Partition drives when using SDI

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Guest

Hi,
I have 80GB raw hard drive, and I want to use SDI to transfer the Xpe
image to my drive for system recovery (normally I want drive C: 20 GB and D:
60 GB), but SDI just allows me to do up to 2GB for C: and the rest is still
in raw data. Is there any way to partition my drive as I described above? or
other 3rd party tool like ghost.exe, fdisk.exe could take care the job?
Thanks in advance
Anthony
 
Anthony,

As soon as you use MS or 3rd party tools to partition the drive you need to deal with PART data blob in the SDI file.

You did not mention the deployment approach you are taking with the SDI file. I don't think it is a network download, right? (20/80G
is huge for that). It is probably a CD or USB flash, or etc.

The question is how do you exactly want to "transfer" XPe image to the drive using SDI file?

Are you planning on using sdi2hd tool? Then you'd need to create SDI file with DISK blob. Unless you manually tweak SDI file binary,
it is going to be huge and you hit the limits.

If you use SDIMgr (with WinPE or your own custom recovery XPe image), you can work with PART blob. With this way you can use tools
like diskpart, format, etc. to prepare the media to expand the SDI file on.

SDI/DISK may not be a good option to deploy images on big disks.

Btw, you don't necessarily have to use SDI approach for system recovery unless it is a requirement for you.
 
KM,
Thanks, yeah,sorry for the comfusing, I am using DVD for with about 2GB
..SDI file on it. After typing "sdi2hd File.sdi /D0", I just have C: (2GB) and
the rest is raw? so in your previous answer "SDI/DISK may not be a good
option to deploy images on big disks" ? I wonder why? and which is your
better suggestion method for System Recovery?
Thanks
Best regards,

Anthony
 
Anthony,

The reason I mentioned the SDI/DISK blob is not a good option for you is that it allows you to capture the entire disk content.
Isn't that too big even for a DVD?

I was thinking about CD-ROM, not DVD. I am not sure if you can make XPe bootable image on DVD. I haven't played with that but this
NG google archive may help you more with it.
Is that the reason why you want to use SDI? SDI RAM boot from a DVD?

If so, in the SDI image (even RAM booted) you can do the following:
- make sure to support WSH within the recovery image
- include SDIMgr, include sdiaut.dll and register it within the recovery image
- use diskpart, format, etc. to prepare the target media from the recovery image (you can easy script this)
- use SDIMgr /writepart command to write the system partition data to the target. Change boot.ini if necessary.
You will also need to capture the golden image with SDIMgr /readpart command beforehand and add it to the DVD content.

Some other CD methods could be:
- (easiest) xcopy from a recovery bootable CD to the target media. You will just need to create an XPe image on El-Torito CD.
You can even add some compression here (use not xcopy though, but an archiving app)
- CD boot sector code to copy raw image data from CD to the target
- the target media boot sector code that will handle the recovery (it is risky, though, as user may damage the entire disk
content including the boot sector and the recovery won't work).
 
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