I have an older Windows NT box that for several reasons needs to remain at
Windows NT for a while.   I need to find a way to image the boot device on
this machine quickly, probably from a DOS or Linux preboot environment, but
I would prefer to find a Windows based utility.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"Will" <DELETE_westes@earthbroadcast.com> wrote in message
 news:zdudnWjOEIJYvoXYnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d@gi
ganews.com...
>I have an older Windows NT box that for several reasons needs to remain at
> Windows NT for a while.   I need to find a way to image the boot device on
> this machine quickly, probably from a DOS or Linux preboot environment,
> but
> I would prefer to find a Windows based utility.

Thanks for sharing this.

--
Joep

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Will wrote:
> I have an older Windows NT box that for several reasons needs to remain at
> Windows NT for a while.   I need to find a way to image the boot device on
> this machine quickly, probably from a DOS or Linux preboot environment, bu
t
> I would prefer to find a Windows based utility.

You probably won't do much better in terms of performance than
conventional partition-management utilities like Partition Magic or
imaging-specific ones like Norton Ghost (though Ghost itself has not
been receiving very good reviews lately), since most of the time (unless
your partition - or at least the portion of it occupied by data - is
quite small) will be spent sequentially scanning the data on the disk.

The tools available at www.sysresccd.org and perhaps
www.ultimatebootcd.com seem to be reasonably well-thought-of if you're
looking for something free; for free Windows-based solutions, Googling
up "free partition manager" may help you get started (the Ranish
partition manager has been around for a while, but I know nothing else
about it).

- bill

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

"Bill Todd" <billtodd@metrocast.net> wrote in message
 news:dJCdnfhtk7Df1oTYnZ2dnUVZ_rSdnZ2d@me
trocastcablevision.com...
> Will wrote: 
at[vbcol=seagreen] 
on[vbcol=seagreen] 
but[vbcol=seagreen] 
>
> You probably won't do much better in terms of performance than
> conventional partition-management utilities like Partition Magic or
> imaging-specific ones like Norton Ghost (though Ghost itself has not
> been receiving very good reviews lately), since most of the time (unless
> your partition - or at least the portion of it occupied by data - is
> quite small) will be spent sequentially scanning the data on the disk.
>
> The tools available at www.sysresccd.org and perhaps
> www.ultimatebootcd.com seem to be reasonably well-thought-of if you're
> looking for something free; for free Windows-based solutions, Googling
> up "free partition manager" may help you get started (the Ranish
> partition manager has been around for a while, but I know nothing else
> about it).

We tried ServerMagic (server version of PartitionMagic) and the performance
is awful.   It took six hours to mirror an 8GB drive from a 9GB SCSI 15K
source drive to a 15K destination drive.

The main bottleneck in ServerMagic was that it was not asynchronous on read
and write.   It would first read the drive and stop writing to the target,
then stop reading and write to the target.    That has to more than double
the time it takes to do the job?

--
Will

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Will wrote:

...

> We tried ServerMagic (server version of PartitionMagic) and the performanc
e
> is awful.   It took six hours to mirror an 8GB drive from a 9GB SCSI 15K
> source drive to a 15K destination drive.
>
> The main bottleneck in ServerMagic was that it was not asynchronous on rea
d
> and write.   It would first read the drive and stop writing to the target,
> then stop reading and write to the target.    That has to more than double
> the time it takes to do the job?

I'm guessing that you may have had some hardware problem that, e.g.,
caused a great many SCSI errors and retries.  My only personal
experience with Partition Magic is with versions 6 and 8, both of which
will copy a full 8 GB partition between ATA disks in about 15 minutes
(an average speed of a little under 10 MB/sec, which is consistent with
the synchronous reading/writing that you describe - even a bit slow,
actually).  However, I usually don't copy the partition that I'm booted
from, so it doesn't drop back into DOS mode to do so:  I have
occasionally done that (though not since it aborted due to a PM V6
internal stack problem, with disastrous consequences for my system) and
do recall it taking somewhat longer, but nothing like hours.

- bill

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Bill Todd wrote:
> Will wrote:
>
> ...
> 
>
> I'm guessing that you may have had some hardware problem that, e.g.,
> caused a great many SCSI errors and retries.  My only personal
> experience with Partition Magic is with versions 6 and 8, both of which
> will copy a full 8 GB partition between ATA disks in about 15 minutes
> (an average speed of a little under 10 MB/sec, which is consistent with
> the synchronous reading/writing that you describe - even a bit slow,
> actually).  However, I usually don't copy the partition that I'm booted
> from, so it doesn't drop back into DOS mode to do so:  I have
> occasionally done that (though not since it aborted due to a PM V6
> internal stack problem, with disastrous consequences for my system) and
> do recall it taking somewhat longer, but nothing like hours.

I should add that I usually used a Win98 SE system in the above cases -
though I have run PM booted from a Win2K partition a couple of times and
am pretty sure that its performance was similar.  It is of course
remotely possible that its performance under NT is significantly different.

- bill

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

> imaging-specific ones like Norton Ghost (though Ghost itself has not
> been receiving very good reviews lately)

www.storagecraft.com (yes, the shameless ad :-) )

Look for "ShadowProtect".

Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]