Cluttermagnet Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Hi, All- Perhaps some of you are familiar with BootitNG? I used it a lot over the years, especially for partition work. Bing has now been replaced by Bootit Bare Metal. Reading through TeraByte's writeup, I see that Bootit BM has support for ... both internal and external drives (including USB 2.0, IEEE1394, and eSATA). I'm now wondering if BootitNG ever had support for USB? I recently tried to image a copy of Win7 to an external drive over USB2 and Bing kept claiming it was a 'disk full' situation, and the imaging stalled and failed. Did Bing ever support external drives in the first place? I have no idea. I guess I always imaged to a different partition or a different internal drive, in my past work. Thanks, Clutter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 4, 2011 Author Share Posted November 4, 2011 I've started looking at the manual for BoototNG and it is vague as to USB and external drives. On the one hand, my copy of Bing can see the external drive, but OTOH it can't seem to write to it. Here's one interesting thread on this subject, a little dated... Looking for help imaging a partition with BootItNG Perhaps I need to look for a better imaging utility? Presently, I can image just fine to another partition on the same drive, or a different internal drive. The only hangup is writing images to and restoring images from an external USB2 drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 My preference is Symantec Ghost. If you want Linux then use the imaging tool, GParted, in the Linux live cd distro, SystemRescueCD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 My preference is Symantec Ghost. If you want Linux then use the imaging tool, GParted, in the Linux live cd distro, SystemRescueCD. @cluttermagnet -- I've recently used PartImage, as found on various linux rescue distros like Pmagic and System Rescue to image my Win7 laptop. And, obviously, those distros can read/write my external usb2 drive. The drive is a Seagate 'FreeAgent' 320gb unit, on sale recently at Newegg for $40. Works like a charm here on several computers. It'll be going along when I travel with the laptop. @Peachy -- I too have been a user of Ghost for ten years or more, but have run into a problem with the new laptop; my older versions of Ghost all run on some version of DOS, none of which seem to recognize the SATA optical drive in the laptop [Tosh Satellite ca. 2010] -- and of course they also don't recognize the usb disk either. I do trust Ghost more than any other, so I was reduced to removing the SATA hd from the Toshiba and connecting it to a SATA port in a desktop here -- made a Ghost image that I'm sure I can reinstall if/when that time comes around. Assuming I'm at home and the desktop is available. I've done good windows restores from PartImage images on my desktops [win2k and XP], haven't yet faced that side of the problem on the win7 box. But I think it'll probably work OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peachy Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 @Peachy -- I too have been a user of Ghost for ten years or more, but have run into a problem with the new laptop; my older versions of Ghost all run on some version of DOS, none of which seem to recognize the SATA optical drive in the laptop [Tosh Satellite ca. 2010] -- and of course they also don't recognize the usb disk either. I do trust Ghost more than any other, so I was reduced to removing the SATA hd from the Toshiba and connecting it to a SATA port in a desktop here -- made a Ghost image that I'm sure I can reinstall if/when that time comes around. Assuming I'm at home and the desktop is available. You'll probaby need to use the later versions of Ghost to get USB drive support. I believe from Ghost 11 onward the USB support was finally stable. I use Ghost 11.5.1 that is part of the Symantec Systems Solutions Suite 2.5.1. I've used it successfully to backup Windows 7/Server 2008 and EXT4 partitions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 5, 2011 Author Share Posted November 5, 2011 (edited) Thanks, guys! I've been looking at Ghost and partimage recently- and I did just yesterday download the latest SystemRescueCd dated 2011-11-01. I'll need to work at understanding how to use the tools on that CD, however. There's a lot in there. FWIW I can at least save images, it's just a little inconvenient to have to move them off to the external drive via a two step method. Actually, I have a lot of praise for BootitNG, used it a lot over the past 8-10 years, ever since Fred Langa put us all onto it. I'd also previously used the Power Quest Drive Image utility in Win98SE, prior to Symantec buying them out. Also, Partition Magic sounds very familiar. I think I had used that one in 98SE as well. I'll keep working at this, especially as I find the time and patience to get to know Win7 a little better. For now I conclude that BootitNG cannot handle the USB2 interface, but that the updated Bootit Bare Metal can. Hmmm- I just noticed one comment above regarding gparted. I'm pretty familiar with gparted as a partition editor. I use it quite frequently, in fact, and it is my favorite partitioning utility by far. But did I understand you to say that gparted can be used as an imaging tool? I had no idea about that, if it's true. Edited November 5, 2011 by Cluttermagnet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed_P Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 (edited) I use Runtime's Drive Image XML for imaging my partitions and it supports backing up to USB drives. http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm I use to use Symantic's Drive Image and Partition Magic but found that they don't get along with Windows 7's new partition alignment senarios. Another app that I use with Windows 7 disks is CloneDisk. http://reboot.pro/8480/ I suspect it supports backing up to USB drives also. I've just never tried it. While I have heard of BootItNG I have never actually used it, rather I use Bart PE systems for backing up and restoring partitions. Windows 7 supports image backups of it's partitions and while I have not tried it backing up to USB drives I think it would. Create a Windows 7 Rescue CD for restoring images created by Windows 7. A concern with many image backup apps is they backup drives/volumes/partitions rather than whole hard drives. As such it is best to include a backup of your system's MBR along with your drive image backups. Edited November 6, 2011 by Ed_P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 9, 2011 Author Share Posted November 9, 2011 Thanks, Ed. I'm mulling over all the options I've run across recently. It's fairly low priority right now, as BootitNG performs admirably, other than being unable to run over USB. It's actually a pretty good utility, once you get the hang of it, and it's simple to use. So for now I use Bing to image to a different partition, then move it off to the external drive as a separate operation. OK for now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted November 9, 2011 Share Posted November 9, 2011 The drive is a Seagate 'FreeAgent' 320gb unit, on sale recently at Newegg for $40. Works like a charm here on several computers. It'll be going along when I travel with the laptop. http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000f5ee0a0aRCRD http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?loca...000dd04090aRCRD Seagate offer free tools for the FreeAgent, see first link. They also offer for any seagate drive Disc Wizard which is a seagate specific cut down Acronis. Clonezilla is good for backups and works with USB external drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebrke Posted November 10, 2011 Share Posted November 10, 2011 Thanks, Ed. I'm mulling over all the options I've run across recently. It's fairly low priority right now, as BootitNG performs admirably, other than being unable to run over USB. It's actually a pretty good utility, once you get the hang of it, and it's simple to use. So for now I use Bing to image to a different partition, then move it off to the external drive as a separate operation. OK for now. FWIW, I think BING was a great product. It always performed well for me, and was successful in imaging my linux as well as windows partitions. I've resorted to my BING image of OpenSuSE more than once. Why not consider Bare Metal? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted November 11, 2011 Author Share Posted November 11, 2011 FWIW, I think BING was a great product. It always performed well for me, and was successful in imaging my linux as well as windows partitions. I've resorted to my BING image of OpenSuSE more than once. Why not consider Bare Metal? Yep, I am, in fact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.