twgonder
asked on
Ghost & USB HD/CD/Zip & MSCDEX problem
Objective:
Create a flexible Win 98 bootable CD that I can take to client's computers and Ghost (image) their HD before I begin any substantial work.
Situation:
I've reviewed Q_20335116.html, for an overview of Ghost and USB drives.
The Windows Ghost utilities (2003 and patches) creates a bootable floppy (Win98) that has drivers for USB 2.0 and it does not use MSCDEX. The make floppy utility creates a bootable floppy and a second with the ghost.exe file. To create a bootable CD that has Ghost, you need to use MSCDEX to assign a drive for the Ghost program (and other partition management software) that won't fit in the bottable portion of the CD. System files and drivers fill up most of a 1.44 floppy used to create a bootable image. Roxio 6.0 is used to burn the bootable CD.
I have a Maxtor USB external hard drive, a Nec USB external DVD writable drive and various zip drives. I've created bootable floppy disks that work fairly well and the drivers load and work, almost. All ghost imaging is done by booting from a floppy or CD (not from Windows). The floppy boots are just for testing before burning a CD.
If I don't use MSCDEX to assign driver letters, then I can use Ghost to image to the external drives as well as check and restore the image (run from a floppy but you can't access the CD and hard drives by letter from a DOS prompt).
If I use MSCDEX to assign the drives, the save destinations for the image show the "@..." drives (these are shown by Ghost based on the loaded drivers not using MSCDEX) and the image generates OK. If I try to check/restore the "@" drives don't show but the assigned letter drives are present but the check/restore hangs the system. I presume Ghost doesn't like to use letter assigned (by MSCDEX) drives.
Here are some relevant lines from the Config.sys:
rem drivers for the internal IDE CD drive
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
devicehigh=drivers\oakcdro
devicehigh=drivers\btdosm.
devicehigh=drivers\flashpt
devicehigh=drivers\btcdrom
rem The following line loads Panasonic's universal USB- controller driver
devicehigh=drivers\USBASPI
rem the following is an aspi mass storage driver for usb- connected HDs and compactflash memory cards
devicehigh=drivers\DI1000D
rem The following one loads CD-ROM driver
devicehigh=drivers\USBCD.S
And from the Autoexec.bat:
LH \drivers\MSCDEX.EXE /D:cdrom1 /D:cdrom2 /L:Q /m:10 /V
PATH=%PATH%;q:\;q:\dos;q:\
Problem:
I can't use a bootable CD with Ghost (and other programs) on the CD and use MSCDEX to get at the drive by letter because MSCDEX seems to whack Ghost's ability to access and properly use the external USB drives.
Know a trick around this issue?
Create a flexible Win 98 bootable CD that I can take to client's computers and Ghost (image) their HD before I begin any substantial work.
Situation:
I've reviewed Q_20335116.html, for an overview of Ghost and USB drives.
The Windows Ghost utilities (2003 and patches) creates a bootable floppy (Win98) that has drivers for USB 2.0 and it does not use MSCDEX. The make floppy utility creates a bootable floppy and a second with the ghost.exe file. To create a bootable CD that has Ghost, you need to use MSCDEX to assign a drive for the Ghost program (and other partition management software) that won't fit in the bottable portion of the CD. System files and drivers fill up most of a 1.44 floppy used to create a bootable image. Roxio 6.0 is used to burn the bootable CD.
I have a Maxtor USB external hard drive, a Nec USB external DVD writable drive and various zip drives. I've created bootable floppy disks that work fairly well and the drivers load and work, almost. All ghost imaging is done by booting from a floppy or CD (not from Windows). The floppy boots are just for testing before burning a CD.
If I don't use MSCDEX to assign driver letters, then I can use Ghost to image to the external drives as well as check and restore the image (run from a floppy but you can't access the CD and hard drives by letter from a DOS prompt).
If I use MSCDEX to assign the drives, the save destinations for the image show the "@..." drives (these are shown by Ghost based on the loaded drivers not using MSCDEX) and the image generates OK. If I try to check/restore the "@" drives don't show but the assigned letter drives are present but the check/restore hangs the system. I presume Ghost doesn't like to use letter assigned (by MSCDEX) drives.
Here are some relevant lines from the Config.sys:
rem drivers for the internal IDE CD drive
device=himem.sys /testmem:off
devicehigh=drivers\oakcdro
devicehigh=drivers\btdosm.
devicehigh=drivers\flashpt
devicehigh=drivers\btcdrom
rem The following line loads Panasonic's universal USB- controller driver
devicehigh=drivers\USBASPI
rem the following is an aspi mass storage driver for usb- connected HDs and compactflash memory cards
devicehigh=drivers\DI1000D
rem The following one loads CD-ROM driver
devicehigh=drivers\USBCD.S
And from the Autoexec.bat:
LH \drivers\MSCDEX.EXE /D:cdrom1 /D:cdrom2 /L:Q /m:10 /V
PATH=%PATH%;q:\;q:\dos;q:\
Problem:
I can't use a bootable CD with Ghost (and other programs) on the CD and use MSCDEX to get at the drive by letter because MSCDEX seems to whack Ghost's ability to access and properly use the external USB drives.
Know a trick around this issue?
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