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Driveimage – Restoration
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8. Restore the image.
No backup solution is complete unless you *know* that you can actually recover the files
your images. Until you know that you can restore your files, your new image isn’t worth a pitcher
of warm spit. Yes, I said spit. Let’s ensure that your new backup is working, shall we? You DID
back up your files originally, right?
http://tipsfor.us/ghost-windows-xp-for-free/driveimage-restoration/ 10/9/2010
Driveimage – Restoration » TipsFor.us Page 2 of 20
Boot from the BartPE live CD and launch DriveImage XML. Insert any media that contains your
backup image. Click “Restore” on the left side and start following the wizard again. Choose the
XML file that you want to restore. For my purposes, I chose to restore the image from its location
on my second hard drive, though I could also have inserted the DVD-R containing the image into
my second optical drive. [See full screenshot]
Next, select the drive or partition to which you want to restore. If this is a new hard drive that
does not yet have any partitions, DriveImage XML also gives you the option to launch the
“Windows Disk Management” utility, which you can use to create a new partition. You will have to
confirm your choice a couple of times, and the final time you actually have to type a few
characters into a text box and then click OK. When you have ensured that the correct image is
going to restore to the correct partition, cross your fingers and click OK. Here goes! [See full
screenshot]
Now watch helplessly as all of your files are erased… and hopefully restored with the files in your
image. Believe it or not, it only took my computer exactly 8 minutes and 40 seconds to restore
the image. [See full screenshot]
When it is finished, reboot and remove the live CD. If your system comes back to life,
congratulations, you have successfully implemented an image/restore backup system, all for free.
If your system exploded or drank all of the soy nog in your refrigerator, I offer my condolences.
Re-read the instructions, and better luck next time.
9. Alternatives and asides.
Though this entire process may seem much more complicated than a commercial equivalent like
Symantec Ghost, it really is not. From this point on, all I have to do when I want to backup my
system is to run DriveImage XML from my system drive to create an image. If I ever need to
restore from it, I simply boot my live CD and restore the image. There’s no more slipstreaming or
building live CDs. I’ve never used Norton Ghost(tm) or any other paid backup solution, so I
cannot draw a direct feature comparison.
While DriveImage XML offers a lot for free, I do have some suggested improvements. I’d like to
see a way to automate a time schedule for creating backup images, such as “every Sunday at 11
PM.” I’d also love the ability to specify the size of the “split large files” option instead
defaulting to 656 MB. Specifically, DVD-sized chunks would be great.
Of course, this is only one way to achieve the results for free. I am sure that there are other free
imaging utilities, some of which may even integrate with BartPE or another live CD environment,
but this is what I found that works for me. While another option would be to boot a Linux live CD
and use a tool such as Mondo Rescue, using a Windows live CD simplifies matters in that
guaranteed to have full NTFS write support.
Before any DOS purists attack me stating that Windows XP does indeed have a cloning utility
called “xcopy”, let me say this. If you can prove to me that xcopy is as versatile and easy to use
as DriveImage XML and can do everything that I’ve listed in this article, I’m all ears. Deciphering
all those switches is not my cup of tea.
That said, I leave the door open for anyone to tell me an alternate way to create an image/restore
backup system like the one I have described for free. We can all benefit from that kind of
knowledge. Please do not tell me that “such-and-such program has a free 30-day trial.” That does
not count.
Good luck, and happy backups.
—- Brian Bondari —-
© 2005
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Posted by Brian - TipsFor.us at

12:38 am
106 Responses to “Driveimage – Restoration”
Comments (106)
1. David B says:
October 6, 2006 at 2:08 pm
THANK YOU! I have been looking for a free alternative to Ghost, and from what I just read, it
sounds like I found it. Thank you for the detailed instructions.
I do have one question though. Say I have a lab of 10 computers, how will the differing license
numbers affect the process?
Thanks, David
Reply
2. habibbijan says:
You’re welcome.
I have experience in an OS X lab, but not one for Windows. Therefore, I can only speculate. Unless you
feel like creating ten separate images, every computer will end up with the same license number. I
suppose you could change it after the computer has been restored.
Something like keyfinder may do the trick: http://www.winkeyfinder.com/
Another link of interest: http://www.freepctech.com/pc/xp/xp00066.shtml
Good luck.
Reply
3. Mike Bluett says:

Actually, you can just do this (i.e., you don’t need DriveImage XML):
1. Create a BARTPE bootable CD
2. Boot from the CD
3. Copy all files and folders just as they appear on your operational XP hard disk
That’s it
If a restore is required, all you need to do is:
1. Boot from the BARTPE CD
2. Create the disk partition that will hold your new XP installation (if it isn’t already created).
3. Make the partition ACTIVE (if it isn’t already)
4. Copy all files and folders from the backup media
5. Boot from the newly built XP HD
The only difference is that DriveImage XML may use compression thus decreasing the amount of
backup media used, but the outcome is the same.
Reply
4. vlad says:
October 7, 2006 at 9:30 am
Hello, and thanks for this tutorial. I searched for long time such a
simple method for “ghosting”. But i have a simple question: my harddisk 0
has the primary partition (system) and a extended partition with 2 logical
drives (D,E). Obviously i create the image for system partition; there is no
risk to lose/damage/etc. the logical drives when I restore the system? (for
example, some commercial software has problems with drive letter and
paths… and I find only tutorials where the model is one harddisk with ONE big partition). Thank you
Reply
5. habibbijan says:
Hi vlad,
I haven’t tried this procedure on a system with extended partitions. However, my main sytem has
three partitons on the main drive (including a linux install), plus a second hard drive with two
partitions. I have not had ANY trouble with it.
My suspicion is that it will be fine. Your mileage may vary.
Good luck.
Reply
6. Brent says:
Thanks for your great tutorial. Driveimage won’t let me perform a “Drive to Drive” copy using
a source partition that is larger than my destination partition. However, the data size of the
source is small enough to fit the destination and I do not have the “Raw mode” option enabled. The
documentation sounds as if Driveimage will automatically resize the source to fit the destination
partition and doesn’t indicate it being limited to the destination being as big or bigger than the source.
The only documented limitation I found is that you can only restore an image to a drive that is the
same or larger size as the original, so I’m assuming the same limitation applies to making a “Drive to
Drive” copy? Or am I missing something?
Thanks.
Reply
7. Jeff says:
I’m new to using DriveImage, but I experienced a similar problem as Brent. I created my image (which
works great when I re-image the same computer as I created the image on), but when I tried
reimage another computer with that image, it gave me some error about the the destination drive
needs to be as big or bigger than the image partition I was trying to restore. My image file was only
6GB, so there should have been no problem. I didn’t have RAW Mode selected when I created the
image either. So apparently it seems that with DriveImage, the size of the WHOLE partition is taken
into consideration when you create an image (which is something I don’t understand). Help!
Reply
8. TimP says:
habibbijan, you are THE Man!
This is just what I’ve been looking for, free software to image my PC with some well written, clear
instructions on how to do it.
The InterSuperWeb is a better place because of you and folk like you.
Cheers.
Reply
9. Jeff says:
Since DriveImage XML has a flaw and won’t let you reimage a smaller hard drive than what
you took an image from (yes, even without Raw Mode selected), I just did what Mike said
and didn’t use DriveImageXML at all…I just sysprepped my image and after it shut down, I booted with
BartPE and just copied all the files off the hard drive to a network drive(or whatever backup media
you’re using).
After you have those files copied, anytime you want to re-image a computer, just boot it using BartPE,
format the drive within BartPE, map the network drive(where your files are stored), then just copy
those files onto the hard drive. It’s as easy as that.
DriveImageXML *seemed* to work well and I liked it at first….until I realized you can not re-image a
smaller drive (so if you take an image off a 100GB hard drive, you can not re-image an 80GB hard
drive…even if the image itself is only 5GB or whatever). It’s rather sad because I was excited that I
found some good free software for reimaging…apparently not.
Reply
10. habibbijan says:

October 13, 2006 at 11:45 am
Let’s be fair. Driveimage never claimed to be able to do such a task. For what it IS able to do,
it works wonders. It’s able to backup and restore system images for free. Yes, I agree that it
would be nice if it had the capability to restore an image to a smaller drive or partition, but I would not
call it a “flaw” that it cannot do so without being advertised.
I’m glad the straight copying method works for you.
Thanks for all the comments!
Reply
11. Jeff says:

Hey Habibbijan,
Well, without getting into a fight about it, I would like to add some more to that. Just as Brent said
in his message, the documentation says it will resize to the destination partition (and doesn’t mention
anything about a requirement of the size of the partition), here’s the exact words in the Help File:
“While copying the source drive will be resized to the size of the destination partition if raw mode is
unchecked and the file system to be transferred is an NTFS of FAT32 file system.”
And all throughout the documentation it talks about re-imaging to other drives, etc., and it never says
you can not re-image a smaller drive. That IMPLIES that DriveImage is claiming it could do that. If you
read Ghost’s documentation, they doesn’t say, “Oh, and you can re-image a smaller drive with this
software too.”…but yet Ghost can do it. They don’t mention it in their documentation because it
implied by everything else they’re talking about. After all, it’s imaging software…that capability should
be a GIVEN. I mean, come on, if you’re in an environment where you reimage a bunch of different
computers with the same image, that’s just crazy you can’t reimage a smaller drive. That means you
can only reimage the computers that have the same size or bigger hard drive and all other computers
are just screwed. All other software (Ghost, Altiris, etc.) have no problem with it…and even though
those are programs you pay for, it’s not like it’s an advanced feature or hard to program in…it’s one of
the simplest, most crucial elements I would think you would need when you have imaging software.
The whole point of imaging software is to make re-installing your OS convenient and time saving. If
you can’t use your image on a smaller hard drive, I would say that’s not very convenient…your image
is useless for any other smaller computer (that in my opinion is considered a flaw).
Anyway, with all that said and done, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree on this being
a “flaw”, lol. And the important thing is that we both have solutions that work for us. Have a good
one!
Reply
12. Brent says:

Actually, the limitation of restoring an image to a smaller partition is documented in their
online FAQ:
Q. Can I restore the image to a smaller partition?
A. No, currently you can only restore your data to a partition that is exactly the same size or larger,
regardless of the data size.
What I was trying to do, however, was perform a “Drive to Drive” copy, which clones the source
partition to the destination partition without creating an image in between. So, I was hoping
limitation didn’t apply in this case, but unless someone knows otherwise, looks like it does.
However, I will say that, for my needs, DiskImage is still my favorite (especially since it is free). Here
everything I’d like to have:
1) ability to “hot image”
2) scheduling ability
3) ability to clone partition to partition (even if destination is smaller)
4) support Windows 98
So, in other words, I’d like to be able to schedule a “hot image” clone of the source partition, so if the
source drive fails, it’s a simple switch of drives and I’m ready to go (this is for my non-tech savvy
parents who live in another state and doing anything more complicated for them is a real hassle).
Of my wish list above, DiskImage gives me 2 of 4 (well, more like 2.5 of 4). All I need is a bigger
destination drive and I get 3 of 4. The only other programs (free or paid) I know of that can
image” are Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost 10, but neither (that I’m aware) can clone by
schedule. Anyone feel free to correct me or otherwise inform.
I might actually just use Norton PartitionMagic to repartition the source drive so there is a smaller
“Programs” partition and add a second partition for “Data,” which is my preferred setup, anyway. I
already backing up essential data to CD, so I really just need the programs backed up, still. If I set my
“Programs” partition size to be smaller than my destination drive, then bingo, DriveImage does
everything I need (minus Windows 98, but oh well – I have another plan for that machine).
Sorry we’ve been taking over your site, Habibbijan . Thanks again for you help.
Reply
13. Brent says:

Oops, I made a mistake: it looks like you actually cannot schedule a “Drive to Drive” hot
image clone using DriveImage. The scheduling is only for backing up to an image file.
So, that puts (as far as I know) DriveImage on about the same ranking (according to my wishlist in my
previous post) as Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost 10… except DriveImage is FREE.
I suppose I can find Ghost for free after rebates…
Reply
14. Jeff says:

Ah, ok, well I guess I somewhat appologize because it was mentioned in the FAQs about the
re-imaging of a smaller drive. However, that should be something that’s actually listed in the
help file if you ask me. Anyway, sorry again for my bashing of DriveImage…I just really, really,
really would love it if it could actually re-image a smaller partition! Oh well.
Reply

I agree that it would be an outstanding feature, and hopefully one that they can eventually
add. I can easily see the benefit of such a use.
For what it’s worth, you can always send the Runtime company an e-mail with a feature request.
support [at] runtime.org
Cheers,
Brian
Reply
16. Lars says:

Thank you for sharing this article. I just completed a flawless backup/restore of my two
development pc’s.
Best regards
Lars Brandt
Denmark/EU
Reply
17. Thaton Kyaikto says:

I had a problem. Has anyone seen this problem?
System restore doesn’t work on the restored drive.
I get an error when I try to use system restore, apparently I am missing a file. I think it was the
volume shadow index file (VSI)
System restore works fine on the original drive.
If anyone knows a work around please let me know.
My take on the size issue…..Use Partition Magic to resize the drive as small as possible and the make
an image of it then. I made my partition 8gb. I’m not interested in backing up working drives that I am
using, I can shuffle data later after I have cloned a fresh copy of a new install onto the new drive. I
keep several drives on hand, when one gets “buggerred up” I pull the files I want to keep onto another
drive and wipe it, and then reinstall the OS. I had been keeping a 20gb drive with the fresh install just
for drive to drive copying.
I currently have over 1000gb’s of hard drive space (video editing) I built my tower with 4 pull out
drives in front and I plug and play some SATA’s from the side. I made one of the 4 pull outs hot
swappable by using a USB-2 IDE dongle and connecting it internally to a PCI USB-2 card. The trick to
making it work is putting a switch on the USB cable that breaks the power. I had to dissect the USB
cable and extend the red power leads to a switch. I mounted the switch on the front of the tower. I
plug a drive into the bay, turn on the key for the bay and then switch on the power to the USB cable.
Then the drive is recognized, just like you are using an external USB enclosure. Only it is nice and neat
and installed in my tower.
I appreciate your hard work, thanks for have this page up and running.
Thaton Kyaikto
Florida, USA
Reply
18. Menus says:

November 7, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Hello Mr Habibbijan – thanks for your comments and instructions on handling
DriveImageXML. So far I did not succeed in getting the created image to run. It may well be,
that this is owed to the facf that WinXP created a so called Systempartition on my HD (C:) It
containes: Boot.ini,NTLDR, and NTDETECT.com. I noticed this some weeks ago, however I do not know
how long it is already there.
In some Forums (and in the M$-Knowledgebase) it is addressed as something making problems and
there are methods recommended to handle those problems (like renaming your drives in a complicated
way via Registry/HKEY/Mounteddevices.. .
My question to you is, how to you handle this partition during the copying and restore process????
If this interests you, I will gladly send you Screenshots of all this. Just let me know.
Regards: Menus
Reply
19. Brent says:

November 17, 2006 at 3:59 am
For anyone interested, found a program that does everything I need (see my previous posts)
and, at least as of today, it’s free:
Paragon Drive Copy 8 Personal SE

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2166317/paragon-drive-copy-personal
You can download it and register for a free license, but this offer will probably only be available for the
next day or two. It’s normally priced around $25, which I’d still be willing to pay knowing it can do
what I need.
I haven’t fully tested it yet on Win XP and haven’t tried it at all yet on Win 98, but so far it seems to
work great.
For something more relevant to this tutorial, they have a disk imaging program, also for free as of
right now:
Paragon Exact Image 7 SE

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/download/paragon-exact-image-7-se.aspx
The current version of this software is now called “Paragon Drive Backup 8.0″ and retails for about
$50.
I haven’t tried “Exact Image” out at all. I did a google search on it and BartPE and got a few hits from
people who have built custom plugins for it. I’m assuming it may have some of the same abilities as
their “Drive Copy” software (e.g., restore to a smaller partition).
Finally, I emailed Runtime Software with the suggestions found on this page for improving DriveImage
XML and this was their response:
“These are features that full retail packages of Backup software do. We are not interested in releasing
the software as a retail software and therefore the software will stay as it is mostly. Thanks for your
interest though.”
Thanks again, Brian, for putting together this great tutorial. I will certainly be using it as future needs
arise.
Reply
20. Johannes says:

November 22, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Brian,
Thanks a lot for this excellent tutorial.
Keep up with the good work!
Regards,
Johannes
Germany
Reply
21. Onous says:

January 23, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Many of you are talking about data backups. I would actually think about using these backup
solutions for System Drive/ OS Backups. I have no idea why people come in and talk about
file copying…which is totally out of focus.
Reply
22. Ron says:

March 8, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Great article habibbijan,
I have one question though; is it possible to boot from BartPE and restore an image from one optical
drive (i.e. swap cd/dvd discs)?
Thanks,
Ron
Reply

March 14, 2007 at 8:30 pm
Hi Ron,
To my knowledge it is not possible to switch discs once you are running from the live environment.
There is another option: I haven’t tried this, but I think you can go ahead an create an image of your
system with Driveimage XML. When building your BartPE disc, there is an option to include an “
directory with whatever files you want. If you use a blank DVD, you can specify the directory in which
you stored your “image” as the “extra” directory.
That way, you can boot from the BartPE disc AND have your backup available on the same disc.
Good luck.
Reply
24. Andreas Baum says:

March 18, 2007 at 11:57 am
Hello,
I try DriveImage XML 1.21. Nice Program but if I use the Task Scheduler I get the message “Image
fragment size set to 0 sectors (0 bytes).”. Now I have click on the “OK” button and the backup starts.
Why does the “Information” window appears? I can’t start backups without clicking.
Reply
25. Mark Smith says:
April 20, 2007 at 3:57 pm

All in all, an excellent tutorial!
A few observations/suggestions:
1. You might want to update the tutorial to steer people to this discussion thread upfront, since there
are some critical time saving issues that are discussed here, such as the restore to a smaller partition.
This cost me significant time to find this info and then to reduce the original disk partition size & re
image it so I could restore it to a smaller drive.
2. You CANNOT use 1 CD drive for both DriveImage and your image file. I had to use an external USB
drive for the image.
3. I was not able to ever successfully run Windows Disk Management when I had booted from BartPE.
4. You must connect a USB drive before booting BartPE. It will not recognize it with a live plugin as
normal Windows does.
5. Last, and for me, the most challenging issue, is that I can’t get my restore image to work on
another drive. I am suspicious that it probably stems from me creating the image on a new Dell which
has 3 partitions on it. They use a hidden partition, a backup partition and the normal C partition.
I imaged the C drive, which contains the XP OS, but when I put this on a drive with only 1 partition
simply does not work, no matter how many attempts I’ve made with a variety of boot utilities. I
restored all the windows boot files (boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect, etc), and the MBR seems correct, but alas,
all I get after the POST is a blank screen with a blinking curser….. rats!
I was hoping this would save me copious amounts of time not having to reinstall Windows on all my
new drives! Guess I’m back to the slipstream approach….
Reply
26. Giuseppe Mameli says:

April 26, 2007 at 8:19 am
Hi habibbijan,
thanks a lot for your blog.
I use DriveImage to get C: image for cloning pc (after sysprep).

I made a batch command using Xp diskpart command to prepare the partitions. I’d like to automate
the restore using a command line but unluckily this feature is unsupported by DriveImage XML.
On program
Reply

April 27, 2007 at 6:11 pm
MarkSmith – thanks for taking the time to write your observations/suggestions. I’ve updated
the first page of the article to point people toward the comments.
I just tried to run Windows Disk Management from BartPE, and you’re right, it doesn’t work. Bummer.
I’m not sure what to suggest for your Dell system. Just an obvious thought, but you did run FIXBOOT
and FIXMBR from a startup disc, didn’t you?
Giuseppe – You raise a good question, and I do not know what 3rd party utilities can process the
Driveimage backup files. I’d like to know as well.
My article is due for an update/revision. I’m also considering writing a tutorial for accomplishing this
process using open-source and command-line tools. Stay tuned, and thanks for the comments.
Reply
28. Dan says:

May 3, 2007 at 6:10 am
I have also had some trouble getting Disk Management to start and with the multiple
partitions on the Dell Optiplex series. The drive size was also a problem, but replacements
were found.
When Drive Image XML wouild just hang, while running from the CD, I copied it and all its components
to the server location that would be the destination for the image I was saving and ran it from there
once I’d mapped a drive in BartPE. It makes saving down and loading the image to the PC easier.
Reply
29. dave boley says:

May 6, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I’ve just spent about 3 hours going through the build & burn process, all works fine & I can’t
wait to try it out on a freinds pc. Not only do I have a free means to backup a working xp
partition, but I now realise I have a usefull tool to use at work (I repair laptops all day)Some don
boot to windows because of corrupt files, or viruses. Thanks for the step by step guide, I was amazed
to see the final disk boot, as you said it would.Thank you, best 3 hours spent on my laptop…….
Dave Boley…fixerdave@aol.com
Reply
30. Paul says:

May 11, 2007 at 7:56 pm
I could NOT restore my C: drive using DriveImage XML at all after many different attempts.
What I have done:
* Backup successfully using DriveImage (encountered no error)

* Try to restore the OS from DriveImage XML but encountered error message: “Verifying DMI Pool
data …. ” then
“Error Loading OS”
I have tried the following approaches documented in various website UNSUCCESSFULLY:

(1) Created the target partition (DISC0 in PC) and reformat the partition before restoring.
(2) Created the target partition (DISC0 in PC) but leave the partition unformatted to allow DriveImage
to format it accordingly (my target partition was larger than the original C; partition)
(3) Restored the image to target disc using BartPE within the very same computer.
(4) Moved and connected the target disc to another guest-computer and used the full version
DriveImage, i.e. not “plugin” (installed there)in this guest computer to restore the image into the
target disc and then move it back to the to-be-restored computer and reboot from there. Failed again.
(5) DriveImage FAQ suggests to use “tool>New disc ID” to rename the disc-ID. In DriveImage, the
disc ID was “DISC1″, I used the New Disc ID function to rename it to “DISC0″ but the program
changed it back to DISC1. So, this approach failed again.
I appreciate very if someone here can help on this.
BTW, several reviews posted online suggests that Norton Ghost 9, and 10 are not good (not the old
ghost, may Ghost 8 was good but Ghost 9,10 was actually from another product from PowerQuest.
Tech support is very bad. Both Ghost and Acronis TrueImage requires the product ACTIVATION (not
just a valid serial number key). So does it mean if I purchase this copy, I can only use it to back OS for
only ONE single PC only? I had a few PC at home.
How about Acronis TrueImage 8, does it require Activation too? If I have no luck with DriveImage XML,
I will probably try to buy the TrueImage 8. But I am not sure if I can get it as it’s an old version and 10
is the latest version.
Reply
31. Rufus says:

May 12, 2007 at 1:05 am
You haven’t said that you set your new (primary) partition to ACTIVE. Needs to be done to
boot. Other things to check include making sure your backup actually got all the OS files you
need, and making sure your computer is actually trying to boot from the drive you think it is.
Reply
32. Paul says:

May 12, 2007 at 2:16 am
Rufus,
I think you got the key question: Active partition.

I have read many forums since posting my question. This is probably the key problem. I have not tried
it at all as I did not know how to set it.
I found that in Window control > system administrative tools>computer management >storage
management control menu, there is an option”Mark a partion active”.
Some site mentions about the dos “fdisk” command.

but I don’t know how to use fdisk to set a partion active.
So, in my situation, how would I do it?

(1) connect the drive to the guest-computer (not my subject comp) and use the above
control>admis>… page to “set partion active” and then move it back to the home-computer?
(2) If leaving in the home-computer (subject comp), the only option is to boot it up via the BartPE disc
and then do WHAT to set it active? If to use “fdisk” command, then what is the full syntax for this?
I did mention the DriveImage XML suggests to change the DISK ID (using tool>New DIsc ID), but why
did it NOTallow me to change it? If the discID (like DISK0, DISK1, IDE2…) is reflecting the real position
of the target disc in the guest-computer (i.e. plugged in the IDE1 port or the USB port and this is not
changeabble, then why did the DriveImage XML FAQ suggests about doing it? It must be change
except I don’t know how.
Thanks a lot if you can clarify my questions one step further… Actually, making me one stop closer to
get the”RESTORE” process work.
Thanks a lot.
Reply
33. Paul says:

May 12, 2007 at 3:21 am
Rufus et al:
I haveust moved my target HD to a guest-computer and mount it there. I then use Window
Administrative storage management control tool (described in prior posting) and used “Set partion
active” option to set it active. Result: The target disc finally worked!
However, I have the biggest question still remains:
If I don’t have a second computer (guest-comp) to set the target partion to ACTIVE within the real
window environment, HOW WILL I SET IT TO ACTIVE FROM WITHIN THE BartPE environment? Please
help.
The “Window Management Tool” in BartPE does not come up easily. Most of the time, I got nothing. In
one instant, it came up with the DISKPART> prompt. That is, it was not intuitive as how to use it.
Some other plugins/options in Bart PE appear to be inactive. I am using the latest BartPE 3.1.10 that I
just downloaded from its site a week ago.
Could someone here help clarify HOW TO SET THE NEWLY RESTORED PARTION ACTIVE in BartPE (i.e.
there is only one computer and that is the one we try to boot up and BartPE is the only resource in this
case).
Thanks a lot.
Reply
34. Paul says:

May 15, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Well,
In lack of support about the DISKPART command, I have searched the web and found some info on
that. Some sample commands are:
FDISPART > list disk (to list all disks)
FDISPART > select disk 0 (to select disk 0)
FDISPART > detail disk (get details of disk which must have been selected in a prior command)
I have one additional question and hope someone here can help clarify. So far, I have been able to
generate Image file and retore it multiple times (only to DISK0). However, I still failed to restore the
image to a SATA drive which is a NON-DISK0. After reading DriveImageXML FAQ, it mentions that it
supports image to DISK-0 only.
Why is restoring to non-DISK0 not possible (i.e. only capable to restore to a parallel drive at IDE
0). What is the technical reason behind this?
Is there a work around on this? My computer allows me to boot up from any HD in the system. I
tried successfully connected two bootable HD (one PATA and one SATA which I have manually installed
WinXP on it) and boot from any of them. Now I want to clone the my PATA (my IDEport0 HD now has
all the applications and arrangement I desire) into another serial HD (say DISK-2). That way, I would
be able to bypass the need of using a BartPE disc (very slow and less intuitive than the full window
environment). If my DISK0 is corrupted, then I will boot up on DISK2 and restore image on it.
Similarly, if my DISK2 is corrupted, then I can boot up on DISK0 to DriveImageXML restore image on
it.
The problem is: I cannot restore an image to non-DISK0 like the serial HD as a DISK2. Any suggestion
will be very much appreciated. I have tried to restore image to DISK2 (or DISK1) and the restoration
process went smoothly (i.e. no error message). However, when I attempted to boot up on DISK2, I got
error message “Error Reading disk” hit CTRL/ALT/DEL to restart….
Thanks in advance for any inputs you may have.
Reply
35. josh says:

May 26, 2007 at 4:58 pm
DriveimageXML certainly is a good program that does what it says, and it’s nice that Runtime
makes it available for free. However there’s one thing in particular that drastically limits it’s
usefulness. You can’t restore an image file to a partition or hard drive smaller than the original one the
image came from, which of course you can do with commercial programs.
I learned this the hard way, when I thought I could use it to help with partitioning my hard drive. I
wanted a separate partition for data, so made an image taking up about 10gb, I used a bootable
with a partitioning program to partition the drive in half, then later ran Driveimage on BartPE to restore
the relatively small image file (now on a removable disk) to the first 50gb partition. Big mistake.
Luckily of course I could join the partitions back together and since I had the image I didn’t lose any
data, but it sure was a huge hassle and waste of time.
So for example, if you have a hard drive filled with 20gb of data, the image of course will be around
the same size (or less with compression). If th original hard drive it came from was 220gb, DriveImage
won’t restore it to a hard drive with less space than that. It doesn’t matter if the data on the image
takes is 10 gb, 2gb, even 500mb, if the hard drive has 200gb it won’t work. It turns out of course they
let you know on the web site and the help file, which I should have read more carefully, but of course
this is a pretty useful feature for such a program and I’m not really sure why they couldn’t just add
Furthermore,they say because they use .xml files for the image, it should be compatible with other
drive imaging programs. Of course xml is not a proprietary format, but the latest version of Acronis
TrueImage, perhaps the most well-known commercial ghosting program along with Norton Ghost won
work withfiles created by driveimage. So it’s safe to assume only Driveimage can restore the images it
creates.
Reply
36. Chris says:

May 28, 2007 at 4:11 am
It is so wonderfull!
I want to make a friend with you, OK?
Reply

June 5, 2007 at 1:35 am
I just completed a complementary article on “ghosting” Windows (any version) for free using
open-source tools.
Link to article
It’s a little more “geeky” in that it uses the command line, but it’s actually simpler in some ways
because you do not have to build a BartPE disc.
Enjoy.
Reply
38. Galliano says:
June 6, 2007 at 1:39 am

Great tutorial, which I believe I followed correctly as my BartPE CD boots and most of the
menus work fine. However, I cannot launch DriveImage after booting from the CD. I have the
menu point, but when I click on it DriveImage XML does not start.
If I do the same after booting Win XP normally from the HD and try to launch DriveImage from the
BartPE Live CD it works!
Can anybody help with some trouble-shooting?
Thanks a lot.
Reply
39. esg says:

June 14, 2007 at 8:43 am
Thanks for the article.
1) if you’ve forgotten to plug in an usb drive before booting BartPE, you can start drive part, rescan
and assign a drive letter. Just saves a bit of time.
My problem is that I created an image file of a 120 GB primary partition on a 160 GB drive.
DriveImage XML won’t restore to anything but a 160 GB partition on my next drive. I’d really like two
volumes.
So will try booting from Puppy CD and running GPartd as suggested at
http://www.habibbijan.com/2007/06/05/ghost-your-windows-system-for-free-using-open-source
tools/
Good luck
Reply
40. L. Keesen says:

July 11, 2007 at 2:34 pm
for the fisrt time I have made an image of my C: partition and put it to mij backup partion
D:.
after troubles in C: I have tried to restore the .xml file to C:,
however a box appears with the text: “Target partition must not be the system drive.”
however restore says;’” select a partition you want to restore the image to. this must be an existing
partion which will be overwritten by this operation. restore images to the same or another drive.”
What do I wrong?
regards,
L. Keesen
Reply
41. BlueBearr says:

July 18, 2007 at 9:18 am
Two comments:
Windows Disk Management from BartPE – there is a known issue with running this when the
BartPE networking is activated. The root issue is that starting the network changes the computer
name, which messes up Disk Management. To solve this problem, go into regedit and change the
computer name under
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ComputerName
to the name shown in the networking utility so that the names match.
Second, I seem to recall that I have saved an image to a smaller partition by creating the partition
using Windows Disk Management or DISKPART and then using the DriveImage XML Browse feature to
restore the files. Unfortunately, I can’t test this at the moment.
Nice tutorial!
Reply
42. JK Mitra says:

July 19, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Many thanks for a fantastic tutorial:~)
Has any one Imaged and Restored Windows VISTA with DI XML v 1.21, effectively??
Cheers
Reply
43. larry says:

July 24, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I created a backup of a windows 98se computer using BartPE and DriveImage xml. The files
were created using the compressed and split file options. DriveImage xml created the
following files on the external drive FAT32 partition:
Drive_C.001 (672,000 KB)

Drive_C.002 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.003 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.004 (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.005 (454,878 KB)
Drive_C.dat (672,000 KB)
Drive_C.xml (18,474 KB)
I would like to to copy the files to a cd after completing the backup and to restore using the cd’
DriveImage xml.(or must the files on the cd be copied to an external drive partition before the files can
be restored using DriveImage xml).
Thank you for your help
Larry Altic
Reply
44. Michael Nielsen says:

August 15, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Hi, I had trouble when I bought a new drive for my laptop and wanted to copy my partitions
from the old one. I used the Ultimate Boot Disk – which had DriveImagexml on it. Disk
management under computer management worked fine. I craeted my partitions and set the first one
active, Drive to Drive copied the partitions and I coulndt boot! Blank screen with blikning cursor. I used
the “new Disk ID” feature in Drive Image, but no luck…
Then I booted from the Ultimate Boot disk again and chose Windows recovery console (Press R when it
asks), logged into my C:/windows. Then fixmbr, reboot, and viola! It said that mbr was wierd and
nonstadnard and it would damage my drive, but it fixed everything.
Reply
45. Arex_x says:

August 21, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Very fine tutorial , habibbijan , the one who is not a terrorist.
Just what I was looking for.
No more 1.5-hour xp installing-sessions with following 2 hours of flipping through my cd-wallets for cds
with the right drivers and programs. : )
And all this fine programs and tutorial without having to pay a single Kroner to the man.
Thanx.
(BTW. One of the first things I read on runtime.org was about DriveImage XML being unable to
reimage a smaller drive. It`s sad that some ppl have to complain about what is free.)
Reply
46. Matt says:

August 24, 2007 at 12:17 pm
If you ghost your hard drive, format it, and use the image, will you gain the same increase in
speed as if you simply reinstalled windows?
Reply
47. Chris says:

August 29, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Matt, “imaging” tools do just that, take an image of the drive. So you don’t get any speed
improvement because a highly fragmented drive will be recreated exactly as it was before
imaging when you restore the image to the disk.
Reply
48. Len says:

September 1, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Extremely helpful. However, I probably spent about two hours searching the web to see how
I could accomplish this task without having the original Windows XP disk. I found somewhere
that the installation files were probably in C:\I386, and this turned out to be true (I have OEM
Windows installation). Then I finally just ran PE Builder v3.1.10a, and lo and behold it actually just
searched my hard drive and found the files. It lists it as c:\, but don’t worry — it knows to go to the
I386 subfolder and not burn the entire C drive. I hope this can save someone else hours of extra
Reply
49. David says:

September 10, 2007 at 10:26 am
I created an image of a 37.2GB Windows 2000 Professional system drive. I ran this while
booted up normally, and not from a floppy or CD.
When I try to restore it to a brand new, single partition 320GB drive, I get this error message:
Could not resize FAT32 partition

Write Error: The parameter is incorrect
How do I fix this error?
Reply
50. Jim says:

September 17, 2007 at 9:09 am
Has anyone experienced this error:
I get this error when running DriveImageXML version 1.21 on a Windows 2003 Server
Standard Edition:
“Data File Create Error”
“File ‘’ could not be created. Access violation at address 004FB766 in module ‘dixml.exe’. Read of
address 00000027.”
I’ve searched all the discussion groups and forums and not seen reference to this error. The server
runs MS SQL Server 2000, could this be the problem? I’ve got other servers on this system that all
backup correctly.
Can anyone help with this?
Runtime support were not helpful.
Reply
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8. Restore the image.

9. Alternatives and asides.

Good luck, and happy backups.

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Posted by Brian - TipsFor.us at

106 Responses to “Driveimage – Restoration”

Something like keyfinder may do the trick: http://www.winkeyfinder.com/

Another link of interest: http://www.freepctech.com/pc/xp/xp00066.shtml

3. Mike Bluett says:

1. Create a BARTPE bootable CD

2. Boot from the CD

If a restore is required, all you need to do is:

1. Boot from the BARTPE CD

3. Make the partition ACTIVE (if it isn’t already)

4. Copy all files and folders from the backup media

5. Boot from the newly built XP HD

My suspicion is that it will be fine. Your mileage may vary.

10. habibbijan says:

I’m glad the straight copying method works for you.

Thanks for all the comments!

11. Jeff says:

12. Brent says:

Q. Can I restore the image to a smaller partition?

13. Brent says:

I suppose I can find Ghost for free after rebates…

14. Jeff says:

15. habibbijan says:

16. Lars says:

October 22, 2006 at 5:40 am

17. Thaton Kyaikto says:

18. Menus says:

19. Brent says:

Paragon Drive Copy 8 Personal SE

Paragon Exact Image 7 SE

20. Johannes says:

Keep up with the good work!

21. Onous says:

22. Ron says:

23. habibbijan says:

24. Andreas Baum says:

25. Mark Smith says:

April 20, 2007 at 3:57 pm

26. Giuseppe Mameli says:

I use DriveImage to get C: image for cloning pc (after sysprep).

27. habibbijan says:

28. Dan says:

29. dave boley says:

30. Paul says:

What I have done:

* Backup successfully using DriveImage (encountered no error)

I have tried the following approaches documented in various website UNSUCCESSFULLY:

I appreciate very if someone here can help on this.

31. Rufus says:

32. Paul says:

I think you got the key question: Active partition.

Some site mentions about the dos “fdisk” command.

So, in my situation, how would I do it?