USB Bootable recovery

I want to have a Bootable Recovery USB flash drive ready.
Recommendations please.
What works easily?

My backup might be on an external USB HDD drive (maybe even on the
flash drive) or internal HD.

My old laptops do not have working CD so that is out.

This would be for recovery (big screw up) or rebuild (crashed C.

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On 5/18/2015 4:38 PM, OldGuy wrote:
I want to have a Bootable Recovery USB flash drive ready.
Recommendations please.
What works easily?

My backup might be on an external USB HDD drive (maybe even on the flash
drive) or internal HD.

My old laptops do not have working CD so that is out.

This would be for recovery (big screw up) or rebuild (crashed C.

If you have a bootable recovery CD, YUMI will put that on a USB drive
for you. It can multiboot, so put something like Hiren's on there too.
And maybe puppy linux (macpup 5.50) so you can have stuff like Gparted.
And put some driver files and your key utilities on there too.

OldGuy wrote:
I want to have a Bootable Recovery USB flash drive ready.
Recommendations please.
What works easily?

My backup might be on an external USB HDD drive (maybe even on the flash
drive) or internal HD.

My old laptops do not have working CD so that is out.

This would be for recovery (big screw up) or rebuild (crashed C.


What do you want to place on the USB flash drive ?

--
...winston
msft mvp consumer apps

OldGuy wrote:
I want to have a Bootable Recovery USB flash drive ready.
Recommendations please.
What works easily?

My backup might be on an external USB HDD drive (maybe even on the flash
drive) or internal HD.

My old laptops do not have working CD so that is out.

This would be for recovery (big screw up) or rebuild (crashed C.


Your backup/restore software should be doing this for you.

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50165.aspx

That article makes a bootable USB flash, using the
installed Macrium Reflect. I would expect Acronis to
do something similar.

To test, put a brand new hard drive into the laptop
(you know, the one you bought now for a rainy day),
then boot the newly created USB flash, then do the
restoration from the external hard drive. Always
make sure a restoration recipe works, before you
need it.

My classic story on this, is the staff at work. Our software
guys wrote their own backup software for the server. It
backed up to tape. They were as pleased as punch with themselves,
patting themselves on the back and so on. Well, about a
month later, there was a problem, and they actually needed
the new software. And... the restore didn't work. Needless
to say, Paul was taking notes. They had flogged the hell
out of the backup step, but it was "too hard" to test
the restore. I've also seen some rocket scientists
religiously make backups to tape (one of those fancy $3K-$5K
variety tape boxen), only to discover the tape drive head was
dirty, and the tapes were actually *blank*. I always like
that look of surprise on someone's face when that happens.
That's why the tape drive has this little LED on the
front that says "Clean Me" :-) Always expect the unexpected.

Paul

OK so I will use Macrium Reflect Free to create the USB bootable.

How big a dedicated USB flash do I need?

Will this one USB flash work for all PCs, WinXP32 and WinOther64 bit
systems?
So it should be created as Win32 and that will work on Win64 bit?

I am assuming that the recovery backup data is on a local disk, either
internal or an external drive (USB).

Can this somehow work with a network LAN drive holding the backup data?
How does the LAN drive get mounted?

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OldGuy wrote:
OK so I will use Macrium Reflect Free to create the USB bootable.

How big a dedicated USB flash do I need?

Will this one USB flash work for all PCs, WinXP32 and WinOther64 bit
systems?
So it should be created as Win32 and that will work on Win64 bit?

I am assuming that the recovery backup data is on a local disk, either
internal or an external drive (USB).

Can this somehow work with a network LAN drive holding the backup data?
How does the LAN drive get mounted?

The easy part is getting it booted.

There are more difficult aspects.

The USB key you create, should boot just about anything.
CPUs with 64 bit capability, also support 32 bit as
a subset. That isn't a problem. Some day, some goof
may make a "pure" 64 bit processor, but that would be
a mistake. Both AMD and Intel make mixed ones. There
is a "pure" mode that can be turned on, but that isn't
something that happens immediately.

*******

To be ready for "bare metal restore", you need:

1) New blank hard drive for computer. This is the
new C: drive, the one that, for the purposes of
this exercise, has just died on you.

2) Macrium boot media. CD or USB flash drive.

3) External hard drive with image of C: collected
on a previous backup operation.

While Macrium as a product, supports NetMount for
recovery, the support on the Free version is poor.
You have an opportunity at some point, to add a
network driver to the USB flash or the CD image.
I've been prompted to "provide the network driver"
before by Macrium, but of course I haven't a clue
what file that is, and what directory it goes in.
I presume the paid version does a better job
of this (somehow). It shouldn't really be all
that complicated. The normal format for such
things, is the txtsetup.oem style, an INF file
plus the binary files (DLL or EXE etc). More complicated
driver formats are not normally accepted (you can't just
toss an InstallShield in there).

Paul didn't bash his head against the wall on this one.
Since the backup image is on a drive anyway, I'll just
be plugging in the drive when it is needed. The only
potential complication, might be a 2TB backup drive,
and I'm sure there will be all sorts of fun getting
an image off one of those :-( Sure, GPT will work, but
you'd better test that path first. Don't test it
when your C: drive just broke, and "now it would be
nice to do a restore" is your next step. You might
have a mess on your hands. I think my current drive
image, is below 2TB on the hosting drive. Around 1.1TB
of stuff is stored there (all the important backups,
compressed like the dickens).

You can see here, getting network shares running is
a ton of fun.

http://support.macrium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5165

Paul

OldGuy wrote:
OK so I will use Macrium Reflect Free to create the USB bootable.

How big a dedicated USB flash do I need?

400 MB max. for the boot stuff. FAT32

I am assuming that the recovery backup data is on a local disk, either
internal or an external drive (USB).

You would do better to have it on a bootable, USB drive. Or a larger,
bootable thumb drive. In either case, use USB3.

--

dadiOH
____________________________

Winters getting colder? Tired of the rat race?
Taxes out of hand? Maybe just ready for a change?
Check it out... http://www.floridaloghouse.net

On Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at 9:33:12 AM UTC-5, OldGuy wrote:
OK so I will use Macrium Reflect Free to create the USB bootable.

How big a dedicated USB flash do I need?

Will this one USB flash work for all PCs, WinXP32 and WinOther64 bit
systems?
So it should be created as Win32 and that will work on Win64 bit?

I am assuming that the recovery backup data is on a local disk, either
internal or an external drive (USB).

Can this somehow work with a network LAN drive holding the backup data?
How does the LAN drive get mounted?

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Make SURE that you make your backup images on an separate drive.

Andy

Paul wrote:
OldGuy wrote:
I want to have a Bootable Recovery USB flash drive ready.
Recommendations please.
What works easily?

My backup might be on an external USB HDD drive (maybe even on the flash
drive) or internal HD.

My old laptops do not have working CD so that is out.

This would be for recovery (big screw up) or rebuild (crashed C.


Your backup/restore software should be doing this for you.

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50165.aspx

That article makes a bootable USB flash, using the
installed Macrium Reflect. I would expect Acronis to
do something similar.

Yes, Acronis True Image does something similar. I made a USB boot disk
(thumb drive) for that purpose, so I can readily restore a backup image in
case the main drive fails (otherwise I can just run Acronis on the main
drive, and do it from there).

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting to an
ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I used the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary files
instead of an ISO file.

To test, put a brand new hard drive into the laptop
(you know, the one you bought now for a rainy day),
then boot the newly created USB flash, then do the
restoration from the external hard drive. Always
make sure a restoration recipe works, before you
need it.

Always a good idea to test it at least once! But I routinely do this after
various software experiments (trying out different software), so I know it
works.

On Tue, 19 May 2015 21:32:25 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting to an
ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I used the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary files
instead of an ISO file.

I know of no scenario where you can boot a physical PC from an ISO file, so
it makes sense to me that your Dell can't.


--

Char Jackson

Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 19 May 2015 21:32:25 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting to
an ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I used
the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary
files instead of an ISO file.

I know of no scenario where you can boot a physical PC from an ISO file,
so it makes sense to me that your Dell can't.

I thought I recalled reading about making a bootable ISO image file for a
USB thumb drive as one option in Acronis True Image, but I may be having a
senior moment. Maybe that was only part of the story, and it's more
involved than simply booting directly off an ISO image file on a USB stick
in BIOS.

Bill in Co wrote:
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 19 May 2015 21:32:25 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting to
an ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I used
the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary
files instead of an ISO file.
I know of no scenario where you can boot a physical PC from an ISO file,
so it makes sense to me that your Dell can't.

I thought I recalled reading about making a bootable ISO image file for a
USB thumb drive as one option in Acronis True Image, but I may be having a
senior moment. Maybe that was only part of the story, and it's more
involved than simply booting directly off an ISO image file on a USB stick
in BIOS.



Given we're dealing with computers, I would "never say never".

Generally, a utility that converts an ISO to a USB stick,
may unpack it and place the "main bucket" on the file
system on the USB stick. For example, it might be install.wim,
squashfs file, and so on (some sort of compressed file system,
held inside a single file). Think of the main file as "being
a kind of ZIP file". There would be no particular
advantage to storing the entire ISO as such. It's best to
unpack it, and place the files loosely on the stick. This
approach may change some day, once the main bucket file
becomes larger than 4GB (FAT32 limit). That's a kind of
incentive to keep software developers under control.

If you had an actual ISO, you might need some sort of boot code
which could RAM-mount the ISO and read from it. A sort of
loopback mount. There are a couple of "boot expert" web sites,
but I generally cannot follow too many of their conversations,
as they're more interested in one-upping one another.

The next time you prepare a bootable USB, list the
contents and see what you can find.

Paul

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 19 May 2015 21:32:25 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting
to an ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I
used
the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary
files instead of an ISO file.

I know of no scenario where you can boot a physical PC from an ISO,
file, so it makes sense to me that your Dell can't.

I thought I recalled reading about making a bootable ISO image file for a
USB thumb drive as one option in Acronis True Image, but I may be having
a
senior moment. Maybe that was only part of the story, and it's more
involved than simply booting directly off an ISO image file on a USB
stick
in BIOS.



Given we're dealing with computers, I would "never say never".

Generally, a utility that converts an ISO to a USB stick,
may unpack it and place the "main bucket" on the file
system on the USB stick. For example, it might be install.wim,
squashfs file, and so on (some sort of compressed file system,
held inside a single file). Think of the main file as "being
a kind of ZIP file". There would be no particular
advantage to storing the entire ISO as such. It's best to
unpack it, and place the files loosely on the stick. This
approach may change some day, once the main bucket file
becomes larger than 4GB (FAT32 limit). That's a kind of
incentive to keep software developers under control.

If you had an actual ISO, you might need some sort of boot code
which could RAM-mount the ISO and read from it. A sort of
loopback mount. There are a couple of "boot expert" web sites,
but I generally cannot follow too many of their conversations,
as they're more interested in one-upping one another.

The next time you prepare a bootable USB, list the
contents and see what you can find.

Paul

Well, I used the other option to make a bootable USB thumb disk in Acronis
(to boot the Linux based system for Acronis True Image Home ver 11), which
created several files as listed below. I may have mentioned this before
(there may be some deja vu here :-)

The files stored on my USB bootable thumb drive a bootwiz.cfg,
bootwiz.sys, kern3.dat, ramd2.dat, and spla1.run, for a grand total of only
18 MB.

But I seem to recall this being an alternative option to making an ISO boot
file for the USB disk, but again, I may be having a senior moment.

As you imply, if this indeed were the case, somehow the BIOS would have to
know how to read an ISO file and make sense out of it, which, on second
thought, sounds a bit too much to me. I should have written this stuff
down at the time. :-)

Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 19 May 2015 21:32:25 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote:

Interestingly enough, my somewhat old Dell system won't allow booting
to an ISO file (evidently this is a BIOS limitation in my case), so I
used
the
other option, where Acronis creates the thumb drive with the necessary
files instead of an ISO file.

I know of no scenario where you can boot a physical PC from an ISO,
file, so it makes sense to me that your Dell can't.
I thought I recalled reading about making a bootable ISO image file for a
USB thumb drive as one option in Acronis True Image, but I may be having
a
senior moment. Maybe that was only part of the story, and it's more
involved than simply booting directly off an ISO image file on a USB
stick
in BIOS.


Given we're dealing with computers, I would "never say never".

Generally, a utility that converts an ISO to a USB stick,
may unpack it and place the "main bucket" on the file
system on the USB stick. For example, it might be install.wim,
squashfs file, and so on (some sort of compressed file system,
held inside a single file). Think of the main file as "being
a kind of ZIP file". There would be no particular
advantage to storing the entire ISO as such. It's best to
unpack it, and place the files loosely on the stick. This
approach may change some day, once the main bucket file
becomes larger than 4GB (FAT32 limit). That's a kind of
incentive to keep software developers under control.

If you had an actual ISO, you might need some sort of boot code
which could RAM-mount the ISO and read from it. A sort of
loopback mount. There are a couple of "boot expert" web sites,
but I generally cannot follow too many of their conversations,
as they're more interested in one-upping one another.

The next time you prepare a bootable USB, list the
contents and see what you can find.

Paul

Well, I used the other option to make a bootable USB thumb disk in Acronis
(to boot the Linux based system for Acronis True Image Home ver 11), which
created several files as listed below. I may have mentioned this before
(there may be some deja vu here :-)

The files stored on my USB bootable thumb drive a bootwiz.cfg,
bootwiz.sys, kern3.dat, ramd2.dat, and spla1.run, for a grand total of only
18 MB.

But I seem to recall this being an alternative option to making an ISO boot
file for the USB disk, but again, I may be having a senior moment.

As you imply, if this indeed were the case, somehow the BIOS would have to
know how to read an ISO file and make sense out of it, which, on second
thought, sounds a bit too much to me. I should have written this stuff
down at the time. :-)

Only the bootstrap process has to be conventional. Once a stub of
code is running, it could start reading the USB device itself,
mount an ISO and so on.

BIOS --- hands to USB bootstrap --- loads from ISO --- hands off to OS

Reading from an ISO wouldn't have to be any different than
reading from squashfs. All it needs is the right kind of
driver to do it.

You could try opening kern3.dat or ramd2.dat with 7ZIP
and see if the files are archival formats. I don't have any
Acronis stuff here of note, so I can't look right now.

Acronis is using some sort of Linux setup, by the looks of things.

http://reboot.pro/topic/7647-problem...oting-acronis/

Paul