Re: OT: Bootable CD's

[Chris Streatfield <softaware@xxxxxxx>]

Paul,

I don't know the answer to these queries, however,
have you thought of using Drive Image:
http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage

I haven't personally used this product but I
understand that companies like Sony use it for the
recover CD's that are supplied with their PC's. My
Sony Vaio has been recovered a few times using the CD
and it worked perfectly (even allowing different
partitions to be chosen from a selection).

Regards,
Chris

--- Paul Gordon <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sorry for the OT post, but I bet someone here knows
> the answer to this...
>
> I'm trying to burn a bootable CD, (never done one
> before), for a customer to
> use as a recovery CD, with a ghost image of an
> entire C: drive on it, plust
> all the ghot config files to automaticalyl restore
> the image.
>
> I'm slightly confused over some of the options I've
> got:
>
> Acording to Nero's help file, I can use floppy
> emulation, harddisk
> emulation, or no emulation. with floppy emulation,
> the bootable CD behaves
> after booting just as if a floppy disk had been
> inserted into the floppy
> drive. This also true for the drive letter which is
> of course 'A'. The
> floppy disk drive (normally 'A') may then be
> accessed through the drive
> letter 'B'. The amount of the boot data is of course
> limited by the maximum
> capacity of the floppy disk (for example 1.44 MB)
>
> That is all fine and dandy, and as far as it goes is
> perfectly clear to me.
> BUT, what I'm not entirely clear on, is can I then
> still use the remaining
> 648.6MB of CD capacity for putting my data on as
> well? - the way I "think"
> it should work is that the CD then has a "boot"
> area, which is an emulation
> of a floppy disk (thus limited to 1.4MB), onto which
> I can then load the
> standard DOS based CDROM drivers (MSCDEX) and so on,
> which should them load
> up CDROM support, and mount the CD as the next
> available drive letter,
> allowing me to access the rest of the data on the
> CD.. I'm let to this
> conclusion for two reasons:
> 1) It would be plainly stupid to engineer a system
> where a 650MB CD is
> completely crippled down to 1.44MB just to enable it
> to be bootable!
> 2) The nuance of the text in Nero's helpfile, - see
> above where it says "The
> amount of boot data is limited"... Notice it
> specifically says boot data,
> and not total CD capacity...
>
> Can anyone tell me if this is right or not? - when
> using floppy emulation,
> can I make a CD appear as BOTH a 1.44MB drive A: AND
> a 648.4MB Drive D:
> simultaneously?
>
> I'd prefer to use floppy emulation rather than
> harddisk emulation, just
> because it will be so much easier. - I'd have to
> prepare a 650MB partition
> on my harddisk to be the model for the CD (a pain),
> plus on the target
> machine, using harddisk emulation means that the
> drive letters of the "real"
> harddisks in the PC all get bumped up by one, which
> will confuse me when I'm
> setting up the ghost options, and I'm bound to
> overwrite the wrong
> partition!
>
> I've tried to burn one as a floppy-emulation boot
> CD, but on the target
> machine, it just hangs at the "booting from CD"
> message during startup..
> (So I know the BIOS has recognised the CD as
> bootable...)
>
> Any thoughts / suggestions?....
>
> TIA
>
> Paul G.
>
>
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