imaging SATA drive with Powerquest Deploycenter

[David Andrews]

I am unable to use Powerquest DeployCenter on the Dell Optiplex GX270
machines with SATA drives that have come in. Deploycenter refuses to
load consistently. When booting off of a floppy disk, it gets up to
"Loading. Please wait..." and then it just sits there. I've seen it
actually load the software and work fine after sitting there for about
1-2 hours. However, other times it will not load at all. I've been
unable to find anything on the internet about this problem, and the
knowledge base is terrible now that Symantec bought out Powerquest.
Any ideas?

 

[Jerry]

Did you check with the SATA drive's manufacturer to see if that had issues
posted on their web site?

 

[Bob Harris]

Pre-SATA vintage software may not be able to "see" SATA disks, depending on
the details of the hardware, such as whether they are part of a RAID array
(even an array of one disk), etc.

If the disks came with the Dell, contact Dell support. You may need a
newer/updated verison of the software, and OEM-type software is usually
different than the related retail product, so downloading a patch directly
from Powerquest might be the wrong thing to do.

Related info: I have found that Norton GHOST 2003, when run in windows
mode, can NOT see all partitions on my SATA disks (Seagate disks, on an ASUS
P4S8X, each as a RAID array by itself). However, when run in DOS mode it
can see all partitions. I have found that Acronis TrueImage version 6 can
see the disks in windows mode, but not from its bootable recovery CD.
However, version 7, build 584 or high can see them in both modes. Between
GHOST and TrueImage, I prefer TrueImage, which is friendlier. However,
GHOST still has more options, if you spend the time to decypher the manual.

Finally, I have found that it is usually safer to save one or more
partitions instead of the whole disk. This is true, even if there is only
one partition on the disk. The resulting image file is more easily loaded
onto a new disk, in the event you upgrade or have a crash.

 

[Bcdevkota]

The problem is not with SATA drives. The problem is your machine
probably has a DVD-Burner in it. You need to run "pqimgctr /ide=off
/nocdr" Will provide you maximum performance.

-Baibhav Devkota