Cloning verification

[null]

I've recently added a verification check to my backup.bat file and
thought others might be interested. The use of xxcopy for routine
backup to another hard drive has been discussed here in the past. I
use the versatile locate.com by Charles Dye for verification. It also
supplies additional useful data. It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.highfiber.com/~raster/freeware.htm

Place both xxcopy.exe and locate.com in the same folder as the below
backup.bat file:
**********************************************************************
@echo off
cls
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo CLONING DRIVE C: TO DRIVE D:
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
xxcopy c:\ d:\ /clone/YY
cls
echo ----------------------------------------------------------------
echo GENERATING DRIVE C: DATA SUMMARY
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
locate c:\*.* /s
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo GENERATING DRIVE D: DATA SUMMARY
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
locate d:\*.* /s
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo FINISHED!
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
********************************************************************
Info produced by locate.com using the /S (summary) switch includes:

1. Total number of items found (files plus directories)
2. Total number of files and how many have the hidden or system file
attribute set (H/S)
3. Total number of directories and how many have the hidden or system
file attribute set (H/S)
4. Total number of bytes stored on the drive

I find that the summary reports for the two drives are identical with
one peculiar exception. On my Win ME PC there's a directory off of
Windows named RECENT. It's copied ok but there are no special file
attributes on the source directory while the destination directory is
copied with hidden and read-only attributes set. I don't why this
happens but it's obviously no problem.

I'll note that I no longer use any exclusions since I wish to see that
everything copies exactly and the total numbers of files and folders
agree identically. There's no harm in allowing the swap file to copy
(which it does).

Also, I've abandoned system restore since it's unnecessary when using
a cloned backup drive. I've found that after disabling system restore
you can delete the entire c_restore structure with no ill effect. I do
this after booting using the system boot diskette and then typing:

deltree /y c:\_restore


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

I've recently added a verification check to my backup.bat file and
thought others might be interested. The use of xxcopy for routine
backup to another hard drive has been discussed here in the past. I
use the versatile locate.com by Charles Dye for verification. It also
supplies additional useful data. It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.highfiber.com/~raster/freeware.htm

Place both xxcopy.exe and locate.com in the same folder as the below
backup.bat file:
**********************************************************************
@echo off
cls
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo CLONING DRIVE C: TO DRIVE D:
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
xxcopy c:\ d:\ /clone/YY
cls
echo ----------------------------------------------------------------
echo GENERATING DRIVE C: DATA SUMMARY
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
locate c:\*.* /s
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo GENERATING DRIVE D: DATA SUMMARY
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
locate d:\*.* /s
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
echo FINISHED!
echo -----------------------------------------------------------------
********************************************************************
Info produced by locate.com using the /S (summary) switch includes:

1. Total number of items found (files plus directories)
2. Total number of files and how many have the hidden or system file
attribute set (H/S)
3. Total number of directories and how many have the hidden or system
file attribute set (H/S)
4. Total number of bytes stored on the drive

I find that the summary reports for the two drives are identical with
one peculiar exception. On my Win ME PC there's a directory off of
Windows named RECENT. It's copied ok but there are no special file
attributes on the source directory while the destination directory is
copied with hidden and read-only attributes set. I don't why this
happens but it's obviously no problem.

I'll note that I no longer use any exclusions since I wish to see that
everything copies exactly and the total numbers of files and folders
agree identically. There's no harm in allowing the swap file to copy
(which it does).

Also, I've abandoned system restore since it's unnecessary when using
a cloned backup drive. I've found that after disabling system restore
you can delete the entire c_restore structure with no ill effect. I do
this after booting using the system boot diskette and then typing:

deltree /y c:\_restore


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

Art,
Sounds great. Thanks! I just have one question:

Have you successfully wiped your main drive and then cloned it from
the backup? It seems to me that some of the shortcuts will misdirect.
However, since I've never had to do this, I don't know for sure.

 

[null]

Art,
Sounds great. Thanks! I just have one question:

Have you successfully wiped your main drive and then cloned it from
the backup? It seems to me that some of the shortcuts will misdirect.
However, since I've never had to do this, I don't know for sure.

There's no need to wipe your main drive to test out the cloned drive.
Just substitute it for the main drive and use it as the primary drive.
This assumes, of course, that you've made the clone bootable when you
first prepared it for use.

I have tested restoring from the cloned drive as well.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

There's no need to wipe your main drive to test out the cloned drive.
Just substitute it for the main drive and use it as the primary drive.

Yeah, I kinda already knew that. Just didn't want to pull the cover to
switch drives or mess with the BIOS and-or jumpers. Haven't really
looked at it hard enough to figure out how to do it on my system. 80)>

This assumes, of course, that you've made the clone bootable when you
first prepared it for use.

I lucked out on that one in a way. What happened was that I made the
old hard drive the slave when I installed the new one, and (obviously)
the new one I configured as the master. Did a total reinstall on the
new one and copied my data files over from the old one. Then I wiped
the old drive. Was really happy when I learned about XXCopy in this
group. I was then able to clone the new one onto the old one. This has
served well for restoring lost files, but I really like the idea of
getting rid of system restore completely.

I have tested restoring from the cloned drive as well.

Do you mean a whole restoration or a partial?

Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

Thanks for replying, Art.

 

[null]

Do you mean a whole restoration or a partial?

Partial restores. Minor stuff. Comes in handy sometimes.

My motivation, BTW, back when I started with this, was that I never
want to have to reinstall Windows. I put quite a bit of time and work
into "hardening" and altering Windows, and I don't want to have to go
through it again. Fortunately, I've never had to use the clone on a
emergency basis.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[jona]

There's no need to wipe your main drive to test out the cloned drive.
Just substitute it for the main drive and use it as the primary drive.
This assumes, of course, that you've made the clone bootable when you
first prepared it for use.

Huh ?? Admittedly, I've never cloned a WinXP drive, but cloning a
Win98 drive does not require the destination disk to be bootable to
start with.

 

[null]

Huh ?? Admittedly, I've never cloned a WinXP drive, but cloning a
Win98 drive does not require the destination disk to be bootable to
start with.

Of course not. You can simply image to the backup drive if you wish.
And use it for only restore purposes. But what if you also want to
arrange to have it available as a alternate bootable drive in the
event your main h.d. fails? In that case you need to make it bootable
during the initial drive preparation phase. Or you might use a special
program which writes to sectors and copies the boot image.

The term "cloning" as used with something like xxcopy is a bit of a
misnomer since the destination drive becomes a "logical clone" only
.... just directories and files being copied. True cloning demands a
sector by sector copy. Yet a full blown true clone is unnecessary for
most practical purposes.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

Partial restores. Minor stuff. Comes in handy sometimes.

My motivation, BTW, back when I started with this, was that I never
want to have to reinstall Windows. I put quite a bit of time and work
into "hardening" and altering Windows, and I don't want to have to go
through it again. Fortunately, I've never had to use the clone on a
emergency basis.

I know what you mean. When I was running Windows 95 it was easier to
maintain the registry and the files using InCtrl5. With M$ ME though,
InCtrl5 locks up too often during installs. I took InCtrl5 off of my
system as a result. Still, programs like Regshot:

http://regshot.yeah.net

and Catfish:

http://www.equi4.com/catfish.html

as well as Total Uninstall (which although I've installed it, I
haven't used yet):

http://www.geocities.com/ggmartau/

This is easier.

The built in "System Restore" doesn't do a good enough job of managing
file changes. If one relies on a checkpoint that was automatically
created say, at the beginning of the day, executables that you've
downloaded since that point will be deleted and ones that you've
deleted will get restored.
However, as far as I can tell "System Restore" does restore the
registry perfectly. But Scanreg can do that too though, and without
the file restorations and deletions:

C:\WINDOWS\SCANREGW.EXE /backup

prior to the installation, and then:

C:\WINDOWS\SCANREGW.EXE /restore

after the uninstallation.

Having to put up with the clunky, poorly named, sometimes huge, hidden
system folder "_RESTORE" created by "System Restore" is a pain. It
would be nice to get rid of it.

 

[null]

I know what you mean. When I was running Windows 95 it was easier to
maintain the registry and the files using InCtrl5. With M$ ME though,
InCtrl5 locks up too often during installs. I took InCtrl5 off of my
system as a result. Still, programs like Regshot:

http://regshot.yeah.net

and Catfish:

http://www.equi4.com/catfish.html

as well as Total Uninstall (which although I've installed it, I
haven't used yet):

http://www.geocities.com/ggmartau/

This is easier.

I'm unfamiliar with those apps. I've been using RegSeeker, EasyClean
and M$'s RegClean just as a final check for errors.

The built in "System Restore" doesn't do a good enough job of managing
file changes. If one relies on a checkpoint that was automatically
created say, at the beginning of the day, executables that you've
downloaded since that point will be deleted and ones that you've
deleted will get restored.
However, as far as I can tell "System Restore" does restore the
registry perfectly. But Scanreg can do that too though, and without
the file restorations and deletions:

C:\WINDOWS\SCANREGW.EXE /backup

prior to the installation, and then:

C:\WINDOWS\SCANREGW.EXE /restore

after the uninstallation.

I haven't run into a situation where I've been concerned. I
practically never use scanreg.

Having to put up with the clunky, poorly named, sometimes huge, hidden
system folder "_RESTORE" created by "System Restore" is a pain. It
would be nice to get rid of it.

Well, you did notice my mention of how you can delete it, I suppose.
It does take time when doing this from "pure" DOS after a boot with
the system diskette. I thought of loading smartdrv in a config.sys but
since I only had to do it once and be done with it, it's not worth
bothering with speeding it up. To deltree that much stuff off a drive
takes a amazingly long time.

BTW, I hear people complaining that Win ME was unstable for them. I've
not experienced any BSOD's or crashes at all. I have had a couple of
apps that I had unexplained problems with that should have run on ME
(they ran on other PCs with ME). Have you had a good experience with
ME? I'd say mine has been quite good.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

I'm unfamiliar with those apps. I've been using RegSeeker, EasyClean
and M$'s RegClean just as a final check for errors.

Regshot's home page won't open on my system. However, what it does is
basically the same thing as InCtrl5.

Catfish takes snapshots of your hard drive and exports them to text files.

Total uninstall is like InCtrl5 in that it monitors your system during
an install, but it also allows you to undo all of those changes.

I haven't run into a situation where I've been concerned. I
practically never use scanreg.

I also rarely use it. However, in conjunction with Catfish, one could
theoretically do a complete manual uninstall provided that a program's
install doesn't modify any .dll files or the like.

Well, you did notice my mention of how you can delete it, I suppose.
Yep.

It does take time when doing this from "pure" DOS after a boot with
the system diskette. I thought of loading smartdrv in a config.sys but
since I only had to do it once and be done with it, it's not worth
bothering with speeding it up. To deltree that much stuff off a drive
takes a amazingly long time.

Even when you right click on "My Computer", select
Properties/Performance/File System/Troubleshooting/Disable System
Restore and then reboot? This pretty much cleans out the _RESTORE
folder. Then you can use a startup disc and delete that folder like
you said. It shouldn't take long if all of the backup files are gone.
Surely, you did this though.

BTW, I hear people complaining that Win ME was unstable for them. I've
not experienced any BSOD's or crashes at all. I have had a couple of
apps that I had unexplained problems with that should have run on ME
(they ran on other PCs with ME). Have you had a good experience with
ME? I'd say mine has been quite good.

I get BSOSs and crashes infrequently, but no more often than with
Windows 95. It's usually when running my preferred $ware word
processor (which is 16 bit) or when I'm using some buggy freeware. I
never ran W98 or W98SE.

Win ME took a lot of tweaking to get to where I like it. However,
there have been freeware programs (like InCtrl5 - no longer freeware)
that wouldn't run reliably on ME but did in W95.

I really don't like the fact that M$ made IE "a part of the OS." Of
course there is a program out there that can remove IE, but if it
screwed up..... back to the drawing board.

 

[null]

On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 09:05:30 -0800, John Corliss

Even when you right click on "My Computer", select
Properties/Performance/File System/Troubleshooting/Disable System
Restore and then reboot? This pretty much cleans out the _RESTORE
folder. Then you can use a startup disc and delete that folder like
you said. It shouldn't take long if all of the backup files are gone.
Surely, you did this though.

The first time did it I hadn't first disabled System Restore. So it
was both pointless and time consuming You're right that there's far
less stuff to delete when System Restore has been disabled. And the
time it takes isn't all that bad.

I get BSOSs and crashes infrequently, but no more often than with
Windows 95. It's usually when running my preferred $ware word
processor (which is 16 bit) or when I'm using some buggy freeware. I
never ran W98 or W98SE.

Win ME took a lot of tweaking to get to where I like it. However,
there have been freeware programs (like InCtrl5 - no longer freeware)
that wouldn't run reliably on ME but did in W95.

I really don't like the fact that M$ made IE "a part of the OS." Of
course there is a program out there that can remove IE, but if it
screwed up..... back to the drawing board.

I used IEradicator on both my former Win 98 and my current Win ME.
I've never had a problem with it. I like to leave a portion of Mozilla
in memory for fast loading, and that's precious memory that isn't
being hogged by IE. There's no point in leaving IE there if you're
never going to use it. And certainly I wouldn't use it for anything
except the initial download of critical OS patches after a fresh
install of the OS. Like Q once said, you can use FTP to download
Mozilla (Just joking. But not exaggerating much).


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[jona]

Of course not. You can simply image to the backup drive if you wish.
And use it for only restore purposes. But what if you also want to
arrange to have it available as a alternate bootable drive in the
event your main h.d. fails? In that case you need to make it bootable
during the initial drive preparation phase. Or you might use a special
program which writes to sectors and copies the boot image.

The term "cloning" as used with something like xxcopy is a bit of a
misnomer since the destination drive becomes a "logical clone" only
... just directories and files being copied. True cloning demands a
sector by sector copy. Yet a full blown true clone is unnecessary for
most practical purposes.

My wrong. Just to make sure, I have just gone through the
whole exercise by successfully cloning a c: to a non-bootable
(but standard formatted) d: drive which then booted just fine.
I see you're talking about xxcopy and I'm talking about
*xclone* with the command from a DOS window.... 'xclone c: d:'
No point in comparing apple to pears, is there.

 

[null]

My wrong. Just to make sure, I have just gone through the
whole exercise by successfully cloning a c: to a non-bootable
(but standard formatted) d: drive which then booted just fine.
I see you're talking about xxcopy and I'm talking about
*xclone* with the command from a DOS window.... 'xclone c: d:'
No point in comparing apple to pears, is there.

From what I know of xclone, it's similar to xxcopy and just copies
files and folders. So I don't know how your cloned drive magically
became bootable Do you have a url for some newer version of xclone
that also copies the MBR?


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[jona]

From what I know of xclone, it's similar to xxcopy and just copies
files and folders. So I don't know how your cloned drive magically
became bootable Do you have a url for some newer version of xclone
that also copies the MBR?

Below is an extract from the readme file. Further along the readme file
(rather long and snipped for purposes of this discussion) he mentions
that this version of xclone was not tested on NTFS formated drives....
and nor have I.
I have copies of xclone dated back to 1998 on my drive which have the
same file size (23kb) as the one that came with this readme file (downloaded
July this year - from where I know not) but that doesn't say very much.
The said readme file also doesn't give a version history. Shout if you want
me to email it to you.

<C&P>
XCLONE.EXE v1.3
David Weber
(e-mail address removed)
April 22, 1999
<<<< License >>>>
The XCLONE program is not public domain. It is copyright (C) 1998 by
David Weber. XCLONE can be freely copied by anyone. It cannot be sold for
profit.
</C&P>

 

[null]

I've recently added a verification check to my backup.bat file and
thought others might be interested.

I posted on alt.msdos.batch under the Subject Re: way to gather all
the files on Win98 FAT32 Volume ...
concerning the attributes discrepancy problem I ran into. It seems
that if, for one reason or another, an attribute is changed on the
source it won't get changed on the destination. In order for cloning
to work in this regard the destination must first be erased. That
would be a terribly time consuming operation for routine backup which
normally goes very quickly since only changed files and folders are
affected.

Normally, this odd change in attributes won't happen and it's not a
serious problem by any means. I have no idea why this happened with
just this one directory. And it's easy to take care of.

Also, while most often I find a single run of my backup.bat is
sufficient, there are occasions when the verification check indicates
a different total number of bytes on the drives. In those cases,
usually just repeating the backup one more time takes care of it.

For routine backup (and for other cloning) I _strongly_ recommend
doing a verification such as the technique I suggested.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

(clipped previous discussion)

Art,
You've said that you find no use for System Restore and that you
don't use Scanreg very often. How do you restore your registry after
uninstallation of a buggy freeware program for instance? Do you use
something like Easy Cleaner to clean it out?

 

[null]

Art,
You've said that you find no use for System Restore and that you
don't use Scanreg very often. How do you restore your registry after
uninstallation of a buggy freeware program for instance? Do you use
something like Easy Cleaner to clean it out?

I think both Easy Cleaner and RegSeeker are useful in this regard
since they do help find remnants of old installs in the registry that
can be deleted. IMO they are an easy and convenient way of keeping the
registry in good shape. I don't recall ever restoring the registry
even back during the four years I used Win 98.

I also use KAV's Trojan_Finder (see my web site) since it offers
quite thorough info on the entire startup axis (including important
portions of the registry) and running processes. That's somewhat in a
different vein than what you asked but IMO it's important to know and
have a record of (log files) what things are and should be when a
system is clean (free of spyware and other malicious code).


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[null]

Art,
You've said that you find no use for System Restore and that you
don't use Scanreg very often. How do you restore your registry after
uninstallation of a buggy freeware program for instance? Do you use
something like Easy Cleaner to clean it out?

I forgot to mention, John, that I'm in the habit of deleting the
directories of old installs. That can help with registry cleanup using
the utils since they may then find more old "broken" entries.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg

 

[John Corliss]

I forgot to mention, John, that I'm in the habit of deleting the
directories of old installs. That can help with registry cleanup using
the utils since they may then find more old "broken" entries.

Makes sense. However, when I talk about restoring the registry, I
should clarify that there's a difference between doing that after
you've simply tested a program, then uninstalled it, and uninstalling
a program after you've done other installations and-or tweaks.

In the first case, the best way to keep your registry clean is to do
the following before an install:

SCANREGW /backup

Yhen assuming there have been no other installs or tweaks before you
do the uninstall, do the following:

SCANREGW /restore

and pick out the copy you want to use.

In the second scenario (when you install a program and then another
one and-or some tweaks before uninstalling the program), those
programs you mentioned are of great help.

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi John - For NT-based computers, you can use Erunt to take a snapshot of
the Registry just before an install and then use Erdnt to restore it after
the uninstall. Another excellent program for this purpose is
TotalUninstall, here: http://www.geocities.com/ggmartau/ You can get
Erunt here for all NT-based computers including XP here:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/index.htm I've set it up to
take a scheduled backup each night at 12:01AM on a weekly round-robin basis,
and a Monthly on the 1st of each month. See here for how to set that up:
http://home.t-online.de/home/lars.hederer/erunt/erunt.txt, and for some
useful information about this subject

This program is one of the best things around - saved my butt on many
occasions, and will also run very nicely from a DOS prompt (in case you've
done something that won't let you boot any more and need to revert to a
previous Registry) IF you're FAT32 OR have a DOS startup disk with NTFS
write drivers in an NTFS system. (There is also a way using the Recovery
Console to get back to being "bootable" even without separate DOS write NTFS
drivers, after which you can do a normal restore.) (BTW, it also includes a
Registry defragger program). Free, and very, very highly recommended.

FYI, quoting from the above document:

Note: The "Export registry" function in Regedit is USELESS (!) to make
a complete backup of the registry. Neither does it export the whole
registry (for example, no information from the "SECURITY" hive is
saved), nor can the exported file be used later to replace the current
registry with the old one. Instead, if you re-import the file, it is
merged with the current registry, leaving you with an absolute mess of
old and new registry keys.


--
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP



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