Are my BING img files of no use after upgrading to BIBM?

[bottomcritter]

I just tried out BIBM on a new install. Thinking I would just try and retrieve an image made with BING, I discovered it would not recognize the IMG file type. Some further reading indicated that BIBM is a completely new program with no compatibility to BING. This has made me stop and reconsider whether I will upgrade my existing BING installs with all the image backups that are involved, if in fact there will be no use for them. Is this true?

[ohaya]

I just tried out BIBM on a new install. Thinking I would just try and retrieve an image made with BING, I discovered it would not recognize the IMG file type. Some further reading indicated that BIBM is a completely new program with no compatibility to BING. This has made me stop and reconsider whether I will upgrade my existing BING installs with all the image backups that are involved, if in fact there will be no use for them. Is this true?

Hi,

I haven't switched to BIBM yet... still using BING 1.87, for that exact reason. I have a ton of BING images, and that incompatibility.

I think that, if I recall, they switched to using a new image format with Image for DOS/Windows/Linux awhile ago, which was incompatible with BING.

Then, with BIBM, as I understand it, it uses the IFD/W/Linux format, for the imaging functions, so the images created by BIBM are not compatible with BING and vice-versa.

As I said, I'm not using BIBM (yet), but I think that the above is accurate ..

Jim

[Bob Coleman]

I wouldn't say it's true that there would be no use for the images that you have. It is true that they can't be used by Image for DOS (IFD) which is included with BIBM and intended to be used for imaging by BIBM users.

However, there is nothing to prevent your keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any
existing BING images when/if necessary. Surely, as time goes on this won't be a frequent requirement.

[ohaya]

I wouldn't say it's true that there would be no use for the images that you have. It is true that they can't be used by Image for DOS (IFD) which is included with BIBM and intended to be used for imaging by BIBM users.

However, there is nothing to prevent your keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any
existing BING images when/if necessary. Surely, as time goes on this won't be a frequent requirement.

Hi,

When you say "keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any existing BING images", do you mean having BING on a floppy or CD, and having to boot to the floppy or CD when you need to restore the BING image? That (to me) sounds like it'd be a bit of a pain.

Jim

[DrTeeth]

On Fri, 6 Jan 2012 19:09:18 PST, just as I was about to take a herb,
ohaya disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>I have a ton of BING images, and that incompatibility.

Just our if interest, how many images and why do you need to keep
them? Surely after a relatively short time the older ones become
redundant. Just being curious and not trying to be cheeky .
--

Cheers

DrT
______________________________
We may not be able to prevent the stormy times in
our lives; but we can always choose to dance
in the puddles (Jewish proverb).

[Bob Coleman]

I wouldn't say it's true that there would be no use for the images that you have. It is true that they can't be used by Image for DOS (IFD) which is included with BIBM and intended to be used for imaging by BIBM users.

However, there is nothing to prevent your keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any
existing BING images when/if necessary. Surely, as time goes on this won't be a frequent requirement.

Hi,

When you say "keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any existing BING images", do you mean having BING on a floppy or CD, and having to boot to the floppy or CD when you need to restore the BING image? That (to me) sounds like it'd be a bit of a pain.

Jim

Yes, that's what I mean. I wouldn't think you would continue to use existing images frequently in the future, but only you can decide how much of a pain it is relative to how often you have to do it.

[mjnelson99]

Jim,
I am using an SD card to boot IFW/IFD now and it is pretty
painless. BING can also boot from SD if your computer allows
it. It is very rapid compared to CD or floppy.

I must agree with the question of how often are you going to
actually be using those old images?
Mary

On 1/6/2012 11:02 PM, ohaya wrote:
> [quote="Bob Coleman":gan0ix4a]I wouldn't say it's true that there would be no use for the images that you have. It is true that they can't be used by Image for DOS (IFD) which is included with BIBM and intended to be used for imaging by BIBM users.
>
> However, there is nothing to prevent your keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any
> existing BING images when/if necessary. Surely, as time goes on this won't be a frequent requirement.[/quote:gan0ix4a]
>
>
> Hi,
>
> When you say"keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any existing BING images", do you mean having BING on a floppy or CD, and having to boot to the floppy or CD when you need to restore the BING image? That (to me) sounds like it'd be a bit of a pain.
>
> Jim

[ohaya]

Hi,

Actually, I *do* keep, and use, most of the images.

The reason is that I do a lot of development, and oftentimes, a specific project requires an environment that might have 2-7 virtualized machines (= "guests") for each environment, with maybe 4-8GB or more of drive space per guest. It would be quite prohibitive to keep all of those guests on hard drives all the time, so what I've been doing is to image the guests, and then restore the ones that I need as needed. And, I oftentimes have to resurrect a test environment that I might've originally stood up many months earlier.

Jim

[AlanD]

On 2012-01-07 6:24 PM, mjnelson99 wrote:
> Jim,
> I am using an SD card to boot IFW/IFD now and it is pretty
> painless. BING can also boot from SD if your computer allows
> it. It is very rapid compared to CD or floppy.
>
> I must agree with the question of how often are you going to
> actually be using those old images?
> Mary
>
> On 1/6/2012 11:02 PM, ohaya wrote:
>> [quote="Bob Coleman":gan0ix4a]I wouldn't say it's true that there would be no use for the images that you have. It is true that they can't be used by Image for DOS (IFD) which is included with BIBM and intended to be used for imaging by BIBM users.
>>
>> However, there is nothing to prevent your keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any
>> existing BING images when/if necessary. Surely, as time goes on this won't be a frequent requirement.[/quote:gan0ix4a]
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> When you say"keeping your BING boot media and use it to restore any existing BING images", do you mean having BING on a floppy or CD, and having to boot to the floppy or CD when you need to restore the BING image? That (to me) sounds like it'd be a bit of a pain.
>>
>> Jim
>
Not to interrupt, but Mary would you share with us how you managed to
boot from SD card?

AlanD

[TAC109]

On Sat, 7 Jan 2012 20:29:31 PST, ohaya wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Actually, I *do* keep, and use, most of the images.
>
>The reason is that I do a lot of development, and oftentimes, a specific project requires an environment that might have 2-7 virtualized machines (= "guests") for each environment, with maybe 4-8GB or more of drive space per guest. It would be quite prohibitive to keep all of those guests on hard drives all the time, so what I've been doing is to image the guests, and then restore the ones that I need as needed. And, I oftentimes have to resurrect a test environment that I might've originally stood up many months earlier.
>
>Jim

You could always 'convert ' your images by restoring with BING and
then immediately taking a new image with BiBM or one of the other
version 2 products (IFD/IFW/IFL). If you needed to 'update' any of
your images, it would be convenient to do that at the same time.