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Dirk B

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BootIt NG
Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:16pm

Hello, this is my first post. First I'd like to thank whomever it is that operates this discussion board. I have no knowledge as to how they operate, but I'm glad they are. Is there anyone here who has experience/knowledge with BootIt NG? I'm primarily interested in using it as a boot manager, but also for imaging. Thanks in advance for any advice/help that might be put forth.

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Brian

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	Re: BootIt NG Reply #1 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:26pm @ Dirk B BING is one of my favourite apps. Most of your questions will be answered here... http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/index.htm How many OS are you planning to use?
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Rad

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	Re: BootIt NG Reply #2 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:31pm Did not know BootIT NG had imaging capabilities. Thot it was strictly a boot manager. Does BING have good imaging capabilities? Basic only? What is rationale of combining a boot manager with imaging client (or vice versa). Why one of your favorites? (that's a big vote for them)
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Dirk B

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #3 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:33pm

Thanks for the quick response Brian! Well, what I would like to do is: I just purchased a 1TB HDD. I'd like to partition it into several (I understand that I am not limited to 4 primary partitions with BootIt NG) primary partitions and run several different Windows XP/software configurations. What I'd like to do after partitioning is restore a base configuration of the OS to each partition, and then proceed with different application installations on the various drives. Is this something that is not too challenging? I am only moderately technically savvy, but willing to learn.

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Brian

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #4 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:43pm

Dirk B,

That will be a dream. First up, I do use unlimited primaries. I hesitated for the first six months as I didn't understand the concept but now I wouldn't go back to limited primaries.

There is a video on the page I posted that outlines what you need to do. Create your partitions. Install a single WinXP. Copy the partition to unallocated space, multiple times. Set up Boot menus (called Boot Edit).

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Dirk B

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	Re: BootIt NG Reply #5 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:51pm I've tried to do this (albeit with just 4 primary drives) using Norton Partition Magic, but it only boots from the first primary drive. When I use PQBOOT to change the active drive and then boot from it, it says 'Operating System Not Found' Do you have any experience with PM? If so, should what I did have worked?
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Brian

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #6 - Mar 21^st, 2009 at 2:29pm

Dirk B wrote on Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:51pm:

If so, should what I did have worked?

Yes. Before BING I used pqboot and it worked well. 'Operating System Not Found' suggests the OS hasn't been set active and that is what pqboot is supposed to do. When you look with PM, is the chosen OS "active"?

Edit.... Are you referring to booting an OS from the second HD? pqboot can't do that. PM either.

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TheShadow

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #7 - Mar 22^nd, 2009 at 6:45am

I'm finding this thread very interesting, although I've never heard of BootIt NG.

But while reading about multiple OS's on a single drive, I'm reminded of years ago when I tried that myself. One day that HD crashed and I lost two OS's and all the associated files, not just one OS.

Since then, I take a more "Old School" approach to running multiple OS's.
On both of my computers, an OLD one and a NEW one, I can get into the BIOS boot menu by just tapping the F11 key during boot-up. It looks something like this:

I'm currently running two Maxtor 160 gig SATA2 drives for Vista Ult. and Win-7 and a Maxtor 200 gig SATA2 for XP-Pro. Each drive is backed up by Ghost, to another drive, so if one drive shoots craps, I have a backup that's easily restored to a new drive. My main drive, my XP drive, is also backed up to a bootable DVD, for Off-Site storage.

NO WAY in this lifetime, would I ever put all my eggs in one basket.
Every HD will fail ! The question is not IF but when and we never know when.

Just a thought.

Shadow Cool

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Brian

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #8 - Mar 22^nd, 2009 at 2:46pm

@

Rad

Rad wrote on Mar 21^st, 2009 at 12:31pm:

Does BING have good imaging capabilities?

Yes, image and restore from the boot disk (Floppy, CD or USB) or from BING installed on the HD. Validate function is present too. You can also do partition clones but not whole HD clones.

Until about a year ago all TeraByte Unlimited imaging products made compatible images. They could restore images made by each other. A year ago, version 2 of IFW, IFD, IFL was released and these images aren't compatible with BING images. No big deal but we are waiting for ver 2 BING. The version 2 products are faster than ver 1.

Unlike Partition Magic, BING is able to work with 2048 sector offset partitions as well as our familiar cylinder aligned partitions. BING contains a BCD Edit tool to fix Vista if you have a boot problem. There is a tool to zero the diskID which is handy if you have drive letter issues after cloning an OS.

When multi-booting, you can choose from a Boot Menu at startup or you can choose the next item to boot by double clicking a shortcut in Windows. An OS on any HD can be booted. DOS can be booted from a partition anywhere on the HD. The 2 or 8 GB limit doesn't apply.

The unlimited primary partitions ability is interesting. Over 200 primaries are supported. Partition data is stored in other sectors of Track 0, beyond the standard MBR. However, when an item is booted you can still only have up to 4 primary partitions in the standard LBA-0 partition table. When you set up the partition table for a boot item you would select the OS partition and any data partitions that you want to be seen when the OS has booted. In Disk Management, all other partitions are shown as Unallocated Space so Disk Management must not be used for partitioning when unlimited primaries are in use. If you desire, you can have several Extended Partitions but only one can be present in a boot item's quota of up to 4 primary partitions.

And BING fits on a floppy.

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Dan Goodell

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #9 - Mar 22^nd, 2009 at 8:06pm

I, too, am a fan of BootIt-NG. Brian's given a good description of its capabilities. I began using it about 9 yrs ago when I was looking for a boot manager that would support LBA booting of partitions beyond the then-new 8-GB barrier. (It's worked so well that I must confess I had not even paid any attention to Terabyte's version 2 stuff until Brian enlightened me to the scope of the improvements.)

BootIt-NG is a combination of Terabyte's boot manager, partition manager, and partition imager, all rolled into a single self-booting floppy! At $35, you won't find a better value anywhere, especially when the competition often charges twice that much for just one of those three utilities.

Rad wrote: "Does BING have good imaging capabilities? Basic only?"

Depends on what you mean by basic. Everything Terabyte does is done conservatively, which makes it rock solid and reliable but sometimes that means things are left out. For instance, the partitioner will format FAT32 and linux partitions, but not NTFS. Consider that NTFS is a proprietary format, for which Microsoft has never actually released the specs. To guarantee you get an error-free format, BING will create the partition but expects you to use a Microsoft tool to actually format the file system.

Terabyte's v1 products would only clone/restore to partitions of the same size as the original, forcing you to deal with partition resizing and cloning as two separate tasks. The v2 products can do both together, so I guess David (the developer) now feels he doesn't need to take such a conservative approach.

And talk about conservative... he spent 10 yrs tweaking version 1 (and all have been free upgrades, I might add), while Ghost has been through... how many versions?

OTOH, while some folks here have spent countless hours customizing special Ghost 2003 boot disks, BootIt-NG has for some time included built-in support for numerous enhancements like USB, NTFS aligned, and 2048-aligned partitions.

Brian wrote: "BING contains a BCD Edit tool to fix Vista if you have a boot problem."

IMHO, BING's BCD editor is also much easier to use than most alternatives, and easily fixes up what Ghost 2003 is incapable of handling. There have been questions about Ghost 2003's compatibility with Vista in other threads. Even though Ghost 2003 doesn't support Vista, I can use it to image/clone a Vista OS partition, then use BING's BCD editor, and the clone works fine.

Brian wrote: "DOS can be booted from a partition anywhere on the HD. The 2 or 8 GB limit doesn't apply."

For the sake of accuracy, that depends on the DOS version. MS-DOS 6.22, Microsoft's last official DOS version, did not know LBA addressing, so cannot see anything beyond the first 8 GB of the disk. DOS 7.1 (the version underlying Windows 98SE but never separately released) understood LBA, so isn't bound by the 8 GB limit--or even the 137 GB limit, for that matter. Other DOS variants, such as later versions of DR-DOS, FreeDOS, and Dell's DRMK are also not constrained.

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Rad

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #10 - Mar 23^rd, 2009 at 11:33am

Well, fact that both Brian & Dan are fans, means I'm interested. Been looking for an alternative to Ghost, since I've had a few problems with it not creating an image (tho never with it not restoring, which would be a much nastier problem).

For some reason NG14 has been getting stuck at 5% calculating time to image (C drive to external USB) .. resulting destination folder on external drive containing 0 bytes (nada). No disk-activity .. no CPU usage.

Can't even cancel back-up job .. have to reboot to clear it.

I've always been able to resolve my NG14 probs by uninstalling, running the Norton Removal Tool and re-installing. I suspect the problem is due to a conflict with some other software on my laptop. But I've had to do the uninstall/reinstall deal twice now (2nd time just last night). This suks due to all the req'd reboots.

I like that Terabyte has been in biz ~ a decade, so no new-comer to the imaging world. And I like that Dan says:

Quote:

Everything Terabyte does is done conservatively, which makes it rock solid and reliable

since reliability is most important to me. And I especially like that I can *create* an image from bootable media .. which I can't do with NG14.

I really don't like that NG14 won't let me create an image from bootable media.

I tried TrueImage Home 2009, but those imaging operations reported as 'failed'. Lotsa disk activity to start, but ultimately 0 bytes in destination folder.

Thanks for sharing. Are you guys using this as your *primary* imaging utility?

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #11 - Mar 23^rd, 2009 at 12:30pm

Brian wrote on Mar 22^nd, 2009 at 2:46pm:

No big deal but we are waiting for ver 2 BING. The version 2 products are faster than ver 1.

What's the skinny with BING.2? Coming soon?

What other products combine boot mgr with partitioning + imaging? Paragon? Acronis?

Quote:

And BING fits on a floppy.

All 3 utilities, or just the imaging part?

What's the procedure to create a bootable CD? (Nevermind. I see on the PDF they use make disk. I prolly create a *.iso and burn using Nero.)

Guess my last question would be .. do you see any problem installing BING alongside NG14?

If I am primarily interested in imaging, should I go with one of the other products, such as IFW or IFD?

What's the diff between these products and the imaging utilty that comes with BING?

If I have GRUB/Ubuntu already installed as multi-boot, do you forsee problem?

would be happy to just make a bootable CD and use BING's imaging feature that way .. if possible.

Why would somebody need more than 4 primary partitions? .. since Windows can boot from extended/logical drives.

How about Daemon Tools, which I use? Any conflicts there?

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #12 - Mar 23^rd, 2009 at 4:24pm

okay, i created a bing boot cd from *.iso (using nero) no problem.

cd booted fine.

i did NOT install to hard drive, cuz i'm nervous about already having GRUB/ubuntu installed.

on subsequent screen after cancelling out of install/setup, i see:

*settings
*partition work
*resume (which takes you back to previous screen)
*backup
*restore
*help
*reboot

in Settings, i see (among other things) that usb 2.0 sppt is enabled, which i think i want cuz i want to image my c drive (laptop has c, d,f) to external usb.

I would kinda like 'Full Partition List' and 'Use Volume Labels' both enabled, but they are not. Would this help? How to enable on pre-burned CD?

i clicked backup and see HD0 and HD1 both available to be selected (checkmark boxes not grayed out)

if i select neither HD0 nor HD1 and proceed, it instantly reports operation completed successfully.

if i select (put check-mark in box) HD0 and proceed, it instantly says 'The backup operation of HD0 failed'

i'm guessing HD0 = internal laptop and HD1 = external USB.

? help?

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Brian

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #13 - Mar 23^rd, 2009 at 5:47pm

Rad,

I'll address your other questions later. It's fortunate that you haven't yet installed it to the HD as it will wipe out grub. When you eventually decide to install it to the HD, this is how you fix grub...

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=231

In Partition Work, look at the partitions in HD 0 and HD 1 to see which drive is which. Usually HD 0 is your internal HD but sometimes a USB drive becomes HD 0.

This is how you create/restore images...

Quote:

Create a compressed partition image
1 On the desktop, click Partition Work.
2 In the Partitions list, select the partition or volume that you want to create a compressed
image of, and then click Image under Actions.
3 In the Image dialog box, click Create Image to create a new image, and then click OK.
At the bottom of the Work with Partitions window, BootIt NG displays the Paste Pending
for Image Create message.
4 In the Partitions list, click the free-space entry, CD/DVD R/RW drive, NTFS or FAT/FAT32
partition or volume where you want to paste the copied partition image, and then click Paste
under Actions.
If you are pasting to a free-space volume and you use the same extended partition with
DOS/Win9x/WinME then, for correct operation of the OS, you must ensure that the last
volume in the extended partition is supported by the OS - i.e. FAT or FAT32.
DVD-RW discs must be new or fully blanked (not quick blanked) or the write process will fail.
5 Do one of the following:
• If you are pasting to a free-space entry, in the Paste Image dialog box under Partition
Information, type the Name of the partition that you want to create.
• If you are pasting to a CD or DVD drive, the image will span as many disks as needed.
• If you are pasting to an NTFS or FAT/FAT32 partition or volume, in the Save As dialog
box under File Name, type the name of the file to be created. This name must be 8 or less
characters with no spaces.
• If you are pasting to an NTFS or FAT/FAT32 partition or volume, BootIt NG lets you
adjust the file size being created so that you can copy the image files to a CD or DVD
using another program. If you don’t plan on copying the image files to a CD or DVD,
then it's best to limit the image files to 2 GB because 4 GB is only valid with certain
operating systems such as Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003.
6 When BootIt NG asks if you want a validation, click Yes or No.
If you click Yes with the Byte for Byte check box selected, BootIt NG rereads all of the
source data again and compares it with the compressed image; otherwise, BootIt NG
performs a normal Validation to ensure that the new file is valid (and that the crc/checksum
matches).
7 Click OK.

Restore a compressed partition image from a file
1 On the desktop, click Partition Work.
2 In the Partitions list, select the location of the compressed partition or volume (or CD/DVD
drive) that you want to restore, and then click Image under Actions.
If you are restoring from a CD, DVD, or image partition type, BootIt NG displays the Image
Pending for Restore message and you can skip to step 5.
3 In the Image dialog box, click Restore from file to restore an existing image from a file, and
then click OK.
4 In the Open dialog box, type the File Name of the image file to be restored, and then click
OK.
5 In the Partitions list, click the free-space block or an existing partition large enough to
contain the restored image, and then click Paste under Actions.
To see the exact required size, while the Paste Pending for Image Restore message is
displayed, press and hold down both the Ctrl key and the Shift key.
6 If overwriting a partition, BootIt NG asks if you would like to validate the image; this is used
to ensure that the image crc/checksum is valid. (If the process aborts on the actual restore, the
partition boot sector is cleared.)

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Brian

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Re: BootIt NG
Reply #14 - Mar 23^rd, 2009 at 6:09pm

Rad,

If you don't plan to use the boot manager functions, BING doesn't need to be installed. Everything else can be done from the CD. You can continue to use Ghost 14 whether BING is installed to the HD or not.

I prefer IFW/IFD (version 2) over BING for my imaging. They are faster and I like imaging from Windows with IFW. I know you prefer imaging from a boot disk so IFD would suit you.

BING costs $35 but if you buy the "Bundle" for $50 you get BING, IFW, IFD, IFL and TBOSDT. I use the lot.

I wouldn't hold my breath for ver 2 BING. It could be a long way in the future. No announcements have been made.

Quote:

in Settings, i see (among other things) that usb 2.0 sppt is enabled

Most people find USB 2 works better if this is not ticked. I'm surprised yours is ticked. The default is not ticked. You probably chose this option when you created the ISO. It's only for those BIOS that don't work well with USB 2.

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