Stefanie,
Comments inline...
Not with the runtime. As in first posting stated, I want to build a
recovery cd based on pe. Then I archive the files from runtime into a
cab file, because cab file is easier to handle and extract at
deployment. Just copy files with pe from cd to target (using xcopy)
will result in upper case (SHIFTED) filenames, wich will work, but in
Did you try another copying tool - robocopy (2K/XP Resource Tool kit)?
startmenu this dosn't look very nice. Extracting files from cab will
avoid it. I don't have any expierience in developing software for such
a solution, I'm able, to write batch files, but that's it.
I see. If I understand correctly, you cannot use a localized version of WinPE, that will handle particular language fine including
file name and etc., because on the same recovery DVD you are going to have multiple images with different languages, right?
If so, you've got yourself a problem if you are using WinPE 1.x (in WinPE 2.0 you can add additional language packs). Pretty much
any tool you use that deals with file system it may fail to copy files that include non-english characters if you use English WinPE.
Some ways how to fix the issue:
- Use disk imaging software (this will include some not free licencing though)
- Use WInPE 2.0 (AIK). Really nice improvement to PE 1.x. In fact, almost different OS. However, I dont know what the licencing
is there.
- Create recovery bootable CD/DVD that will boot to XPe. Here you can add whatever locales, language packs, etc. you may need.
XPe is way more flexible than PE. Thoughts on licencing here - see below.
- Use a small ("hidden") partition on the target storage where you can store SDI file temporarily to expand it on the main
partition. Note: you can always extend the main partition later to cover the entire disk with "diskpart extend" command. More
details below.
- Write your own disk imaging tool. This, btw, is not a big deal if you only going to stick with partition data (in other words,
partitionng you leave to diskpart). You will just have to do CreateFile on the partition to get to raw data.
... >
Pfff, this don't work on a recovery dvd. I tried, but I always got
that access denied error. This may only work on a none wirte proteced
media.
Sorry, my bad. This issue slipped my memory.
Even readdisk command requires write permission to the volume where the SDI file is located. We reported this ages ago but the tool
hasn't been fixed yet :-(
Although, I don't recall pricesely whether readpart command works. I'd assume it does't but have you tried it?
And actually sdi images allways seems to got that size of its
defined values - no matter, whether the space is really used or not.
So if I define a drive with 1 GB it will have the size of 1 GB, even if it is empty.
Yup. Although you could always "trim" the image (there have been some posts in this NG where we discussed possible solutions to
this). However, it'd probably involve a bigger effort that what you are doing now.
However, you can zip the SDI file. With all the zero's it will be compressed to only data content or smaller.
The beatity of the SDI is that it is free disk imaging tool for XPe. In other words, you don't have to deal with additional 3rd
party software licencing.
Disk imaging would help you to avoid any problems with files names and such.
Here is a possible scenerio [only theoretical one since I never tested it here]:
- Launch recovery CD with PE
- From within PE you launch you batch script that will do the following:
- partition the local hard disk. Use diskpart to create two partition.
- format and mount the second partition that will temporarily hold the SDI file - copy of the first golden partition. (don't
mount the first partition)
- copy required SDI file from DVD to the second partition drive. SDI file can be zipped or cab'ed here. You just create the
second partition big enough to hold the uncompressed SDI.
- use SDI tools (SDI Manager) to expand the SDI file to the first partition of the disk. (note: only use PART blob in the
SDI)
- unmount and delete the second partition with the diskpart (it is important to delete the partition here so that the space
become unallocated)
- extend the first partition to cover the disk (hereis more details on how you do that:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590)
- reboot
I also was thinking about an XPE based recovery CD to avoid that write
protected issue by using ewf. But from my point of view, I will need
an own xpe runtime licence for it, since it will be a kind of an own
"embedded device".
If you're only going to use that XPe image for the purpose of recovery of your main XPe image you don't need to buy additional
licenses.
I'd recommend you to consult with your XPe distributor. They should let you know the legal aspect of it.
