TeraByte Product Release Thread

Can you try this? Don't do an Entire Drive restore. Do a partition restore and enter 20 as the First Track Sectors to restore in Restore First Track.

 

0641 here.

 

That works fine! That's what I wound up doing... I restored the whole device, then restored a very small partition on the device using "Restore first track" and setting the value to 24, I believe (just picked a number bigger than what I saw as the end of Grub's usage in the EMBR area).

Should this be reported as a bug to the TB Forums? If you think it is... pls feel free to do so.

 

The easiest way to see this was by doing the following...

Wipe the early part of the UFD (used Partition Wizard's DISK WIPE tool) from the MBR out for a few seconds (made sure it included the whole area between the MBR and the first partition's location). Did a full device restore of a saved device image. Then looked at the EMBR area (LBA-1 to LBA-20) and saw nothing but the wipe pattern. The GRUB MBR was returned along with the partitions in the image... just no EMBR area.

Prior to the wipe, the GRUB EMBR area was populated up to LBA-17... completely cleared after the wipe.

 

As I mentioned in a earlier post, I've been looking for my "go to" UFD imaging tool... and I thought I had found it with IFW, but this kink was not expected. Although I can use it as a multi-step process, I was hoping for something very simple and very fast. IFW gives me good speed... the rest I played with were terrible in the speed dept.

If Terabyte sees this as a bug and fixes it (I think it is), IFW would fit the bill perfectly.

 

Again... thinking out loud,

Since GRUB is so widely used among non-Windows Systems, possibly IFL might do this imaging differently. The problem is... I want to do this under Windows

 

You did the test and understand the issue. Please report your findings in the TeraByte forum. I'm interested in knowing the answer.

 

Have you tried without restoring an Entire Drive image? Use a blank UFD and do a partition restore with Restore First Track, 24 sectors.

 

No, I haven't done that yet, mainly because the image being used is a multi-partition image. But since I always see the "Restore first track" option available when doing any single partition restore, I'm sure it will work.

I'll give it a try in a bit and let you know...

 

You might have to restore the partitions individually to see the Restore First Track option. How many partitions are present?

 

Another option you could try is to backup the first 24 sectors of the working UFD with TBOSDT in Windows...

copy sectors x 0 24 D:\UFD.bin

(x is the drive number of the UFD. Find this by looking in IFW. Backup, Full. You will see HD x next to the UFD)

Restore the entire drive image and then run TBOSDT to copy the sectors to the new UFD...

copy sectors x 0 24 D:\UFD.bin /w

See page 13 in tbosdt.pdf re COPY SECTORS.

TBOSDT must be run as an Admin. Right click tbosdtw.exe, run as Admin.

 

Just tried single partition restores into a (really) BLANK (no MBR/EMBR) UFD. As expected, the "Restore first track" option was available. The interesting thing, though, was the restoration with that option set and AUTO as what to restore didn't restore anything in the LBA-1 to LBA-<n> area... so I have no idea what criteria it uses for an AUTO restoration. I did the same and this time set the first track sectors to 20 and indeed they were restored properly... that was expected. I've never been able to find out exactly what that AUTO setting does... the docs say use AUTO if you're not sure what to put there <duh...>.

Not knowing how IFW is really working down below, my expectations would be as follows... if you're imaging a whole device, it should be imaging the MBR and all the space considered to be the first track (Legacy-MBR used to be the 63-blocks after the MBR... don't know what it is if your 1st partition starts farther out then block 64 like in SSDs) as well as all partitions defined in the MBR itself. I would also expect a restoration of that device's image to restore the exact same thing... the MBR, first track and known partitions. IFW does not do that.

Partition restoration works as advertised... it restores what partition you tell it to and whatever first track sectors you specify if you select that option.

It's not quite there...

 

The issue lies a bit deeper than described. The first time you try and restore a whole device image to a whole BLANK device, at the "Restore options" window, although there's no "Restore first track" option available there, the FirstTRack field contains AUTO (the field cannot be changed), probably the DEFAULT. That restore fails to restore any of the EMBR (sectors 2-63).

When testing the partition restoration and having the ability to "Restore first track" and set that field to whatever... when set to a number, that number of sectors in the EMBR is restored properly, when set to AUTO, it also fails to restore any MBR.

I noticed that when I last did a partition first track restore of 24 blocks, the next time I tried to do a device restore (described above), when I got to the "restore properties" window, the first track field was now set to 24 (cannot change this field)... this full device restoration did, as well, restore those 24 blocks.

There's some internal connections not being made properly causing all these anomalies. I'll stop at this point with this issue here and try and continue it in the Terabyte Forums. When I get a resolution, I'll report back.

 

I suppose all these problems can be avoided by simply creating a "raw" (sector-by-sector) image. Except that the process is very slow. The bigger the UFD, the worse. Maybe only "practical" for 8 GB UFDs.

In my case, I create mult-boot UFDs using WinSetupFromUSB (simpler then Easy2Boot, although not as flexible). I can create a UFD with 5 WinPE ISOs in about 5-10 minutes using a USB 3.0 UFD, and I dont´do this frequently. So, it´s better for me not to try to copy the UFD, just to create a new one.

Edit. I looked at the partition structure of the 32 GB UFD. MiniTool Partiiton Wizard shows it as an MBR drive with only one FAT32 partition that occupies all the drive, 16% used space. Windows Disk Manager shows it as an MBR disk, 8 MB unallocated space at the beginning, then a single FAT32 partition. It´s an MBR drive, but it boots in a computer in UEFI native boot mode. In a computer in legacy mode, it boots via GRUB.

 

Final post on the recent topic...

In preparation of the above described anomaly in the TB Forums, I just repeated my attempted restoration process on a BLANK UFD (FULL device image to a single device). As Murphy would have it, the results were different

Yesterday, when I reached the "Restore options" screen, not only was the "Restore first track" option missing, but the entry for "First track sectors" arrived with "AUTO" in it and the field was not editable (it was locked). Turns out the AUTO in that field was the condition causing the EMBR (1st track) not to be restored.

This morning, when repeating that scenario (same device, same image, same everything), the "Restore first track" option is still missing (by design, I believe now) BUT... the "First track sectors" field is now fully configurable ! According to a Jan 2016 post by TB Support, a ZERO entry (0 = ALL) in that field will restore all first track sectors, AND should be used that way for non-standard BOOT loaders (almost all but a standard Windows loader). I put a "0" into the field and all worked as expected.

I have no idea why that "First track sectors" field on the "Restore options" screen was locked yesterday, and I sure don't plan to spend a great amount of time figuring out why it was un-editable (it might have been a 1st time use of a freshly installed IFW prior to doing anything serious with it... possible installed DEFAULTs, etc.).

Bottom line... using IFW for UFD multi-BOOT imaging and restoration configurations should work just fine when using FULL device imaging... and it's FAST. Just make sure that "0" is placed in the "First track sectors" field prior to the commitment of the restoration process (I have made it my DEFAULT since it doesn't hurt at all to restore the entire 1st track for any restoration, regardless of BOOT Loader in use).

Sorry for all the above blather with this problem... I just don't have a clue at this point.

EDIT: I will add that this was in the imaging/restoration of a Legacy-MBR BOOT device only... no UEFI involved here.

 

I tried it, First track sectors=0, but it didn´t work. Just a blinking cursor after the reboot, the same that had happened before.

I also noticed that after the restore reached 100%, the process continued with several "small" restores, as if it was restoring several small partitions. Only one partition is seen in the disk maps, as stated above.

 

I think the continued "small restores" are really the UFD's Windows WriteCache emptying out into the UFD itself.

If your multi-BOOT Loader is GRUB (and most of the time it is), building software that uses Grub sometimes places an unidentified very small partition following the real information partition after it... this is not seen by Windows Disk Mgmt but usually can be seen by any Partition Tool worth its salt (I use "Partition Wizard").

The one I always see is of partition type 0x21 (File System = "other") and its PBR (Partition BOOT Record) is only 1-disk block and has some Grub stuff in it... I have no idea what it's for.

 

TRF,

This is a difficult topic. Sectors beyond LBA 0 are only EMBR sectors if you have an EMBR Disk. Your UFD was a MBR Disk so that's why (I suspect) the sectors from LBA 1 to LBA 16 were not restored when you had AUTO First Track Sectors selected.

I looked at my IFW Options screen today. When doing a partition image restore, First Track Sectors showed a greyed out AUTO. Restore First Track is not selected by default. If you do select Restore First Track, then First Track Sectors becomes editable. When doing an Entire Drive Restore, First Track Sectors shows an editable AUTO. You entered 16 and your restored UFD booted. Because you didn't have an EMBR Disk the required sectors weren't restored when AUTO was selected.

 

Robin,

In case 63 sectors is not enough (First Track Sectors=0), try 128. Success or not?

Edit ... My mistake. First Track Sectors=0 actually restores 128 sectors now.

 

I think Terabyte describes the "first track" as all sectors contained within Cylinder 0, Head 0. If the geometry in the BiOS is 63 sectors per track, that's what you get. The 1st track isn't an absolute number... I believe it depends on the disk geometry in use.

 

I planned to try out this new IFW/IFL fast incremental feature a while ago on the new Creators Update, but now it sounds like it's not quite there yet. Guess I'll stay with my full-disk image only policy for a while.

 

oliverjia,

I suggest you try differentials in IFL. I think you will be shocked at the speed advantage. I've never been an incremental fan.

Use IFL 3.06a (not 3.06)

For the full image select...
Create Sector Hash File
Use Metadata Hash Files

For the differential image select...
Use Metadata Hash Files

 

Would this applies to SSD as well? As I understand, the data on SSD are getting shuffled around all the time.