresh install" state to isolate software issue.

 

The only trouble with your fast solution is that the majority of users, doesn't have the knowledge to reduce their system partition upto 900MB and split Windows over several partitions.
The bottom line is that your solution is only good for you and a minority of knowledgeable users.
Speed isn't priority #1 for less-knowledgeable users, they only want to know how to do it in an easy way.

Speaking of speed, FDISR refreshes my main archived snapshot (about 3gb) often in less than 40 seconds. Any FDISR-user will confirm this.
Speed depends on too many factors and is always very personal.

 

The average PC user has ZERO knowledge about drive imaging! These tools are primarily used by PC enthusiasts. And of course, there are wanna-be enthusiasts, and hard-core enthusiasts. Don't assume that your way is the best way for other PC enthusiasts. This is not rocket science stuff. The knowledge can be found over the net, and best of all, it's FREE.

FDISK cannot match the technology of drive imaging. Drive imaging is a perfect clone of the original partition, down to the 0s and 1s on the PC. Winners don't make excuses. They make time to learn about new things.

 

That's why I use FDISR as second backup solution, in case ATI fails and if I was a Terabyte-fan, I would say in case BING/IFW/IFD fails.

 

Hi, longbaord, thanks a lot for such a nice piece of information.

 

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