Is this Post still active? I have a question about my drive, but I do not want to type a long post that no one will reply to, please let me know, thanks

ok, Here goes my question and hopefully someone can help me with my issue.

It's been about 6 months since I read this board. It help me a great deal on how to create a bootable USB HDD and use it under DOS.  First let me give you all a little background.

My Company uses DELL computers, so I bought a seagate 100GB 2.5 HDD and a compusa USB Enclosure.  I made the the drive bootable on a FAT32 parition.  I added my images and ghost to it.  In order to get USB 2.0 speeds i use the Aspiehci.sys /int /all driver from Iomega.  It works great with the Dell computers Optiplex workstations and PowerEdge Servers.  I tell it to boot up to the USB drive.  It loads fine
then i run DRVLOAD.exe to load the driver aspiehci.sys instead of running it from config.sys.  The reason I do not load the driver in config.sys is because some computers have USB KB and Mouse only, and when the driver loads it kills the KB and mouse.  So everything is good I can copy an image to the USB HDD and I can re-image the computer from the USB drive at 2.0 speeds.  Well now it looks like we are going to start using HP workstations and servers.  I got an HP 5150 AMD 64bit workstation.  When I load the aspiehci.sys driver, it will not recognize the USB drive any more. When I select ghost or my batch file it says cannot read drive C: abort, retry, fail.  If I don't load the driver, ghosting the workstation is so slow.

Then I tried the usbAspi driver using the /v  /norst and other combinatons and it recgonizes my drive sometimes but it kills my USB KB and Mouse, so I cannot type anymore, so its useless.

My question is does anyone have a USB DOS driver that successfully load USB 2.0 to work with a external USB HDD.

If anyone has experiance with HP workstations and have a way to make 2.0 speeds work, please let me know. 

If you know of a type of external enclosure that works, let me know.

Thanks for reading such a long email and for you help.

elloco07

If I follow your description, it sound like your systems have offered built-in USB support for your keyboard and mice--and allowed for booting from an external USB HDD.

But, that ability to boot from an external USB HDD operates at USB 1.x unless you load a DOS USB 2.0 driver--and the Iomega DOS USB driver *Aspiehci.sys* has worked to give you USB 2.0 speeds (I assume you are also loading the Iomega driver *guest.exe* as well--it would be helpful if you posted your successful *config.sys* and *autoexec.bat* and a *list of boot files* that has been working for you up to now so we can look at what they contain).  And that * Aspiehci.sys* Iomega driver has not interfered with your USB mouse or keyboards.

Now, with your new *HP 5150 AMD 64bit workstation*, you still have the ability to boot with the USB HDD, but it runs at USB 1.x speed--and if you attempt to load either the Iomega DOS USB driver or the Panasonic DOS USB driver (usbaspi.sys), either will cause you to loose access to your USB HDD.  So, that sounds like there is a conflict (incompatibility) between the built-in USB support driver and the DOS USB driver you are trying to load.

1.  How many USB ports are present/how many USB controllers are on the system?  Have you tried different ports?  Are other USB devices hooked up at the same time that are unrelated to what you are trying to do?

2.  Have you tried using a memory manager when loading DOS, i.e. *himem.sys*?

3.  Have you tried loading the DOS drivers in a different order--if possible?

4.  Are there other DOS drivers that you are loading that are not necessary for this specific task?

5.  If your systems allow for booting from an external USB HDD--why are your systems not supporting USB 2.0 for the HDD?  Seems like if they are new enough to support booting from an external device, then they should support USB 2.0. 

Does the presence of the USB mouse and/or keyboard force the controller into only USB 1.x mode?

6.  Have you tried other USB HDD's--maybe your external HDD is incompatible with the built-in USB support driver except in USB 1.x mode, but other USB HDD's may be compatible--without loading that Iomega *Aspiehci.sys* or the Panasonic *usbAspi.sys* drivers.

Report back with the results of your further testing.

Thanks for the reply nightowl.  let me reply 1 by 1

1. There are 8 usb ports, 2 front, 6 on back.  There are 2 usb controllers and 1 enhanced.

2.I do not use any memory management when loading DOS

3. The only DOS driver I load is the aspiehci.sys and i load this when I am about to run ghost in my batchfile.

4. No other Dos Drivers

5. I don't know

6. I have not tried this yet, But will do later this week.

I will try pescadors suggestions about loading the following
DEVICE = himem.sys
DEVICE = usb\usbaspi.sys /e /v /norst
DEVICE = usb\di1000dd.sys
DOS = high,umb
LASTDRIVE = Z

and see if this works.  I will report back the my results, later today.

Thanks

NightOwl wrote on Oct 21^st, 2006 at 9:22am:

elloco07

When I have used the Ghost DOS USB driver:

drvload c:\usb\

aspiehci.sys

/int /all 

I have always seen the Ghost driver *guest.exe* being loaded afterwards--that driver was responsible for assigning a drive letter to a USB HDD--has your experience been different?

Looking at that load line above, I'm assuming you have booted from your external USB HDD, and a drive letter has already been assigned by your system's ability to boot from a USB device.

Guess no one has no idea on how to make this work.

It could be that 64bit chipsets have an issue,  oh well, thanks

El_Pescador

(Edit by NightOwl, 11/16/2006--El_Pescador has revised his above outline and my comments below are no longer applicable!)

Your steps and screen shots in reply #236 are confusing and possibly misleading--

The Ghost Boot Wizard does not create the [config.sys] that you show in the *Review* screen shot for the Boot Wizard--someone unfamiliar with using the Boot Wizard will not understand that you appear to have *edited* that *Review* screen to show the lines you intend to add manually later--unless I don't understand what you have accomplished here!

You appear to have left out the step(s) used to initially create the floppy boot disk that you show in the Windows Explorer screen shot with the *Ghost* and *USB* sub-directories--which shows only the *modified* file content of the USB sub-directory.  Again, I don't think a new user will follow how you got from *point A* to *point B*.

El_Pescador

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Hope you're feeling better--hate that *brain fog* some of the pain meds cause--like the reduced pain though!

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No *approval* needed--was just trying to keep you *on your toes*!

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Not a problem to do--I have never seen a case where *emm386.exe* was needed--only *himem.sys*--but if someone is loading a lot of other DOS drivers for other purposes besides using Ghost, then having *emm386.exe* provide those UMB's to load some of the DOS drivers would help provide more *conventional memory* for DOS programs.

Whenever *emm386.exe* is loaded in DOS and then one starts PartitionMagic (PM)--I always get a notice during its loading that PM will be restricted to using only 32 MB because of the presence of *emm386.exe*--PM seems to work just fine--so I don't really know the reason for that message--but, thought I'd throw that into the mix as FYI!

The one circumstance that I have found that I need to load *emm386.exe* is when I want to do a *screen capture* in DOS using the program *ScreenThief*--both Ghost and GDisk require that *emm386.exe* be loaded in order to take a screen shot of those programs--other programs, like PartitionMagic--no problems without that *emm386.exe* being loaded!