Imaging USB Drives

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Yottabytes
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2013 2:50 pm

Imaging USB Drives

Post by Yottabytes »

For years I backed up my USB Boot drive (viewtopic.php?p=18707#p18707) with Image for Windows. But ever since I started using SDXC UHS-II V90 SD cards about a year ago, IFW imaging of USB drives failed when booting and I had to switch to saving USB images to the virtual hard drive format (.vhd) whose files are more than 10x the size of .tbi or .iso images. IFW also seems to reserve a UEFI partition on these USB drives even though they have an MBR boot loader.

Is there some setting change I can make in IFW to fix this?
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by TeraByte Support »

makedisk has option of the format to use. I really don't understand what ifw imaging of usb drives failed when booting means?
Yottabytes
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2013 2:50 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Yottabytes »

I don't understand either. But it's no longer working. Guess I'll have to stick with .vhd or making ,iso's for the time being.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by TeraByte Support »

Not sure what .vhd or .iso has to do with usb? Like I said, I don't know what you mean.
Brian K
Posts: 2214
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:11 am
Location: NSW, Australia

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Brian K »

Yottabytes,

Do you make an Entire Drive backup of the UFD and then restore this image to the same or another UFD?
Yottabytes
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2013 2:50 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Yottabytes »

@Brian K. Yes, this is exactly what I do, I make an image of my original USB rescue drive in case the original USB card gets corrupted. No different than keeping an .iso image of a CD or DVD.
Mrx
Posts: 68
Joined: Sun Mar 11, 2012 8:22 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Mrx »

I know it's not SD card, but In case it help's (possibly not) but I've had issue's with restoring Win system partition's, if you don't also backup the WinRE_DRV, SYSTEM_DRV, and Microsft reserved partition, and restore all of them. After restore of just C:, it wouldn't boot sometime's.

Not done enough research - but when I restore all of them; it work's most of the time (apart from trim before restore snafu, which was fixed)
Yottabytes
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2013 2:50 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Yottabytes »

@Mrx, that's the weird thing I'm getting when Imaging these SD cards. The one's with a EFI partition, like Windows and Linux boot diskts, work fine, but when I image the USB restore disk, which has a standard MBR, not EFI, IFW somehow creates this phantom EFI partition anyway, which isn't necessary and produces an error message when I boot it.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by TeraByte Support »

you can look at your image being restored, it will show you the partitions in it. Maybe the ifw.log of one of them will help explain what you mean.
Yottabytes
Posts: 112
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2013 2:50 pm

Re: Imaging USB Drives

Post by Yottabytes »

Log file is reporting bad sectors. But I could have sworn the first time I did this with a brand new SD card. And I have since tried two other SD cards. Perhaps the SDXC V90 UHS-II spec'd SD cards that are selling for a huge premiium are not ready for prime time. They come from the factory in Exfat format but when you format them to NTFS, they fail at an alarmingly high rate. I've sent mine back for replacements.
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