External USB hard drive or dvd drive via DOS?

[Cheetah8799]

At work we are looking at ways to image machines using Ghost through DOS. In the past we have kept an archive of images, but lately some of them are 3+gb. That's a LOT of CDs to have to copy for imaging a computer via the built in cd drive.

So now we are looking at using USB to do this. We have an external Plextor USB DVDRW drive, but the enclosure's chipset isn't supported by any of the dos drivers out there. So I'm thinking of maybe trying a Bytecc enclosure, like this one, which I've used before via Windows and like a lot. According to their site though, DOS is not supported, so that may be a problem...

Has anyone done this? Using an enclosure like this with either a large hard drive inside, or dvd drive, and all while only using DOS? I'm hoping someone here has tried it and can comment on their success, or failure...




NOTE: I know going through the network would be an awesome idea. And I've gotten that to work. The problem is that the techs here have their image server on a 10mbps switch in their office area... So doing that really is slow. Plus, management has said they don't want the network slowed down while machines are being imaged... Too many people that don't want to try new things...

 

[Zepper]

USB under DOS is normally out of the question - only BIOS supported devices such as kbd and mse will be functional at a basic level (must have legacy USB support enabled in your BIOS). Some few recent mobos can boot from USB, but whatever OS you boot has to be able to support USB directly as the BIOS bows out after booting.
. I have heard of DOS USB drivers (as I recall, they were on the Japanese Panasonic site) but never used them, try doing a Google search- DOS USB driver -. Good luck. There are a few IDE controllers out there that have an external drive connector (SATA and PATA too), maybe...

.bh.

There's the :sun: , at least for a little while...

 

[kd7fhd]

there are MS-DOS usb drivers available

these drivers have worked with two different usb drive enclosures for me... BUT they were usb 1.1. I have no idea if you would be able to usb 2.0 speed from these drivers.

you could also switch to Acronis TrueImage (much better than ghost). I've used it with both firewire and usb devices. Check with their tech support to see if your enclosure is supported. Several added benefits to TrueImage over ghost is that TrueImage will do incremental back ups and you can create a protected zone on your hard drive and create a image there in addition to doing a back up to a external drive.

 

[Cheetah8799]

Not looking to boot from USB, we can boot from CD drive of floppy. Just would like to read from a large drive via USB.

I've already read through these two sites, but they don't seem to mention any specific enclosures or chipsets that will work...

link

link

 

[Cheetah8799]

these drivers have worked with two different usb drive enclosures for me... BUT they were usb 1.1. I have no idea if you would be able to usb 2.0 speed from these drivers.

Do you remember which enclosures they were?

 

[Zepper]

Well it looks like you found what you need. Now it's just a matter of experimenting to find the best combo for you. Better a surfeit of choices than none at all...
.bh.

 

[Cheetah8799]

Originally posted by: Zepper
Well it looks like you found what you need. Now it's just a matter of experimenting to find the best combo for you. Better a surfeit of choices than none at all...
.bh.

The only problem now is getting the enclosures to experiment with... I'll have to convince someone here to spend the money, which we don't really have....

 

[kd7fhd]

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these drivers have worked with two different usb drive enclosures for me... BUT they were usb 1.1. I have no idea if you would be able to usb 2.0 speed from these drivers.
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Do you remember which enclosures they were?

Sorry, but no. I've already upgraded my external boxes to usb 2.0 and gotten rid of the old ones.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

a 10mbps switch in their office area

kick'em in the nads and get a faster switch..sheez

 

[Cheetah8799]

Originally posted by: ScrapSilicon

a 10mbps switch in their office area

kick'em in the nads and get a faster switch..sheez

ya, I know, 10mbps is rediculous. Thankfully I'm not a tech anymore. I'm just trying to help them out.

 

[Bluefront]

Look....you need to get Drive Image 7.0. You can image any partition and save it to any USB 2.0 external drive, or even to a network drive.

To restore the image you boot off the Drive Image cd-rom, it loads a bunch of drivers that support practically any storage device, configures your network so you can find the image over a LAN, then you restore the image. Works perfect.

Download the update patch for the program if you use sp2. No sweat...