TrDo,

I haven't used DiscWizard. What are you planning to do?

Hi Brian and Tator,

@Brian:  I was delighted to find out that DiscWizard is a free app for people using Seagate drives, and as such my research efforts in deciding which Disc Imaging I should use, now come to an end. I have decided to use the DiscWizard app to back up my drive, and I wanted to clarify these details-at my earlier post-, before I do.  To be honest I'm a bit afraid to use it; not that I've heard bad reviews about it, it's just that I haven't done it before and I'm afraid of doing something wrong.

@Tator: I've seen that you have used it, quite extensively.  I'll follow your advice in creating the BartPE plug-in, and I would appreciate if you could tell me whether if I was to successfully create the bootable media cd (from DiscWizard), I could then test it to boot my pc without creating any serious problems to my pc, which currently runs fine.  It would be a test, on a fine working pc! (note:I run Vista Home Premium 32).

Thank you both very much for your time and efforts.  I hope we keep this thread running for two reasons:

1. Not all people can afford the expensive alternative apps to DiscWizard.  I know there are some free apps, but that requires a different discussion basis.

2. It's one of the very few decent threads I found on the web, about this issue.

Thanks again.

TrDo.

Hi Tator,

I do not have access to a WinXP system.  What should I do then?...I'll try to use the boot media cd, to boot.

Let me see if I got that right; In case it fails to boot through the boot media cd, I can't use the BartPE CD, because I won't be able to create it in the frst place, right?

But why the BartPE CD is so important? I cannot understand that.  I mean, if the boot media cd works, should I also have the BartPE as well?

Thanks a lot mate.

TrDo.

Just curious:  Will the Seagate DiscWizard tool restore a backup image or perform a clone operation to a non-Seagate brand hard disk drive?

Thanks.

The options in Seagate Disc Wizard are "Clone," "Add New Drive," "Create Image," "Restore Image" and "Verify Image."  I've used it to create and verify images from from non Seagate drives and restore images to Seagate drives as well as 1 instance of create and verify image from non Seagate drive and restore image to non Seagate drive.  I suspect clone from 1 drive to another should work equally well whether drives are Seagate or not if the solution in reply #12 of this thread works, but I've not yet had the need or the opportunity to try it. 

BTW I always verify images created with Seagate Disc Wizard and always run the "Check Image Integrity" for Ghost images to be sure the images are good and are restorable.  There have been 1 or 2 times the Ghost image failed to pass integrity check, and I had to recreate the image which passed integrity check after its recreation.

Today I had the opportunity to try the solution in reply #12 on 2 non Seagate drives.  I got the message "No Seagate drives were found on your system..."  After pressing "Alt" and then typing "to" as instructed in the solution, DiscWizard continued to completion.

Just recently I encountered an older Athlon 1900+ system running WinXP that failed to boot to my BartPE CD even though it boots Ghost 2003 CD just fine.  Also I recently got my first laptop running Win7 Home Premium 64 bit that also failed to boot to the BartPE CD. 

Some Google searching found there's a newer version of Seagate Discwizard which is version 13 that is required for Win7 versus the version 11 used in the BartPE CD.  Download and install of Discwizard version 13 resulted in ability to create a Discwizard boot CD that does boot on the system which failed to boot with the boot CD created using Discwizard version 11.

I'm disappointed the BartPE concept has obviously become outdated, but I'm glad Seagate fixed boot issues with the previous Discwizard version 11.  Also the latest Discwizard version 13 may also be used to partition a 3TB drive into 2 or more partition to use full capacity of larger drives on WinXP systems if any are interested in that.  There's a link under the Knowledge Base link on the Seagate site that tells how to use the latest Discwizard version for that purpose plus other helpful links there.