Create a hidden partition, place your image of the boot partition (usually C drive) in this hidden partition. I used PartedMagic to access GParted, and a file manager to copy the image into this drive.

Create a .BAT file to accelerate performing a restore/recovery. Name this file RESTORE.BAT. Here's mine:

@ECHO OFF
ECHO.
GHOST.EXE -CLONE,MODE=PRESTORE,SRC=2:4\EXT5220_C.GHO:1,DST=2:2 -SURE -FX
EXIT

This time your local drive is 2, not 1. 1 is the FDD

Create a DOS startup disk; this time using a flash disk (FDD) with the previous HP USB DISK STORAGE FORMAT utility. Only include the neccessary files: MSDOS.SYS, IO.SYS, and COMMAND.COM.

No CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT !!

Copy a dos version of GHOST onto the root of the FDD, and also copy the RESTORE.BAT to the root of the FDD. Boot with this Flash disk, from the commad prompt type RESTORE

How is that?   

@ esco


Quote:

Create a DOS startup disk; this time using a flash disk (FDD)

So, FDD means *Flash Disk Drive* in this thread, and not *Floppy Disk Drive*?!

There are so many abbreviations--I'm always challenged to keep track of them all!


Quote:

Boot with this Flash disk, from the commad prompt type RESTORE

So, your system supports booting from a USB flash drive!  I assume it is assigned the drive letter A:\ during boot to DOS--and you're at the A:\ DOS prompt before you type *RESTORE*--is that correct?

Quote:

So, FDD means *Flash Disk Drive* in this thread, and not *Floppy Disk Drive*?!

Absolutely correct. It means Flash Disk Drive


Quote:

So, your system supports booting from a USB flash drive!

YES


Quote:

I assume it is assigned the drive letter A: during boot to DOS--and you're at the A: DOS prompt before you type *RESTORE*--is that correct?

NO. Its NOT assigned drive letter A: Instead its assigned drive letter C:
I was really amazed when I used this utility from HP. I don't really know where or how it ends up at C:
I suspect MSDOS.SYS. But I did not modify my MSDOS.SYS, I opened it with notepad but I just saw 1 line:
;W98EBD
I don't remember where I got my MSDOS.SYS

Could it be programmmed into the utility to play around with drive letter assignments !? Could be possible

@ esco


Quote:

NO. Its NOT assigned drive letter A: Instead its assigned drive letter C:

Oh...interesting!

Your flashdrive must have its *media type bit* set to HDD instead of removable media!  Did you set that yourself, or did it come that way.

If you would, in Windows mount that flashdrive and look at it under Disk Management--is it a *Basic Disk* or called *Removable Media*?


Quote:

I was really amazed when I used this utility from HP. I don't really know where or how it ends up at C:

It might be the HP utility, but I've not heard of it doing that.

The *media type bit* is apparently on the USB flashdrive's controller--and at least on some brands of flashdrive you can find utilities that can change it--so that bit is in some cases flashable!

When you hook the flashdrive up and re-boot--do you have a *boot menu* that you can bring up--F8 on my system--what does it call your flashdrive--USB FDD (floppy disk drive), or USB HDD?  Or, enter the bios and look at the boot order settings--how is the flash drive listed there--again the flashdrive probably has to be hooked up prior to going to the BIOS!

@ esco

My USB flash drives show as Removable Storage and when formatted with the HP Utility they boot as C: drive. I've always thought it was normal.

FreeDOS USB flash drives, not created by the HP Utility, boot as C: drive.

Yes, flash drives typically show up in Windows as a removable hard disk.  At least current flash drives do.

But evidently that was not always the case.  Several years ago, I recall a discussion of how a manufacturer could design a flash drive to present itself as a floppy disk or a hard disk.  A flash drive has to have some sort of firmware built into it--of course it does, or else it would be not much more than additional ram.  I think most flash drives nowadays might be hard-wired at the factory to appear to the system as though it were a hard disk, but that may be just a manufacturer's design decision.  There were at least some HP flash drives at one time that could be reconfigured one way or the other.

I remember tinkering with an old version of the aforementioned HP utility several years ago and it had an option to configure the flash drive like a hard disk or as a giant, super-sized floppy disk.  (I don't know if any recent version of the HP utility still has that feature . . . it's so hard to tell because HP keeps changing their pages and revising their software, and yanking old versions of their software off the 'net.  That's why most of the search results you find in google searches end up as dead links.)

I was reminded of this recently when I saw the mention of Buffalo USB wireless adapters in another thread.  It reminded me that I still had a Buffalo WLI-KG54-AI tucked in the back of a drawer here.  This particular device was unusual in that it was not only a wireless-g adapter, but also had a built-in USB flash drive that presented itself to the system as a CD drive!  Plug the device into a USB port and Windows would "find new hardware" for both a nic and a CD drive--and if you hadn't disabled auto-play in Windows it would automatically install the Buffalo wireless drivers from the fake "CD".

I bought the device because at the time I thought it seemed like a cool idea, but later realized it would have been a lot more practical if the "CD" part of the flash drive had shown up like a regular flash drive (so you could update the nic drivers) instead of like a read-only CD.