PQ DriveImage 2002 Useless to Me :(

[corkyg]

I took advantage of PowerQuest's special offer and got the new DriveImage 2002, by D/L and CD. Unfortunately, there is a caveat not apparent in the propaganda - DriveImage does not support IEEE 1394 or USB (1 or 2) when it comes to CD/RW drives. The program is therefore useless to me except for the ability to copy HDD to HDD, . . . and I already have that capability in their DriveCopy 4.0. I only mention this to advise others who, like me, may have all Firewire or USB 2 burners - I have three of them and find them much more reliable than internal IDE ones.

So - we now have another piece of shelfware. Does Norton Ghost have the same problem?

 

[corkyg]

Just like to add that the simple act of installing this software enabled it to screw up my XP Pro drive letter assignments - where two of the drives are linked by Firewire and one by USB. Thank God for System Restore! That quickly fixed it as I reverted to "the day before" and none of those changes were present. It was then a simple Explorer folder delete operation with no Registry impact.

I wrote PowerQuest and said that if and when they developed a patch to bring Drive Image 2002 (a misnomer) into the 21st century, to let me know. Firewire and USB 2 burners and backup external HDDs are quite common now.

 

[DefRef]

They aren't as common as that YET. USB 2.0 has only been around about 6 months and I just missed getting it with my Soyo Dragon+. A year-old PC can't support a USB 2.0 burner w/o an add-in card. That said, PQ should make their products a little more agreeable to current tech. They've been laggin a bit lately.

 

[corkyg]

Right - but 1394 has been around since SCSI III was invented. I have had Firewire now for almost 2 years on all systems - all 3 of my CD burners are Firewire.

 

[Sukhoi]

What's this "special offer" you're talking about, and how much was it for? I might need a new version of Drive Image..

 

[corkyg]

Ah yes - as I recall it was $39.95 for DI 2002 upgraded from any previous verions (I had 3.0 - no good in XP)

Basic question - is Norton Ghost hamstrung with the same limitations?

 

[Sukhoi]

Cool, I think they lowered the upgrade price by $10.

 

[zzzz]

<< The program is therefore useless to me except for the ability to copy HDD to HDD, . . . and I already have that capability in their DriveCopy 4.0. >>


You can make image of the HD split to the sizes you want and store the images to other HD and then burn it in windows using your external CDRW. Drive image and ghost will not support firewire or usb becaue they run in DOS and those interfaces have no or limited dos support.


<< have all Firewire or USB 2 burners - I have three of them and find them much more reliable than internal IDE ones. >>


These burners are really IDE burners in an external firewire/usb enclosure.

 

[corkyg]

Yes - I understand that all burners are the same in different housings - SCSI as well (the ancestor of Firewire, which is really the isolated channels that make SCSI 2 into 3). My inference as to reliability of externals relates to their not using or sharing the IDE controllers with anything else.

That's a good work around regarding copying the data to a regular IDE partition and then burning it. Yeah - that'll work.

 

[statetech]

I've been thinking about this for some time but in my situation, I have a laptop, and only a laptop. I checked a few months ago and confirmed that ghost doesn't support usb since my burner is usb. Have you guys found a way around this?

One hard drive, one usb burner.

Or am I stuck?

 

[corkyg]

The only way I can think of is to create the Ghost image on the HDD, then burn it to a CD. I have a laptop also, but fortunately, it has a modular floppy drive which can be replaced with a second HDD (IDE.) So, I simply boot with a bootalble CDR containing PowerQuest's DriveCopy 4.0. That lest me quickly clone the entire HDD to a "reserve" HDD. When it is finished, I remove it, put the floppy back (LS-120) and I have a spare HDD complete and ready to go.

 

[randypj]

corky-g, I also noticed the upgrade....but, don't know how I would justify it from DI 5.0. With DI, I've always just either imaged to a second hard drive and hidden the image, or created image files, and then used Nero to burn them to cd (the way zzzz said), or copied them to one of my networked pcs.

I believe DI 2002 touts being able to image to network drives, with the exception of the partition the OS is on, because this has to be imaged from DOS?

BTW, Corky-g, I just bought another Winbook XL2 to replace my other one that apparently has a mucked up charging circuitry. Know anyone who wants a broken one?
--Randy

 

[Sukhoi]

Heck, Drive Image 4.0 works fine over a LAN, you just need to know how to make some DOS network boot disks.

 

[Staver]

Ok, your problem got me thinking. Basically without a Dos driver no burner will work. They include a driver for IDE which is why it works. If your Burner has a driver for DOS operations you can get it to work just by editing the virtual boot disk and including it. Since my USB mouse works in the software, I'll assume a USB CD/RW with drivers will. If the partition you are imaging is lockable you will not have to reboot and can image inside windows. Of course, this excludes your system partition.

 

[randypj]

Staver....now you got me to thinking.

I'm thinking that I saw maybe the newest version of Nero, in a review of a lite-on or Plex (shipped with the drive....so, gotta be lite-on), that had a selection for DOS drivers? Course, could be just the drivers to allow it to be recognized as a cd-rom in DOS. But, I'm thinkin' early on there were DOS burner drivers?

Then....you still gotta deal with the xfer across the USB. Good point about your mouse....but, could that just be cause your mobo will recognize USB mouse? I have been under the impression that you can't USB in DOS. I also imagine that drivers could be written.

My 12x Plex came with some backup program in tools or manager.....which I believe was actually a version of Ghost. Hmmm....I wonder how the USB Plex that BB has onsale this week deals with backing up the OS. Hmmm......
--Randy

 

[Staver]

Ack! More thinking made me stop playing my game. Here is what the Readme.txt said:

- USB/FireWire support. Drive Image lets you create or restore images
to and from USB or FireWire drives if Drive Image can execute
natively in Windows (without dropping to DOS boot mode). If Drive
Image must execute in DOS boot mode, support for such devices is
dependent upon the availability of DOS drivers for the drives.

So my guess was right about drivers needed for Dos operations. If it were IDE it said it would burn to it without third party drivers.

 

[corkyg]

And I just got a note from PowerQuest - they are currently in the process of developing a patch which would allow DI to deal with USB devices. Probably along the lines of what some of you have said. Anyway, like Confederate money, I am going to hand on the my DI 2002. Here's a clip from their note:

"Thank you for your inquiry. Our current version of Drive Image does not support a USB device. At some future date we hope to release a update version that will support USB devices. For more information and for update announcements, please visit our Web site at www.powerquest.com or contact us at (800)-379-2566"