Looking for a USB stick drive partition

[Elmo Putney]

My OS partition is normally only about 4 to 5 GB once I have a tidy up, I've been looking around for a piece of software that will boot off a USB stick and do an image of the C: drive onto the same stick, preferably with as few steps as possible.

At the moment I use Gigabytes xpress recovery which is good, but it stores the image on the same physical disk so its a bit risky.

Can Acronis do what I want? Anyone know of something like this?

[systemshark]

Hi,

I use 16gb Memory stick with MiniPE loaded on to first partition (512Mb) and the 2nd 15.5Gb partition for the data /image.

Then all I do is, boot with MiniPe and back up using Norton Ghost to D:

[Elmo Putney]

I looked at BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/)

But I baulked at the number of steps required to get it up and running, I'll take a look at miniPE to see if its less time to get going.

I'm suprised Norton et-al haven't done something like this already though.

[systemshark]

Yes I originally looked at Barts PE builder too... and it want onto the 'too hard list' then I found a $14 bit of software (i'll check when I get home) which converts ISOs to USB pens so they can be bootable USB pens.

MiniPE is a Utilities CD with about 100 useful tools (basically anything and everything you need) and I just use that because it's so simple....

Get a copy of MiniPE via a torrent, and a) burn to CD and you'll love it and b) load it on a USB pen....

Or if you want to avoid all the hassle.... use a booting CD and save to the USB... This works a treat too....

[fuzzweed]

this freebie can make a 'hot' image of the c drive with volume shadow copy - might do what you're wanting but the other way round.
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

[systemshark]

right finally at home.... I hate people who don't know how to drive in the snow...

anyway

the software I used to build a bootable USB is flashboot. it lives here

http://www.prime-expert.com/flashboot/

good luck....

[pBS]

i use Image for Windows from Terabyte...amazing little program, backs up to anything, can even burn dvd's from dos... new version has differential backups also...and much faster than ghost..[about same as driveimage xml]

works from dos, or windows, or a winpe disk [even comes with bartpe plugin maker]
easily scriptable, has builtin cmdline creation helper,hot backups while running,etc..
windows ver is about 4 megs, while dos ver is only a single 500k file,and both include dvd burning ability without any extras needed,even to usb dvd recorders/drives in dos!

you could make a dos boot usb drive with ifw in autoexec and just boot off it to backup, or do it with same stick in windows while *in* windows,etc...very versatile...

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

even copies damaged disks pretty well...saved my arse several times...

[Elmo Putney]

This is all good stuff, I'll take a good look at miniPE and take it from there.

I hate people who don't know how to drive in the snow

Don't even start me on that one, driving in snow is fine and a lot of fun, it's just all the other numpties that make it difficult. I had to stop traffic on Monday morning to stop people trying to get up a hill without a run up.

[martint123]

I'm suprised Norton et-al haven't done something like this already though.

Their problem would be support - I have only seen one mobo that boots from a USB stick - that must be out of a dozen or more I've built up recently.


CD/DVD is a lot faster booting than USB.

[wtg]

The Ultimate Boot CD for Windowsis a great, free tool that includes software for doing drive images. It does much more than that - great for removing malware or recovering files off hard drives that won't boot - but it's build process is highly configurable and lets you choose among many, many tools in it's arsenal.

I think I'm going to go home and try using flashboot with it myself. Be nice to carry it around on a flash drive instead of a CD.