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+----------------------------------------+ | | | Partition saving | | | | http://www.partition-saving.com | | Copyright (c) 1999-2005 D. Guibouret | +----------------------------------------+ HOWTO Table of contents ----------------- 1- Preamble 2- Some definitions 3- Some DOS commands a) Change drive b) List directory contents c) Change directory d) Execute a program 4- Preparation 5- Saving 6- Restoring 1- Preamble ----------- This is not the Partition Saving manual. This is a short description of how to use this program in a standard case. To have more details, please read manual and FAQ. 2- Some definitions ------------------- A drive is a partition on a hard disk, a floppy drive or any other device that allows storing data. With DOS it is identified with a letter between 'A' and 'Z' followed with ':'. A directory (or folder) is an element of a drive that allows grouping files (or sub-folders) together. Directory organisation on a drive is called a tree. A directory inside another directory is called a sub-folder, a directory that contains a sub-folder is called parent directory (or upper directory) of sub-folder. The upper directory into tree (those that corresponds to drive) is called root. 3- Some DOS commands -------------------- DOS is an OS that run with command line. Here are some commands that could be useful. All commands given here must be validated with Enter key to be executed. a) Change drive To change drive, you have to enter "<drive letter>:". Example: -------- To go on floppy drive, you have to enter "A:". b) List directory contents To list what a directory contains, you have to enter "dir". If you enter "dir <directory name>" you will get contents of <directory name>. If you do not give directory name, you will get contents of current directory. If there was more files into a directory than it could be displayed on screen, you could enter "dir <directory name> /p" to stop command between each screen. Example: -------- "dir savepart". c) Change directory To change directory, you have to enter "cd <directory name>". If you do not give <directory name>, current directory name will be displayed. If <directory name> is equal to ".", nothing is done, if it is equal to "..", you go into upper directory, if it is equal to "\" you go into root directory. You could cross over several directories by separating them with "\". Example: -------- If you have following directory tree: C: |- savepart | |- doc | |- en | |- fr_ansi | |- fr_ascii and you are into C:. If you enter "cd savepart", you go into savepart directory (enter "cd" to check this). Then if you enter "cd doc", you go into savepart\doc. A faster way to be into this directory from C: is to enter "cd savepart\doc". Once you are into savepart\doc, you could enter "cd .." to go back into savepart, "cd \" to go into root directory (C:). d) Execute a program To execute a program, you have to enter its name. DOS begin to search a file "<program name>.bat", "<program name>.com" or "<program name>.exe" into current directory, then into all directories given into "PATH" variable (to know what contains this variable, enter "path"). You could also give directory name with program name for the DOS to search it directly into this directory. Example: -------- With considering that you have savepart.exe into savepart directory from previous example directory tree and that you are into C:\, you could enter "savepart\savepart" to run program, or enter "cd savepart" then "savepart". 4- Preparation -------------- Here are elements to be done before saving/restoring a partition: - To be able to save/restore a partition, you need a boot floppy disk or CDROM (or DOS >= 3.3 or Windows 3.x, 9x, Me installed on your hard disk). To know how to create one, you could read FAQ Q10. You have to check that fdisk.exe, sys.com and format.com are on it, they could be useful. - To avoid saving useless things, it is better to remove temporary and useless files, .... Swap file could also be moved onto another partition to avoid saving it. - It could be better to defragment partition before saving it to group all data at beginning, moreover if you will restore it onto a smaller partition. - If you think to clone a Windows NT/2000/XP partition on another computer, you have to prepare Windows to this. For this purpose, please read Microsoft site and search for sysprep tool. This is not needed when saving/restoring a partition that was not moved on disk. For partition that remains on same computer but on another disk using sysprep is also theoretically not needed with using options to update registry and BOOTSECT.DOS file (you could have also to update the BOOT.INI file). - You need a FAT or NTFS partition or a device that could be written by DOS to create saving files. Writing CD directly from DOS is rarely available. In this case you need to create saved file on hard disk then go back to your usual OS to burn CD. For USB devices, it seems that some generic drivers exist to access them from DOS. If you have several types of partition (like NTFS and FAT) into a logical partition, you have to put FAT partitions before the others (else DOS seems not to be able to find them). If you want to create the saving file on a NTFS partition, you have to first create this file on this partition from within Windows with dedicated option because program is not able to create files on NTFS partition, only to modify and resize them. - To be able to find easily which partition to choose, it is better to give a name to each partition. This will avoid confusion in case matching between partition and corresponding letter is wrong. - The part that is better to save is system partition (the one where OS is). If system is installed on a partition and programs on another, as they could be links between them (example: register base and DLL for Windows), you have to save both partitions with running program twice. As a good way of doing, it is better to create at least 2 partitions: one with OS and programs, second with your data (that do not need restoring in case of problem with OS). If it is not the case, before restoring, you will have to save your data somewhere to avoid them being erased with an older version. 5- Saving --------- Here are steps to save a partition: - You have to begin with choosing "Save an element" info first window. - Then you have to choose support. As a general rule, system partition is on disk number 0, so it is this one that you have to choose. "DOS devices" choice should be used only if element to save is not on a hard disk or a floppy disk. - Third window allows choosing what exactly will be saved. It will not appear if you choose a floppy disk on previous window. So you have to choose into list what you want: generally it is only system partition. Full save of disk is of poor interest (it needs a lot of place), saving each partition individually is better. It is the same thing for logical partition: it is better to save each partition than the whole extended partition. Saving partition table or MBR could be interesting in case one day a virus infects your computer (some of them destroy this data). - Fourth window allows choosing what is to save on chosen element. This window appears only if you choose a partition, a floppy disk or a DOS device for which filesystem is known. Saving all sectors does a copy of each sector of partition, but it could be restored only on a partition that is identical to saved one. Choosing to save occupied only sectors does a copy of each occupied sector of partition, this need less space and allows restoring on a different partition than saved one. "Element on itself" choice appears for FAT and NTFS partition only: if you have only one partition, this allows saving this partition with creating saving file on it (if you do not choose this option, you should not created saving file on saved partition). "Element without swap files" choice appears for FAT and NTFS partition only: in this case, swap file (win386.swp, hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys) content is not saved (saving them is useless). - Following window asks you which directory contains swap files. It appears only if you choose option to not save them. As default, program searches into root directory and you could give here another directory (you could give root directory also if swap files are not elsewhere). As a general rule, swap files are into root or Windows directory. - Following window allows giving saving file name. With DOS, names could not be more than 8 characters long and could be followed by a 3 characters extension (example: "fichier00.part" will be cut into "fichier0.par"). Filename could contains alphabetical and numerical characters and '$', '%', ''', '-', '_', '@', '~', '`', '!', '(', ')', '{', '}', '^', '#' and '&' characters. Files created with this program do not need any specific extension (do not give them an extension used by another program to avoid confusion). Filename should be given into "File" line. As default it contains "*.*" which means: list all files into current directory. You could give a simple filename (in this case it will be created into current directory) or a whole pathname (example: "D:\DISK_C.PAR"). Others window elements allow changing drive ("Drives") or directory ("Directories") or choosing an existing file ("Files"). Unless you choose option to save partition on itself into previous window, you should not create a saving file on partition you save. If you created a file on a NTFS partition during preparation, you could mount (that means make available) that partition with "Mount a partition" button on right window to be able to select the partition (first disk then partition) where this file is. FAT and ext2/3 partitions could also be mounted, but in read-only mode. - Following window asks for the size that you do not want the file override. This is useful as example if you want to burn files on CD to force it to not be bigger than CD. In all cases you could not create a file bigger than 2047 Mb. If saving need more place, program will ask you name of a second file where it will continue to save data. - Following window asks if you want to compress data. Bigger the chosen value is, bigger the time to save is (restoring will less be influenced by it). As a general rule, going over level 5 do not win a lot of space in comparison to time spent. - From this point, saving phase begins. Upper progression bar shows saving progress, as lower bar shows filling of file in comparison to maximum size defined. If this file is filled up, another one will be asked to you. List under contains errors that were found when saving. You could cancel this saving, but in this case, you should not use created files. - Once saving is ended, program asks you if you want to create a configuration file. This file is a text file that allows doing the same saving or restoring this partition without program asking you anything. If you answer yes here, filename to create will be asked. If after exiting program, you move saving file (with burning them on CD by example), you have to modify the configuration file to put new place of saving file (example: if you create saving file into D:\DISK_C.PAR, configuration file into D:\DISK_C.CFG, your CD reader has the F: letter and you want to burn both file. Before doing it, you should edit configuration file (with a text editor) to change "file=D:\DISK_C.PAR" line into "file=F:\DISK_C.PAR" and that for all "file=..." lines that are into file). It is better to not burn CD with a too high speed: I got some feedback of people getting problems because they were not able to read CD back from DOS (but it appears to be correct from Windows) unless they decrease burning speed. 6- Restoring ------------ If when saving you have created the configuration file and you want to do restoring on saved partition, you could enter "savepart -r -f <configuration filename>" and restoring will be automatic. Warning: in this case no confirmation will be asked you before. If you do not create configuration file or prefer to do restoring by hand, here are all steps: - Begin with choosing "Restore an element" option in first window. - The second window asks which is the first saving file: you should enter its name into "File" line (or double click on its name into "Files" list) with changing directory or drive before if needed. You must be sure that this file is not on partition you want to restore. - Depending on file contents and how your partitions are, program gives you list of partitions that match the one into saved file. The one that is identical to the saved one is marked with an 'X' into Id. column. Note: restoring a partition obviously erases the current contents. If you saved partition table and restore it, you will loose content of all partitions on disk on which restoring is done as this modify disk organisation. - A window asks you to confirm your choice. - From this point restoring begins. Upper progress bar shows progress for file that is currently read, lower one gives progress for the restored partition. If saving was done into several files, program will ask you the following one when it reaches end of current one. - Once restoring is ended, you should not access to restored partition before having booted your computer. This is because informations that DOS has into memory are no more coherent with partition content and so using it will end with data corruption. After that, if you have saved partition on itself, saving file could appear on restored partition, in this case you could remove it as it is not valid (I speak about the file that could appear on restored partition, not those you use to do this restoring which is always correct). - If when restoring, you do not have restored partition on the one that was saved (either it is not on the same disk or beginning of partition has moved on disk) and you have Windows 2000 and XP, you have to update some definitions into registry and into a file (BOOTSECT.DOS) used in case you have several Windows installations (see chapters 11 and 12 of manual). - In some cases, if you restore system partition, it could be no more bootable. You should begin with checking with fdisk that it is activated. Then for FAT partition, you have to restore MBR with "fdisk /mbr", then boot sector with "sys c:" (from boot floppy disk). For ext2fs partition, you have to restore boot loader by using install CD used into rescue mode (method to use depend on boot loader). For NTFS partition, you have to use fixboot, fixmbr and bootcfg commands by using repair console that could be obtained with install CD. ------ All trademarks and registered trademarks are ownership of their respective holders.