Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Char Jackson
writes:
[]
I'm probably in the minority but I'm one who doesn't make a rescue CD
(actually USB) until I actually need it. Then I use it and promptly
toss the thumb drive back in the pile to be recycled for other uses.
Someone who has a single PC is probably better off creating and
storing a rescue disc but that's not my situation here.

That's my point - "when I actually need it" is too late for a single-PC
user, if "need it" means the PC won't boot, for whatever reason
(hardware drive failure, you've done something silly, or malware). You
can't then _make_ the CD (or USB).
+1

That's one of the benefits of buying an image program already containing
a boot CD as part of its package, like Acronis True Image (ATI), and you
can make a bootable flash drive too. The only problem I've had with
Acronis True Image is that it's become more bloated and less
straightforward in its interface with each succeeding generation.

Well, that, and the fact that when I try to use a flash drive ATI boot
loader on my laptop to do a restore image operation, it wants to restore
the image to D: instead of C:, since it seems to see its own boot Linux
OS as C: - which is very annoying.
That's probably a WinPE disc. The boot drive on those
is normally a RAMdrive at X: .

Linux doesn't use Windows lettering as a rule. A typical
Linux might use /media/mount/partition_label or
/media/mount/hex_string_of letters as names when
auto-mounting.

The Bash shell in Windows 10 might use /mnt/c/windows/system32
as their style. Kasperksy rescue disc might use /mnt/c:
but that's about as close as they get to a Windows name
as such.

Whereas WinPE command prompt will use regular drive
letters, and it peeks into a randomly selected
Windows registry to decide how to do the naming.
If you have two boot OSes, what will it do ?
It's either that, or name the partitions in order
of hardware discovery during boot.

Paul

So you mean I'm kinda stuck with that behavior? It's a bit problematic,
because when I tried it on the Win 7 laptop, even though it did the restore
operation mostly ok, there was at least one weird issue that remained as a
consequence of this "mislabeling" (and I can't recall what ths anomoly was
now).

So I just checked this out again with my Win 7 laptop: That laptop has one
hard drive, which is partitioned into C: for Windows and my programs, and D:
which stores the backup image files (and some other stuff).

When I boot up using the ATI flash drive ISO, it comes up using C: for
itself, and showing D: for my C: hard drive, and E: for the partition
storing the image. However, as mentioned, it will restore the C: partition
mostly ok, but with at least one weird issue remaining (as a consequence of
the legacy of thinking it's restoring to D:, instead of C

My only possible clean "workaround" to "bypassing that anomaly" would be to
restore a previous day's registry (if that were usable and available), which
would completely set the record straight as to it being C:

You can see on this page, their rescue media is booting to X:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/60131

Such media boots to X: (a ramdrive containing a copy of the
booting materials) specifically so C: will be available
for other purposes.

Perhaps you took an ISO and used Rufus to make USB boot media ?

There's probably some other step you didn't mention.

Microsoft makes boot media as a kit, which the backup
companies can use to make utility OSes out of. It allows
making a dedicated environment for restoration jobs, one
which runs many Windows subsystems but not all of them.
(I don't think VSS is in there, because the perception
of Microsoft is, it isn't needed for utility or offline
operations of various sorts.)

You can do the same thing with Linux - Kaspersky uses
Gentoo for its emergency CD, but you can tell from
the paths used that you're in Linux ( /mnt/c: ) whereas
the ATI media on that web page shows Command Prompt
with the usual back-slash delimited path info.

The largest file on the media of a WinPE or WinRE media,
would be a .wim or .esd file. Which is similar to the
squashfs container of a Linux LiveCD (.wim can be compressed).
Finding a .wim or .esd in \sources would be a hint as to
what kind of media that was (Microsoft media).

Paul