Booting XP install from USB (2 partitions)

[vrocco]

OK I know it has been covered over and over how to boot a WinPE from an external USB drive. Thanks to these forums, I got mine working.

However, I have a problem. I have a highly customized install DVD that we use for my workplace. After booting WinPE, it uses Ghost to lay down an image on the drive. The Ghost file (.gho) is about 4GB. This means it will not fit on my FAT partition which needs to be 2GB or less.

I was able to hard code the drive letters into the batch files to get it to run ghost from the second partition after booting WinPE, however, this is where I have a problem. Depending on which computer I plug into, WinPE seems to mount the USB drive partitions as different letters. So I need to go in each time and find out what the drive letter is for my econd partition and then re-edit the batch files to point to that drive letter.

Is there anyway to configure the WinPE so that the Ghost partition always mounts as a certain drive letter, or somehow set a variable like %TargetDrive% to that partition? That way, I can use the variable and not a drive letter.

Any help is appreciated.

Vito

[DownFall]

If you are broken something in you computer.. press ALT+10 after logged in your computer and default factory setups..

[vrocco]

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!

This response has nothing to do with what I asked. Was I not clear in my post as to what I am trying to do?

[TheFlash428]

Plus what the heck is "ALT+10"????

...sorry, I don't really have an answer to the actual question

[Oleg_II]

Just an idea:

in Unattended installation there is a way to set a variable for CD drive:

for %%i in (C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z) do if exist %%i:\cdrom_nt.5 set CDDRIVE=%%i:
set WINPATH=%CDDRIVE%\

As you can see a file CDROM_NT.5 (it's a file in the root on Windows 2000 CD disk) is used as a tag file for finding and defining where the installation source is.

PS By the way, I'm using DeployCenter (DOS version of PowerQuest DriveImage Pro that is still available from Symantec) and there is a way to specify all needed info in scripts (they have a very good manual). No need to difine a letter for USB drive

[vrocco]

Actually got a great answer from MedEvil on the boot-land forum. Works perfectly.

<quote>

Here i described how one can get a fixed drive letter for partitions on an USB-Stick.

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...mp;hl=dosdevice

</quote>

Edited July 5, 2007 by vrocco

[vrocco]

If anyone is interested in the script I wrote to do this, you can find it at

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1938&st=0&gopid=17055entry17055