[Question] Bootable virtual drive!?

[redoz]

Help me!,

Recently i got myself an hp compaq nx6110 notebook, with two cd's, one with winxp home,the other is a dvd full of drivers and applications, hmm, thats not what i wanted to say, i was wondering if anyone knew something about making a snapshot( a drive image) using ghost or acronis true image, mount this image to a virtual drive, and then make this drive permanent(as in bootable by DOS) is there any possibility to do that? it would be great since a friend of mine got himself a dell with no cd's, just an option to restore everything(windows,drivers...etc) in one click, and toshiba's are including a default image on a dvd with their laptops.

regards to all

Please NOW in Microsoft Windows XP section, use [TAGS] in your topic's title.

See rules.

--Sonic

Edited February 8, 2006 by Sonic

[kurt476]

Help me!,

Recently i got myself an hp compaq nx6110 notebook, with two cd's, one with winxp home,the other is a dvd full of drivers and applications, hmm, thats not what i wanted to say, i was wondering if anyone knew something about making a snapshot( a drive image) using ghost or acronis true image, mount this image to a virtual drive, and then make this drive permanent(as in bootable by DOS) is there any possibility to do that? it would be great since a friend of mine got himself a dell with no cd's, just an option to restore everything(windows,drivers...etc) in one click, and toshiba's are including a default image on a dvd with their laptops.

i don't know maybe someone would know..

that could be possible to have Bootable virtual drive!

[EchoNoise]

You can possibly do this with a modded PCI board that has volatile memory chips on it and flash the OS on there...

Or you could try a CF to IDE and plug it into a spare slot?

Ideas ideas... just ideas

[redoz]

too complicated!, hmm, i thought of something else, make a small partition( small as in 2 GB!) for a desired image, but again, can i make it bootable ? I know I'm sounding pretty stupid, but ah well Im not one of a kind!

[Angelico_Payne]

too complicated!, hmm, i thought of something else, make a small partition( small as in 2 GB!) for a desired image, but again, can i make it bootable ? I know I'm sounding pretty stupid, but ah well Im not one of a kind!

well what U are trying to do is complicated

Virtual drives are possible in DOS enviromnet, but plugin in a CD over USB or IDE is the simplest solution

U can use Vmvare to test it before trying it on your friend computer

[dougiefresh]

Virtual drives are possible in DOS enviromnet

Never seen a DOS-level driver to make a virtual drive bootable..... and besides, the MBR would have to be completely rewritten in order to even make an attempt at booting off such a drive. Windows XP would have to have support for the virtual drive, because it don't by default. I don't think that what you want is even remotely possible.

I've never seen DOS software supporting a virtual drive (except by SUBST - and that's definitely not what is being discussed here!) If you know something I don't (and I suspect you do since you made the statement), please direct us in this forum as to where such software can be found!

too complicated!, hmm, i thought of something else, make a small partition( small as in 2 GB!) for a desired image, but again, can i make it bootable ? I know I'm sounding pretty stupid, but ah well Im not one of a kind!

Sure! Use Ghost to duplicate the partition onto another partition that you create under the 8GB partition boundary! Just make sure that the partition is below the 8GB partition boundary, because if you don't, your partition may not be bootable! (Hint: use Partition Magic to move your current partition to 2GB higher than where it currently is! You will have to modify your BOOT.INI in order to point it to the correct partition!)

Hold on, just had a thought: Do you mean as in a partition to make a PC Recovery partition, like what's on the Compaq's and HP's and Dell's? Entirely different, but kinda the same......

Edited February 8, 2006 by dougiefresh

[LLXX]

Do you mean booting from a ramdrive? This is what WinPE and others bootable CDs do...

Never seen a DOS-level driver to make a virtual drive bootable.....

It's been done. Standard Microsoft RAMDRIVE.SYS and RAM-LOAD utility can boot a DOS v3.30 kernel from the ramdrive *after* the main hard drive has booted and loaded the driver, then copied the files to the ramdrive and then essentially boots from it without restarting the whole machine.

[dougiefresh]

I reread the previous messages just now and I think what you're looking for, now that I'm not half-asleep! What you're looking for is a Recovery partition, similar to what the Dell and HP and Comtrash computers have!!!!!

My method of partitioning a system is to create a partition about 4GB in size, next partition is 30GB for operating system (rest of drive is HD is only 40GB!), third partition rest of drive (if any space is available) Use a ordinary MS-DOS disk to put the system files onto the partition you create. You'll have to use a different MBR if you want to hide the partition from your operating system. You'll also want to come up with a user-friendly interface for DOS, preferably graphic interface (GUI)......

What I've done is customized my Dell's PC Recovery partition for my own use. It works very well for me. On second thought, let me see what I can do to help you with this little project....... (give me a little while....)

Edited February 9, 2006 by dougiefresh