Making a restore cd

[fordster]

I am tring to make a cd which if windows crashes or i waunt to reinstall it i can just pull out a cd pop it in reboot and it automatily restores the drive I have herd u could do this with ghost but u haf to boot from a floppy then put in the cd rom them manualy do it Is there an easy way of doing this?
I have herd that u must make changes to a autoexec file but that goes over my head a little.

[Gutter Ball]

I personally use ghost, it has saved my **** and countless hours of reinstalling. I back up once a week on a rewritable, or before I'm going to install something. I don't know the answer to your questions...but I do have one of my own...

My computer can boot from CD...how the heck do you make a CD bootable? Just write the command.com to it?

[BBA]

The interesting topic of creating a bootable CD...of all the things...I never successfully made one.

Any ideas?

[Morpheus1964]

Has anyone tried using Adaptec to just "open" the CD and then typing sys E: at the command prompt? I haven't, but i theory wouldn't it work? You'de hafta then use an autoexec/config.sys configuration that when it started to boot would load drivers for the CD-ROM, obviously, but I would think it would be possible....

[Mntsnow]

Unfortunately the only answer I have on this is a expensive one http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif If you have a PLEXTOR cd burner (or one that you can flash a plextor firmware to) you can use plextor's propriatary program called "Cdres-Q" as it creates a bootable cd and can span cd's for those that have a HUGE base install. (the largest one I made is 5 cd's big and each cd was compressed to hold 1.2 gigs!)

Other than that the best option I can offer is the "ghost and floppy" way.

Mntsnow

[ayuen]

Hi,
Adaptec's Easy CD Creator has an option to create a bootable cdrom. You first create your cd layout with whatever you want on it. You'll also need a 3.5" startup floppy with whatever drivers you'd normally have to access your cdroms, etc. Under the cd layout properties, data tab - you must select iso9000 (means no long file names, unfortunately) and the previously greyed-out make cd bootable box should be checked. When you click okay, the program will prompt you to insert your bootable floppy and make a disk image to cd when you start burning. I believe in order to boot up from cd, you need a bios that supports that option as well. Good luck.

[Brydon]

The win98 cd is a bootable cd but I am not sure how to create one...wouldnt you just copy the win98 startup disk to a cd? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[luqa]

Try creating your own specific autorun.inf file and add to the root directory of the CD you wish to boot from. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[ayuen]

Gutter Ball,
That setup works for me. I write to cdrw so I can alternate backups. I believe Ghost also allows you to specify disk image sizes so you can 'span' large partitions or disks to images that will fit onto cdrom. Never tried it, though. My system files fit onto one cd with compression. Takes about 15 minutes from boot-up to full restore.

[Nathan]

There are some switches you can use so you can place the image on different CD's. If you have a choice, I would suggest that you use a RW. Reason being if you need/want to update the image, you can just place it on that same CD.

[Gutter Ball]

Haha, you know Nathan, you're an adminstrator on the "ehelpfree" board and you're hanging around here too http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif Nothing wrong with that, I'm just playing with ya! Moonlighting was a show? I can't remember, I was only a kid back then http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

And yup, I have a set of 10 CD-R's going with the backups! But I found traces of that subseven virus on my system last week so I needed to erase all back ups and redo them http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

I'll try to make an auto-restore ghost CD in the next couple of days...or at least a bootable one somehow. I'm thinking I'll need to make an autoexec.bat file with the ghost.exe along with some switches for the restore. Later all!

[fordster]

Wow thanks alot.
Here are some sites i found that are talking about the same thing but what do u think the big companys are using to make there restore cd dont u think there is just a prog that will image it then burn it to where it is all done in just one step?

Here are some links to what i am talking about http://www.ozemail.com.au/~rossstew/drs/sec2.html http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Way/2996/index.html

[Gutter Ball]

Fordster, NOW you tell us about those links!!
I was partially right http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif But with those instructions, man..making complete restore CD's will be a BREEZE! WOOHOO!! Gonna print them out and make some up! Thanks for the links!!

[Nathan]

You might find this interesting. Let me know what you think about it.

http://www.ehelpfree.com/ubb/Forum5/HTML/000134.html

[Gutter Ball]

Heeey, Nathan is MOONLIGHTING! :P

Ayuen: I have adaptec...I'll have to try that later. It's funny how I never noticed that option before http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif That would be cool if I could make an autorestore ghost CD!!! I have 5 partitions...reboot with C: ghost image in CD-ROM, then reboot with d: ghost image...man, complete system restore in less than an hour! Way cool http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Nathan]

"Moonlighting" hehehe. Wasn't that a show in the 80's? BTW, what did you mean by "Moonlighting"?

By copying the 98 bootup files onto the CD-rom solves the problem of loading the specific files for each CD-rom.

It works really good too.

[Nathan]

I knew you were kidding there Gutter Ball (are you a bowler? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif ) . I was just having a little fun with ya too! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

This is a very good thread. Alot of valuable info here to say the least. It'll make things alot easier for us users in the future when we are trying some new things on our PC's and we hose them as a result.

[ayuen]

Thanks for the links. I agree, Nathan, lot's of good info. I think for simplicity's sake, I'll stick with the boot disk feature in Easy CD rather than manually creating a boot disk image. Happy backup!

[wyvrn]

My hat is off to everyone on a kick **** thread. I am going to make my first restore cd!!

[Nathan]

Aw come on ayuen! Just burn the files from your startup floppy onto the CD that has the rest of your stuff. It's all a learning process. The more you try the more you learn. Believe me, I know. I've made my share of mistakes doing it. But that's how one learns.

[fordster]

Well let us know how it turns out and EXACTLY how u created it I am still trying to figure how to use nortan ghost's command line switches so the whole thing is done by it's self.

[ayuen]

Yeah, yeah, I know Nathan. You would not believe some of the dumb things I've done to my computer during this 'learning' process. I will probably try to create a boot cdrom manually but what can I say, I try to stick with what works. Everyone in this thread should post their results. Cheers.

[Nathan]

Try this!

Ghost.exe -SPLIT=640

Where "X" splits the image file into "x" megabyte segments

[Rogerbotner]

Make a bootable floppy from win9x or msdos, then You can use Nero to burn a bootable cd rom where Your floppy becames the bootable partion on the cd rom that emulates a floppy and the Ghost images and the ghost program resides on Your cd. It is very easy. I used it for a big company to install NT 4.0 on their new machines that where exactly alike.

[atuomala]

I have used CDRWin to make one. It worked on the first try! Here are some excerpts from CDRWin's Help file:

=============================================
Bootable Discs
--------------
A bootable disc is just an extension of the standard ISO9660 disc. The only difference is the inclusion of a “sector-by-sector image” of a floppy or harddisk, which is then emulated by your system to behave like the original media it was made from. When your system is booted, the following will happen…

· The system BIOS will scan your CDROM
drives for a bootable disc.

· If the bootable disc was created with one
of the “floppy” emulation types, then the
CDROM drive will become drive A:, while
the existing drive A: will become drive
B: (if the system already has a B: drive,
then it will become inaccessible).

· If the bootable disc was created with
the “harddisk” emulation type, then the
CDROM drive will replace the existing C:
drive.

The floppy or harddrive image on the disc is responsible for booting the PC and loading the necessary CDROM drivers needed to access the ISO9660 files on the disc. The simplest example would be an MSDOS boot floppy with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files which load the required CDROM drivers (including MSCDEX).

Note: Your system or SCSI card must have a BIOS that supports "Bootable CDROM" to use one of these discs (you do not need this BIOS to create a bootable disc, only to use one). You will usually have to change your BIOS settings to enable this support.

How to create a boot image file
-------------------------------
CDRWIN is not capable of creating the “boot image file” which will be written to the ISO9660 image file. However, this file can be easily made with a disk editor utility, such as “Norton Utilities” DISKEDIT.EXE (available for both DOS and Windows).

Before using DISKEDIT, you must first create a boot floppy that functions exactly the way you want it to work when it is written to the CDROM. Try booting your PC with the disk to make sure that it functions properly and loads the correct drivers to access the CDROM drives.

Using “Norton Utilities” DISKEDIT.EXE

Start DISKEDIT.EXE from the MS-DOS command prompt.

Select “Drive” from the “Object” menu. Choose the drive that is to converted to an image file and click on “OK”.

Select “Physical Sector” from the “Object” menu. Click on “OK”.

Select “Write Object To” from the “Tools” menu.

Select “To a File” and click on “OK”.

Choose a filename and click on “OK”.


=============================================

I followed those instructions to create a bootable cd to restore an image of my hard drive made with PowerQuest's Drive Image.

[Shagnasty]

I use both Ghost(Prof.) and Adaptec EZ-CD
4.01 DLX...and Nope...I haven't made a
boot CD yet...but I have made a backup
Ghost Image...which took quite a few CD's
to complete....30gb hard drive...The problem
I have had is that I can't seem to use the
Ghost image from the CD's directly...Have
to copy it back to a hard drive in order
to run the thing...I'm sure I'm messing up...
I tried using Nero...but when I install it
my system freezes and will not operate until
it's eradicated...I think I like Adaptec
better anyway...but it's still strange...
Win98SE...with all the latest updates...