Hi all

Very new and a bit (ok a lot) lost here. I have M$ xp embedded system that is locked down that we run a music server on. Now every 6 months - 1 Year the hard drive fails. so every update we receive (monthly) I have to drive out, climb up dismantle the unit, remove the hard drive and clone it to a backup drive then drive out and reassemble it. NOT FUN!!!

I have tried to install Norton Ghost, Acronis, DriveImage xml, R-Drive and many more on the xp machine but none work, they either fail to install (because of the fact it is embedded and most of the functions are not installed or running) or fail to run. It will not let me edit the bios (locked and have tried many time and may ways to defeat the password) to boot form cd or usb I can however edit the boot.ini...

So my question to you (and your experience) is can I install a small program that I can select form the win boot.ini that will clone (exact image) the hard drive to a usb drive?

Your time and help is greatly appreciated

BckSpc

Maybe you could copy an ISO image of the partimage CD: http://www.partimage.org

But then I don't know how you could boot into it. Can you boot from network?

Sorry, I don't really understand that machine configuration you have there.

Hi lucmove,

Thanks for the reply If I can install something like dsl without booting to (ie a live cd or usb) then use the win boot.ini to load it instead of windows that would work. I could run partimage. Any idea how to install dsl with out a cd or usb?

How do you get the music files into that box? Use the same procedure to copy an ISO image of the Partimage CD into it.

The problem is I don't know anything about boot.ini, so I probably can't help anymore. Sorry.

As far as the BIOS problem is concerned, you can get around the password by resetting the BIOS to default. On most motherboards, you unplug the unit, remove the CMOS battery from the motherboard and short the correct jumper posts. That will set the BIOS to the default configuration and erase the password. This fix should not be attempted if you are not fairly familiar with BIOS settings, as you may need to change some of them after the reset. But you should be able to change the boot device order this way. Booting from USB or network is completely dependent on the BIOS. Many newer BIOS versions allow booting from USB or network, but there are still many that don't.
Windows "boot.ini" is similar to Linux "boot/grub/menu.lst". It simply tells the system where to find the operating system. You can't really open a program with it, unless the program contains it's own OS. You may be able to edit "boot.ini" so that it will boot from a CD or DVD. You could Google for "How to edit boot.ini" for further information.
Like the others, I am also not clear on your setup. Not sure what you mean by "embedded XP". If Windows features are not installed, I would think that you could borrow a Windows CD from a friend and add them through "control Panel". Adding features does not require the original CD or installation key. Any XP CD should work.

Seems to me that you can copy the partimage cd (or systemrescuecd www dot sysresccd.org, sorry for the strange notation but I may not post url's) to your hd when you have it in another system for backup. In order to boot from it you need to setup a separate partition for it (use f.e. gparted on the sysresccd), then edit boot.ini.

As you have the disk out it is advisable to have a look at the partitions anyway, it could boot f.e. from a hidden partition that restores the "original" embedded xp.

Hope this helps. I am curios how you eventually tackle this problem so please post your progress.

There is a program in pretty much every linux distro for imaging a drive or partition.

It is called "dd".

http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/dd gives you some instructions.

It copies any "file" to another "file" verbatim.

I quote the word "file" since everything is a file, including your whole disc drive and the individual partitions on them.

You could even copy an entire hard disc (including MBR and partitions) via a network connection or even the internet directly to another hard disc or store it as a complete drive image, though it could take a while if it is large.

Have you considered a couple of other options:
1. Using solid state disc
2. Not using windows at all

Linux is far more versatile in situations as these, which is why you find it in most routers and network equipment of any intelligence.

It's also able to read/write/convert pretty much all multimedia formats including Windows Media and DVD.

I could help you if you are interested.

Although dd has its uses, it will clone 1:1.
This means that if you want to clone a 500GB harddrive, you'll need another 500GB harddrive to clone to, even though you may only be using 50% of the disk capacity. It's a slow process, and if you don't have a matching pair of harddrives to clone between you risk losing data (target drive too small) or you will have unused space at the end of the drive (target drive bigger than original).

I'd go with Clonezilla Live instead.
This live distro will clone a complete disk/partition and only put the files you use in the image. This is how Norton Ghost normally would do it. It's also possible to clone from disk to disk with Clonezilla Live, if that is what you want. Clonezilla Live has support for a pletora of filesystem.

There is an unecessary difficult description of how to make a USB flash drive bootable with this distro.

I have successfully used UNetbootin to put Clonezilla Live on a USB flash drive and booted from it. Basically you download the Clonezilla Live ISO to you local harddrive, start up UNetbootin and tell it to use the ISO you've downloaded, sit back and let UNetbootin do its magic. UNetbootin is available for both Linux and Windows.

First of all, up high may be a thermal hazard. Is the box getting enough air flow? Drill holes!

The answer to the backup isn't fun to learn, but is dog simple once you've got the instructions down pat. From Terabyte Unlimited get BING (named Boot-It New Technology.) You can download and try it free.

Let BING create the disks or USB - whatever your bios lets you boot from - using the option "patition work." You're now halfway.

Boot your box with the USB, outboard disk, CD -- whatever it boots from using the BING-created boot disk. The partition table will come up and let you either a) copy the partition C: or b) image the partition to save backup space. [I use the "partition" terminology of BING, but of course mean your hard drive.]

Note that you need no operating system - only a friendly bios. BING even has options to side-step an unruly bios.

Post question on the Terabyte forum - very helpful crowd.

Good luck also.

Carls

I'm not sure what wonder you would get for the $35 you pay for BING that can't be offered by a ubuntu or partimage live CD.

The full list of "features" are already available from Knoppix or Ubuntu for free.

BING it also not a media server, which you will be able to have for free with pretty much any Live CD with a decent package manager (like ubuntu or knoppix)

Again for free and yes it does include "Non-destructive resizing for NTFS" and all other formats.

Pretty much all the NTFS resizing tools are ripped off from ntfsresize which is the open source package.

Check out http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php if you need to know more about partition tools
Also http://www.sysresccd.org/System-tools for system recovery tools on a bootable CD/USB/netboot

back-.space there are loads of products on the market like partition magic, Acronis Norton Ghost etc all with their own proprietary image formats which they keep you paying for.

My guess is that BING replaces you MBR with it's own proprietary one, thus locking you into it's formats

But none of them stack up favourably against a free live Linux CD with it's open and free formats.

And you can have unlimited boot partitions in a Linux boot loader not just "over 200"

For example:
Can you browse the internet to download drivers using PMagic Acronis or Norton?

Can you install a virtual machine and bring up the OS on the harddrive while running the repair CD?

Whereas Linux is a full blown OS so yes you can.

Don't waste your money.
Stick to the swiss army knife that is Linux.

Trust me I work in IT and have done for over 20 years.

That $35 would buy you a usb stick or even a new hard drive.

Ok I have been working on this and still can't get it working. If it can boot CmosPwd then I might have a chance. I have slax on a hard drive (because it will not boot off any thing else) I now have to issues.

1) Slax runs fine on my desktop pc's but when i try it in the unit on site it won't display slax. The bios setts the vga (vga, cpu, ram in one pic card) and won't let me set it to something else.

2) The gurb menu loads fine as I am just learning on linux can some one help me to boot / run CmosPwd from the grub?

Cheers for all your help
BckSpc

I use G4U instead. Either the cd or floppy images are find but slow. Basically DD across network or disk to disk if you want. I make a master image.

Ok here is what I have found...

I now boot from the hard drive to grub either load windows or to cdrom (thanks to http://cutecomputer.wordpress.com/20...-through-grub/ ) with silax and run the back up very happy!

Ps after thinking about it with booting to cdrom i was able to run cmospwd and get into the bios settings and change it so it does boot off the cdrom anyway

Thanks all for your help