Doing preparation of CFs automated?

[Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras]

Hi!

For our XPe image we prepare our CFs in some special way, what is time
consuming and annoying.
We use a PC that is booting from a CD into DOS.
Our CF is set to fixed disk, the partition is removed, and a smaller
partition for the EWF is created and set active, then the CF is
formatted as bootable. First and last jobs are already batched, but
this does not work with fdisk.
So I am looking for a solution thet can do the whole thing in one job,
preferrably without reboots and with no or small user interaction.
The problem ist, that it seems mandatory to boot from CD because FDISk
only can handle the first harddisk on the IDE bus what is our CF. And
we run in some trouble with some LBA mode when trying to do the whole
task with some USB card reader or similar...

Any ideas how I can find a fool proof solution to prepare those card?
It is ridiculous that an engineer has to look after this stuff, just
to ensure that nothing goes wrong

Thank you very much, and with best regards

Ralph.

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

Are the disks ID'd as fixed or removable?

Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit

 

[Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras]

Are the disks ID'd as fixed or removable?

They are set as fixed.

Ralph.

 

[KM]

Ralph,

Our CF is set to fixed disk,

Have you thought of using cloning software then? Like ghost, altiris, sdi2hd, etc.?

Btw, what EWF mode do you use? Why do you need to create "smaller partition for the EWF"?

 

[Ralph A. Schmid, dk5ras]

Ralph,


Have you thought of using cloning software then? Like ghost, altiris, sdi2hd, etc.?

Is there one available that can clone disks from USB card readers?
That is an interesting idea!

Btw, what EWF mode do you use? Why do you need to create "smaller partition for the EWF"?

To be true, I have no idea I also have there some problems in
understanding, as I was thinking that it is a kind of RAM disk that is
used. Maybe it is a relict of the first tests, and no one realized
that this space is lost and not needed any more? The problem is, I did
not aset up the whole thing from scratch, I just took the previous
work of a coworker and changed some stuff inside it. I will ask around
a bit what the intention behind this could be.

Ralph.

 

[Sean Liming \(eMVP\)]

There are CF hardware cloning solutions too..

I listed a couple hardware duplication solutions here:
http://www.seanliming.com/flashhelp.html


Regards,

Sean Liming
www.sjjmicro.com / www.seanliming.com
XP Embedded Book Author - XP Embedded Advanced, XP Embedded Supplemental
Toolkit

 

[KM]

Ralph,

Is there one available that can clone disks from USB card readers?
That is an interesting idea!

I used Ghost to capture CF image over USB Card reader. It worked just fine.

To be true, I have no idea I also have there some problems in
understanding, as I was thinking that it is a kind of RAM disk that is used.

No. It is rather RAM overlay. Windows [EWF] will redirect all the write requests to the disk to the EWF overlay.

Maybe it is a relict of the first tests, and no one realized
that this space is lost and not needed any more? The problem is, I did
not aset up the whole thing from scratch, I just took the previous
work of a coworker and changed some stuff inside it. I will ask around
a bit what the intention behind this could be.

You should probably read XPe docs about EWF and FBWF. You may find those components very useful for your projects.

 

[Richard]

They must hate me in this forum, but I have tried all the PIA ways and the
easiest and fastest way for me was to create a master CF exactly how I
wanted.

I set up a cheap machine with CF Slots, installed a small installation of
Linux, wrote a script which called DD to copy my master CF to an Image File.
I do this once.

From then on, I use DD to copy the master image to the new, unprepared
Compact Flash cards. DD transfer all the partions and everything exactly
like the master (Sector by Sector Copy). Best part it's easy and FAST.

I have done several hundred this way and it's the way I prefer. A buddy of
mine in Denver set his Linux box up with multiple USB Reader/Writers and
does several CF at once. I haven't done this except using one USB CF Writer
and it also worked fine. I imagine you just start multiple processes to
write more than 1 cf at a time.

I always wanted a Windows GUI solution but never have found one decent. I
tried DD for Windows and it was a lot slower for some reason.


Richard