8. Restore the image.
No backup solution is complete unless you *know* that you can actually recover the files from your images. Until you know that you can restore your files, your new image isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit. Yes, I said spit. Let’s ensure that your new backup is working, shall we? You DID back up your files originally, right?
Boot from the BartPE live CD and launch DriveImage XML. Insert any media that contains your backup image. Click “Restore” on the left side and start following the wizard again. Choose the XML file that you want to restore. For my purposes, I chose to restore the image from its location on my second hard drive, though I could also have inserted the DVD-R containing the image into my second optical drive. [See full screenshot]
Next, select the drive or partition to which you want to restore. If this is a new hard drive that does not yet have any partitions, DriveImage XML also gives you the option to launch the “Windows Disk Management” utility, which you can use to create a new partition. You will have to confirm your choice a couple of times, and the final time you actually have to type a few characters into a text box and then click OK. When you have ensured that the correct image is going to restore to the correct partition, cross your fingers and click OK. Here goes! [See full screenshot]
Now watch helplessly as all of your files are erased… and hopefully restored with the files in your image. Believe it or not, it only took my computer exactly 8 minutes and 40 seconds to restore the image. [See full screenshot]
When it is finished, reboot and remove the live CD. If your system comes back to life, congratulations, you have successfully implemented an image/restore backup system, all for free. If your system exploded or drank all of the soy nog in your refrigerator, I offer my condolences. Re-read the instructions, and better luck next time.
9. Alternatives and asides.
Though this entire process may seem much more complicated than a commercial equivalent like Symantec Ghost, it really is not. From this point on, all I have to do when I want to backup my system is to run DriveImage XML from my system drive to create an image. If I ever need to restore from it, I simply boot my live CD and restore the image. There’s no more slipstreaming or building live CDs. I’ve never used Norton Ghost(tm) or any other paid backup solution, so I cannot draw a direct feature comparison.
While DriveImage XML offers a lot for free, I do have some suggested improvements. I’d like to see a way to automate a time schedule for creating backup images, such as “every Sunday at 11 PM.” I’d also love the ability to specify the size of the “split large files” option instead of just defaulting to 656 MB. Specifically, DVD-sized chunks would be great.
Of course, this is only one way to achieve the results for free. I am sure that there are other free imaging utilities, some of which may even integrate with BartPE or another live CD environment, but this is what I found that works for me. While another option would be to boot a Linux live CD and use a tool such as Mondo Rescue, using a Windows live CD simplifies matters in that I am guaranteed to have full NTFS write support.
Before any DOS purists attack me stating that Windows XP does indeed have a cloning utility called “xcopy”, let me say this. If you can prove to me that xcopy is as versatile and easy to use as DriveImage XML and can do everything that I’ve listed in this article, I’m all ears. Deciphering all those switches is not my cup of tea.
That said, I leave the door open for anyone to tell me an alternate way to create an image/restore backup system like the one I have described for free. We can all benefit from that kind of knowledge. Please do not tell me that “such-and-such program has a free 30-day trial.” That does not count.
Good luck, and happy backups.
—- Brian Bondari —-
© 2005
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THANK YOU! I have been looking for a free alternative to Ghost, and from what I just read, it sounds like I found it. Thank you for the detailed instructions.
I do have one question though. Say I have a lab of 10 computers, how will the differing license numbers affect the process?
Thanks, David
You’re welcome.
I have experience in an OS X lab, but not one for Windows. Therefore, I can only speculate. Unless you feel like creating ten separate images, every computer will end up with the same license number. I suppose you could change it after the computer has been restored.
Something like keyfinder may do the trick: http://www.winkeyfinder.com/
Another link of interest: http://www.freepctech.com/pc/xp/xp00066.shtml
Good luck.
Actually, you can just do this (i.e., you don’t need DriveImage XML):
1. Create a BARTPE bootable CD
2. Boot from the CD
3. Copy all files and folders just as they appear on your operational XP hard disk
That’s it
If a restore is required, all you need to do is:
1. Boot from the BARTPE CD
2. Create the disk partition that will hold your new XP installation (if it isn’t already created).
3. Make the partition ACTIVE (if it isn’t already)
4. Copy all files and folders from the backup media
5. Boot from the newly built XP HD
The only difference is that DriveImage XML may use compression thus decreasing the amount of backup media used, but the outcome is the same.
Hello, and thanks for this tutorial. I searched for long time such a
simple method for “ghosting”. But i have a simple question: my harddisk 0
has the primary partition (system) and a extended partition with 2 logical
drives (D,E). Obviously i create the image for system partition; there is no
risk to lose/damage/etc. the logical drives when I restore the system? (for
example, some commercial software has problems with drive letter and
paths… and I find only tutorials where the model is one harddisk with ONE big partition). Thank you
Hi vlad,
I haven’t tried this procedure on a system with extended partitions. However, my main sytem has three partitons on the main drive (including a linux install), plus a second hard drive with two partitions. I have not had ANY trouble with it.
My suspicion is that it will be fine. Your mileage may vary.
Good luck.
Thanks for your great tutorial. Driveimage won’t let me perform a “Drive to Drive” copy using a source partition that is larger than my destination partition. However, the data size of the source is small enough to fit the destination and I do not have the “Raw mode” option enabled. The documentation sounds as if Driveimage will automatically resize the source to fit the destination partition and doesn’t indicate it being limited to the destination being as big or bigger than the source. The only documented limitation I found is that you can only restore an image to a drive that is the same or larger size as the original, so I’m assuming the same limitation applies to making a “Drive to Drive” copy? Or am I missing something?
Thanks.
I’m new to using DriveImage, but I experienced a similar problem as Brent. I created my image (which works great when I re-image the same computer as I created the image on), but when I tried to reimage another computer with that image, it gave me some error about the the destination drive needs to be as big or bigger than the image partition I was trying to restore. My image file was only 6GB, so there should have been no problem. I didn’t have RAW Mode selected when I created the image either. So apparently it seems that with DriveImage, the size of the WHOLE partition is taken into consideration when you create an image (which is something I don’t understand). Help!
habibbijan, you are THE Man!
This is just what I’ve been looking for, free software to image my PC with some well written, clear instructions on how to do it.
The InterSuperWeb is a better place because of you and folk like you.
Cheers.
Since DriveImage XML has a flaw and won’t let you reimage a smaller hard drive than what you took an image from (yes, even without Raw Mode selected), I just did what Mike said and didn’t use DriveImageXML at all…I just sysprepped my image and after it shut down, I booted with BartPE and just copied all the files off the hard drive to a network drive(or whatever backup media you’re using).
After you have those files copied, anytime you want to re-image a computer, just boot it using BartPE, format the drive within BartPE, map the network drive(where your files are stored), then just copy those files onto the hard drive. It’s as easy as that.
DriveImageXML *seemed* to work well and I liked it at first….until I realized you can not re-image a smaller drive (so if you take an image off a 100GB hard drive, you can not re-image an 80GB hard drive…even if the image itself is only 5GB or whatever). It’s rather sad because I was excited that I found some good free software for reimaging…apparently not.
Let’s be fair. Driveimage never claimed to be able to do such a task. For what it IS able to do, it works wonders. It’s able to backup and restore system images for free. Yes, I agree that it would be nice if it had the capability to restore an image to a smaller drive or partition, but I would not call it a “flaw” that it cannot do so without being advertised.
I’m glad the straight copying method works for you.
Thanks for all the comments!
Hey Habibbijan,
Well, without getting into a fight about it, I would like to add some more to that.
Just as Brent said in his message, the documentation says it will resize to the destination partition (and doesn’t mention anything about a requirement of the size of the partition), here’s the exact words in the Help File: “While copying the source drive will be resized to the size of the destination partition if raw mode is unchecked and the file system to be transferred is an NTFS of FAT32 file system.”
And all throughout the documentation it talks about re-imaging to other drives, etc., and it never says you can not re-image a smaller drive. That IMPLIES that DriveImage is claiming it could do that. If you read Ghost’s documentation, they doesn’t say, “Oh, and you can re-image a smaller drive with this software too.”…but yet Ghost can do it. They don’t mention it in their documentation because it’s implied by everything else they’re talking about. After all, it’s imaging software…that capability should be a GIVEN. I mean, come on, if you’re in an environment where you reimage a bunch of different computers with the same image, that’s just crazy you can’t reimage a smaller drive. That means you can only reimage the computers that have the same size or bigger hard drive and all other computers are just screwed. All other software (Ghost, Altiris, etc.) have no problem with it…and even though those are programs you pay for, it’s not like it’s an advanced feature or hard to program in…it’s one of the simplest, most crucial elements I would think you would need when you have imaging software.
The whole point of imaging software is to make re-installing your OS convenient and time saving. If you can’t use your image on a smaller hard drive, I would say that’s not very convenient…your image is useless for any other smaller computer (that in my opinion is considered a flaw).
Anyway, with all that said and done, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree on this being a “flaw”, lol. And the important thing is that we both have solutions that work for us.
Have a good one!
Actually, the limitation of restoring an image to a smaller partition is documented in their online FAQ:
Q. Can I restore the image to a smaller partition?
A. No, currently you can only restore your data to a partition that is exactly the same size or larger, regardless of the data size.
What I was trying to do, however, was perform a “Drive to Drive” copy, which clones the source partition to the destination partition without creating an image in between. So, I was hoping the limitation didn’t apply in this case, but unless someone knows otherwise, looks like it does.
However, I will say that, for my needs, DiskImage is still my favorite (especially since it is free). Here’s everything I’d like to have:
1) ability to “hot image”
2) scheduling ability
3) ability to clone partition to partition (even if destination is smaller)
4) support Windows 98
So, in other words, I’d like to be able to schedule a “hot image” clone of the source partition, so if the source drive fails, it’s a simple switch of drives and I’m ready to go (this is for my non-tech savvy parents who live in another state and doing anything more complicated for them is a real hassle).
Of my wish list above, DiskImage gives me 2 of 4 (well, more like 2.5 of 4). All I need is a bigger destination drive and I get 3 of 4. The only other programs (free or paid) I know of that can “hot image” are Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost 10, but neither (that I’m aware) can clone by schedule. Anyone feel free to correct me or otherwise inform.
I might actually just use Norton PartitionMagic to repartition the source drive so there is a smaller “Programs” partition and add a second partition for “Data,” which is my preferred setup, anyway. I’m already backing up essential data to CD, so I really just need the programs backed up, still. If I set my “Programs” partition size to be smaller than my destination drive, then bingo, DriveImage does everything I need (minus Windows 98, but oh well – I have another plan for that machine).
Sorry we’ve been taking over your site, Habibbijan
. Thanks again for you help.
Oops, I made a mistake: it looks like you actually cannot schedule a “Drive to Drive” hot image clone using DriveImage. The scheduling is only for backing up to an image file.
So, that puts (as far as I know) DriveImage on about the same ranking (according to my wishlist in my previous post) as Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost 10… except DriveImage is FREE.
I suppose I can find Ghost for free after rebates…
Ah, ok, well I guess I somewhat appologize because it was mentioned in the FAQs about the re-imaging of a smaller drive. However, that should be something that’s actually listed in the help file if you ask me.
Anyway, sorry again for my bashing of DriveImage…I just really, really, really would love it if it could actually re-image a smaller partition! Oh well. 
I agree that it would be an outstanding feature, and hopefully one that they can eventually add. I can easily see the benefit of such a use.
For what it’s worth, you can always send the Runtime company an e-mail with a feature request.
support [at] runtime.org
Cheers,
Brian
Thank you for sharing this article. I just completed a flawless backup/restore of my two development pc’s.
Best regards
Lars Brandt
Denmark/EU
I had a problem. Has anyone seen this problem?
System restore doesn’t work on the restored drive.
I get an error when I try to use system restore, apparently I am missing a file. I think it was the volume shadow index file (VSI)
System restore works fine on the original drive.
If anyone knows a work around please let me know.
My take on the size issue…..Use Partition Magic to resize the drive as small as possible and the make an image of it then. I made my partition 8gb. I’m not interested in backing up working drives that I am using, I can shuffle data later after I have cloned a fresh copy of a new install onto the new drive. I keep several drives on hand, when one gets “buggerred up” I pull the files I want to keep onto another drive and wipe it, and then reinstall the OS. I had been keeping a 20gb drive with the fresh install just for drive to drive copying.
I currently have over 1000gb’s of hard drive space (video editing) I built my tower with 4 pull out drives in front and I plug and play some SATA’s from the side. I made one of the 4 pull outs hot swappable by using a USB-2 IDE dongle and connecting it internally to a PCI USB-2 card. The trick to making it work is putting a switch on the USB cable that breaks the power. I had to dissect the USB cable and extend the red power leads to a switch. I mounted the switch on the front of the tower. I plug a drive into the bay, turn on the key for the bay and then switch on the power to the USB cable. Then the drive is recognized, just like you are using an external USB enclosure. Only it is nice and neat and installed in my tower.
I appreciate your hard work, thanks for have this page up and running.
Thaton Kyaikto
Florida, USA
Hello Mr Habibbijan – thanks for your comments and instructions on handling DriveImageXML. So far I did not succeed in getting the created image to run. It may well be, that this is owed to the facf that WinXP created a so called Systempartition on my HD (C:) It containes: Boot.ini,NTLDR, and NTDETECT.com. I noticed this some weeks ago, however I do not know how long it is already there.
In some Forums (and in the M$-Knowledgebase) it is addressed as something making problems and there are methods recommended to handle those problems (like renaming your drives in a complicated way via Registry/HKEY/Mounteddevices.. .
My question to you is, how to you handle this partition during the copying and restore process????
If this interests you, I will gladly send you Screenshots of all this. Just let me know.
Regards: Menus
For anyone interested, found a program that does everything I need (see my previous posts) and, at least as of today, it’s free:
Paragon Drive Copy 8 Personal SE
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2166317/paragon-drive-copy-personal
You can download it and register for a free license, but this offer will probably only be available for the next day or two. It’s normally priced around $25, which I’d still be willing to pay knowing it can do what I need.
I haven’t fully tested it yet on Win XP and haven’t tried it at all yet on Win 98, but so far it seems to work great.
For something more relevant to this tutorial, they have a disk imaging program, also for free as of right now:
Paragon Exact Image 7 SE
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/download/paragon-exact-image-7-se.aspx
The current version of this software is now called “Paragon Drive Backup 8.0″ and retails for about $50.
I haven’t tried “Exact Image” out at all. I did a google search on it and BartPE and got a few hits from people who have built custom plugins for it. I’m assuming it may have some of the same abilities as their “Drive Copy” software (e.g., restore to a smaller partition).
Finally, I emailed Runtime Software with the suggestions found on this page for improving DriveImage XML and this was their response:
“These are features that full retail packages of Backup software do. We are not interested in releasing the software as a retail software and therefore the software will stay as it is mostly. Thanks for your interest though.”
Thanks again, Brian, for putting together this great tutorial. I will certainly be using it as future needs arise.
Brian,
Thanks a lot for this excellent tutorial.
Keep up with the good work!
Regards,
Johannes
Germany
Many of you are talking about data backups. I would actually think about using these backup solutions for System Drive/ OS Backups. I have no idea why people come in and talk about file copying…which is totally out of focus.
Great article habibbijan,
I have one question though; is it possible to boot from BartPE and restore an image from one optical drive (i.e. swap cd/dvd discs)?
Thanks,
Ron
Hi Ron,
To my knowledge it is not possible to switch discs once you are running from the live environment.
There is another option: I haven’t tried this, but I think you can go ahead an create an image of your system with Driveimage XML. When building your BartPE disc, there is an option to include an “extra” directory with whatever files you want. If you use a blank DVD, you can specify the directory in which you stored your “image” as the “extra” directory.
That way, you can boot from the BartPE disc AND have your backup available on the same disc.
Good luck.
Hello,
I try DriveImage XML 1.21. Nice Program but if I use the Task Scheduler I get the message “Image fragment size set to 0 sectors (0 bytes).”. Now I have click on the “OK” button and the backup starts. Why does the “Information” window appears? I can’t start backups without clicking.
All in all, an excellent tutorial!
A few observations/suggestions:
1. You might want to update the tutorial to steer people to this discussion thread upfront, since there are some critical time saving issues that are discussed here, such as the restore to a smaller partition. This cost me significant time to find this info and then to reduce the original disk partition size & re-image it so I could restore it to a smaller drive.
2. You CANNOT use 1 CD drive for both DriveImage and your image file. I had to use an external USB drive for the image.
3. I was not able to ever successfully run Windows Disk Management when I had booted from BartPE.
4. You must connect a USB drive before booting BartPE. It will not recognize it with a live plugin as normal Windows does.
5. Last, and for me, the most challenging issue, is that I can’t get my restore image to work on another drive. I am suspicious that it probably stems from me creating the image on a new Dell which has 3 partitions on it. They use a hidden partition, a backup partition and the normal C partition.
I imaged the C drive, which contains the XP OS, but when I put this on a drive with only 1 partition – it simply does not work, no matter how many attempts I’ve made with a variety of boot utilities. I’ve restored all the windows boot files (boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect, etc), and the MBR seems correct, but alas, all I get after the POST is a blank screen with a blinking curser….. rats!
I was hoping this would save me copious amounts of time not having to reinstall Windows on all my new drives! Guess I’m back to the slipstream approach….
Hi habibbijan,
thanks a lot for your blog.
I use DriveImage to get C: image for cloning pc (after sysprep).
I made a batch command using Xp diskpart command to prepare the partitions. I’d like to automate the restore using a command line but unluckily this feature is unsupported by DriveImage XML.
On program
MarkSmith – thanks for taking the time to write your observations/suggestions. I’ve updated the first page of the article to point people toward the comments.
I just tried to run Windows Disk Management from BartPE, and you’re right, it doesn’t work. Bummer.
I’m not sure what to suggest for your Dell system. Just an obvious thought, but you did run FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from a startup disc, didn’t you?
Giuseppe – You raise a good question, and I do not know what 3rd party utilities can process the Driveimage backup files. I’d like to know as well.
My article is due for an update/revision. I’m also considering writing a tutorial for accomplishing this process using open-source and command-line tools. Stay tuned, and thanks for the comments.
I have also had some trouble getting Disk Management to start and with the multiple partitions on the Dell Optiplex series. The drive size was also a problem, but replacements were found.
When Drive Image XML wouild just hang, while running from the CD, I copied it and all its components to the server location that would be the destination for the image I was saving and ran it from there once I’d mapped a drive in BartPE. It makes saving down and loading the image to the PC easier.
I’ve just spent about 3 hours going through the build & burn process, all works fine & I can’t wait to try it out on a freinds pc. Not only do I have a free means to backup a working xp partition, but I now realise I have a usefull tool to use at work (I repair laptops all day)Some don’t boot to windows because of corrupt files, or viruses. Thanks for the step by step guide, I was amazed to see the final disk boot, as you said it would.Thank you, best 3 hours spent on my laptop…….
Dave Boley…fixerdave@aol.com
I could NOT restore my C: drive using DriveImage XML at all after many different attempts.
What I have done:
* Backup successfully using DriveImage (encountered no error)
* Try to restore the OS from DriveImage XML but encountered error message: “Verifying DMI Pool data …. ” then
“Error Loading OS”
I have tried the following approaches documented in various website UNSUCCESSFULLY:
(1) Created the target partition (DISC0 in PC) and reformat the partition before restoring.
(2) Created the target partition (DISC0 in PC) but leave the partition unformatted to allow DriveImage to format it accordingly (my target partition was larger than the original C; partition)
(3) Restored the image to target disc using BartPE within the very same computer.
(4) Moved and connected the target disc to another guest-computer and used the full version DriveImage, i.e. not “plugin” (installed there)in this guest computer to restore the image into the target disc and then move it back to the to-be-restored computer and reboot from there. Failed again.
(5) DriveImage FAQ suggests to use “tool>New disc ID” to rename the disc-ID. In DriveImage, the disc ID was “DISC1″, I used the New Disc ID function to rename it to “DISC0″ but the program changed it back to DISC1. So, this approach failed again.
I appreciate very if someone here can help on this.
BTW, several reviews posted online suggests that Norton Ghost 9, and 10 are not good (not the old ghost, may Ghost 8 was good but Ghost 9,10 was actually from another product from PowerQuest. Tech support is very bad. Both Ghost and Acronis TrueImage requires the product ACTIVATION (not just a valid serial number key). So does it mean if I purchase this copy, I can only use it to back OS for only ONE single PC only? I had a few PC at home.
How about Acronis TrueImage 8, does it require Activation too? If I have no luck with DriveImage XML, I will probably try to buy the TrueImage 8. But I am not sure if I can get it as it’s an old version and 10 is the latest version.
You haven’t said that you set your new (primary) partition to ACTIVE. Needs to be done to boot. Other things to check include making sure your backup actually got all the OS files you need, and making sure your computer is actually trying to boot from the drive you think it is.
Rufus,
I think you got the key question: Active partition.
I have read many forums since posting my question. This is probably the key problem. I have not tried it at all as I did not know how to set it.
I found that in Window control > system administrative tools>computer management >storage management control menu, there is an option”Mark a partion active”.
Some site mentions about the dos “fdisk” command.
but I don’t know how to use fdisk to set a partion active.
So, in my situation, how would I do it?
(1) connect the drive to the guest-computer (not my subject comp) and use the above control>admis>… page to “set partion active” and then move it back to the home-computer?
(2) If leaving in the home-computer (subject comp), the only option is to boot it up via the BartPE disc and then do WHAT to set it active? If to use “fdisk” command, then what is the full syntax for this?
I did mention the DriveImage XML suggests to change the DISK ID (using tool>New DIsc ID), but why did it NOTallow me to change it? If the discID (like DISK0, DISK1, IDE2…) is reflecting the real position of the target disc in the guest-computer (i.e. plugged in the IDE1 port or the USB port and this is not changeabble, then why did the DriveImage XML FAQ suggests about doing it? It must be change-able except I don’t know how.
Thanks a lot if you can clarify my questions one step further… Actually, making me one stop closer to get the”RESTORE” process work.
Thanks a lot.
Rufus et al:
I haveust moved my target HD to a guest-computer and mount it there. I then use Window Administrative storage management control tool (described in prior posting) and used “Set partion active” option to set it active. Result: The target disc finally worked!
However, I have the biggest question still remains:
If I don’t have a second computer (guest-comp) to set the target partion to ACTIVE within the real window environment, HOW WILL I SET IT TO ACTIVE FROM WITHIN THE BartPE environment? Please help.
The “Window Management Tool” in BartPE does not come up easily. Most of the time, I got nothing. In one instant, it came up with the DISKPART> prompt. That is, it was not intuitive as how to use it. Some other plugins/options in Bart PE appear to be inactive. I am using the latest BartPE 3.1.10 that I just downloaded from its site a week ago.
Could someone here help clarify HOW TO SET THE NEWLY RESTORED PARTION ACTIVE in BartPE (i.e. there is only one computer and that is the one we try to boot up and BartPE is the only resource in this case).
Thanks a lot.
Well,
In lack of support about the DISKPART command, I have searched the web and found some info on that. Some sample commands are:
FDISPART > list disk (to list all disks)
FDISPART > select disk 0 (to select disk 0)
FDISPART > detail disk (get details of disk which must have been selected in a prior command)
I have one additional question and hope someone here can help clarify. So far, I have been able to generate Image file and retore it multiple times (only to DISK0). However, I still failed to restore the image to a SATA drive which is a NON-DISK0. After reading DriveImageXML FAQ, it mentions that it supports image to DISK-0 only.
Why is restoring to non-DISK0 not possible (i.e. only capable to restore to a parallel drive at IDE-port-0). What is the technical reason behind this?
Is there a work around on this? My computer allows me to boot up from any HD in the system. I had tried successfully connected two bootable HD (one PATA and one SATA which I have manually installed WinXP on it) and boot from any of them. Now I want to clone the my PATA (my IDEport0 HD now has all the applications and arrangement I desire) into another serial HD (say DISK-2). That way, I would be able to bypass the need of using a BartPE disc (very slow and less intuitive than the full window environment). If my DISK0 is corrupted, then I will boot up on DISK2 and restore image on it. Similarly, if my DISK2 is corrupted, then I can boot up on DISK0 to DriveImageXML restore image on it.
The problem is: I cannot restore an image to non-DISK0 like the serial HD as a DISK2. Any suggestion will be very much appreciated. I have tried to restore image to DISK2 (or DISK1) and the restoration process went smoothly (i.e. no error message). However, when I attempted to boot up on DISK2, I got error message “Error Reading disk” hit CTRL/ALT/DEL to restart….
Thanks in advance for any inputs you may have.
DriveimageXML certainly is a good program that does what it says, and it’s nice that Runtime makes it available for free. However there’s one thing in particular that drastically limits it’s usefulness. You can’t restore an image file to a partition or hard drive smaller than the original one the image came from, which of course you can do with commercial programs.
I learned this the hard way, when I thought I could use it to help with partitioning my hard drive. I wanted a separate partition for data, so made an image taking up about 10gb, I used a bootable CD with a partitioning program to partition the drive in half, then later ran Driveimage on BartPE to restore the relatively small image file (now on a removable disk) to the first 50gb partition. Big mistake. Luckily of course I could join the partitions back together and since I had the image I didn’t lose any data, but it sure was a huge hassle and waste of time.
So for example, if you have a hard drive filled with 20gb of data, the image of course will be around the same size (or less with compression). If th original hard drive it came from was 220gb, DriveImage won’t restore it to a hard drive with less space than that. It doesn’t matter if the data on the image takes is 10 gb, 2gb, even 500mb, if the hard drive has 200gb it won’t work. It turns out of course they let you know on the web site and the help file, which I should have read more carefully, but of course this is a pretty useful feature for such a program and I’m not really sure why they couldn’t just add it.
Furthermore,they say because they use .xml files for the image, it should be compatible with other drive imaging programs. Of course xml is not a proprietary format, but the latest version of Acronis TrueImage, perhaps the most well-known commercial ghosting program along with Norton Ghost won’t work withfiles created by driveimage. So it’s safe to assume only Driveimage can restore the images it creates.
It is so wonderfull!
I want to make a friend with you, OK?
I just completed a complementary article on “ghosting” Windows (any version) for free using open-source tools.
Link to article
It’s a little more “geeky” in that it uses the command line, but it’s actually simpler in some ways because you do not have to build a BartPE disc.
Enjoy.
Great tutorial, which I believe I followed correctly as my BartPE CD boots and most of the menus work fine. However, I cannot launch DriveImage after booting from the CD. I have the menu point, but when I click on it DriveImage XML does not start.
If I do the same after booting Win XP normally from the HD and try to launch DriveImage from the BartPE Live CD it works!
Can anybody help with some trouble-shooting?
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for the article.
1) if you’ve forgotten to plug in an usb drive before booting BartPE, you can start drive part, rescan and assign a drive letter. Just saves a bit of time.
My problem is that I created an image file of a 120 GB primary partition on a 160 GB drive. DriveImage XML won’t restore to anything but a 160 GB partition on my next drive. I’d really like two volumes.
So will try booting from Puppy CD and running GPartd as suggested at
http://www.habibbijan.com/2007/06/05/ghost-your-windows-system-for-free-using-open-source-tools/
Good luck
for the fisrt time I have made an image of my C: partition and put it to mij backup partion D:.
after troubles in C: I have tried to restore the .xml file to C:,
however a box appears with the text: “Target partition must not be the system drive.”
however restore says;’” select a partition you want to restore the image to. this must be an existing partion which will be overwritten by this operation. restore images to the same or another drive.”"
What do I wrong?
regards,
L. Keesen
Two comments:
Windows Disk Management from BartPE – there is a known issue with running this when the BartPE networking is activated. The root issue is that starting the network changes the computer name, which messes up Disk Management. To solve this problem, go into regedit and change the computer name under
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName
to the name shown in the networking utility so that the names match.
Second, I seem to recall that I have saved an image to a smaller partition by creating the partition using Windows Disk Management or DISKPART and then using the DriveImage XML Browse feature to restore the files. Unfortunately, I can’t test this at the moment.
Nice tutorial!
Many thanks for a fantastic tutorial:~)
Has any one Imaged and Restored Windows VISTA with DI XML v 1.21, effectively??
Cheers
I created a backup of a windows 98se computer using BartPE and DriveImage xml. The files were created using the compressed and split file options. DriveImage xml created the following files on the external drive FAT32 partition:
Drive_C.001 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.002 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.003 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.004 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.005 (454,878 KB)
Drive_C.dat (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.xml (18,474 KB)
I would like to to copy the files to a cd after completing the backup and to restore using the cd’s with DriveImage xml.(or must the files on the cd be copied to an external drive partition before the files can be restored using DriveImage xml).
Thank you for your help
Larry Altic
Hi, I had trouble when I bought a new drive for my laptop and wanted to copy my partitions from the old one. I used the Ultimate Boot Disk – which had DriveImagexml on it. Disk management under computer management worked fine. I craeted my partitions and set the first one active, Drive to Drive copied the partitions and I coulndt boot! Blank screen with blikning cursor. I used the “new Disk ID” feature in Drive Image, but no luck…
Then I booted from the Ultimate Boot disk again and chose Windows recovery console (Press R when it asks), logged into my C:/windows. Then fixmbr, reboot, and viola! It said that mbr was wierd and nonstadnard and it would damage my drive, but it fixed everything.
Very fine tutorial , habibbijan , the one who is not a terrorist.
Just what I was looking for.
No more 1.5-hour xp installing-sessions with following 2 hours of flipping through my cd-wallets for cds with the right drivers and programs. : )
And all this fine programs and tutorial without having to pay a single Kroner to the man.
Thanx.
(BTW. One of the first things I read on runtime.org was about DriveImage XML being unable to reimage a smaller drive. It`s sad that some ppl have to complain about what is free.)
If you ghost your hard drive, format it, and use the image, will you gain the same increase in speed as if you simply reinstalled windows?
Matt, “imaging” tools do just that, take an image of the drive. So you don’t get any speed improvement because a highly fragmented drive will be recreated exactly as it was before imaging when you restore the image to the disk.
Extremely helpful. However, I probably spent about two hours searching the web to see how I could accomplish this task without having the original Windows XP disk. I found somewhere that the installation files were probably in C:\I386, and this turned out to be true (I have OEM Windows installation). Then I finally just ran PE Builder v3.1.10a, and lo and behold it actually just searched my hard drive and found the files. It lists it as c:\, but don’t worry — it knows to go to the I386 subfolder and not burn the entire C drive. I hope this can save someone else hours of extra work.
I created an image of a 37.2GB Windows 2000 Professional system drive. I ran this while booted up normally, and not from a floppy or CD.
When I try to restore it to a brand new, single partition 320GB drive, I get this error message:
Could not resize FAT32 partition
Write Error: The parameter is incorrect
How do I fix this error?
Has anyone experienced this error:
I get this error when running DriveImageXML version 1.21 on a Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition:
“Data File Create Errorâ€
“File ‘’ could not be created. Access violation at address 004FB766 in module ‘dixml.exe’. Read of address 00000027.â€
I’ve searched all the discussion groups and forums and not seen reference to this error. The server runs MS SQL Server 2000, could this be the problem? I’ve got other servers on this system that all backup correctly.
Can anyone help with this?
Runtime support were not helpful.