[Tripredacus]

I am looking to do my first capture of a multi-partition image, but I have encountered one problem.

Can Imagex capture a hidden partition?

[IcemanND]

Imagex can only capture files which can be read by the os it is running under.

[dford]

In diskpart simply unhide the partition ID=07 and assign letter and then imagex

[Tripredacus]

dford, on Aug 31 2007, 01:48 PM, said:

In diskpart simply unhide the partition ID=07 and assign letter and then imagex

When the image is deployed, it needs to make it so that partition does not have a drive letter. Is that also possible? Or a fix that can be applied after imaging is complete?

[IcemanND]

drive letters are only set for the os that they are setup in.
But if the drive is left as a visible drive it will be seen and possibly given a drive letter. When you are finished deploying the image or capturing it you need to set the drive type back to its original setting.

[Tripredacus]

OK I have completed the task of capturing the image of the C drive and the hidden partition. While capturing the hidden partition, I assigned the drive letter P: to it. As per Iceman's doc, drive letters assigned with diskpart are only for that specific Win PE session.

I deployed the image today, which had to be done in 2 parts. One was the C drive, then the second for the drive I called E with DiskPart. But after rebooting into Windows, the E drive was visible and you could traverse the files. I Deleted the drive letter but this partition will not function. It does not give me the ability to boot into the recovery partition.

My thought is that typically, the recovery partition appears as FAT32 (EISA Configuration). My deploy makes it appear as NTFS but with no parentheses next to Healthy. There is also a green border around the recovery partition. I am pretty sure that the problem appears during the deployment phase, concerning how imagex is putting the partition down, or how I am setting up the partition for putting the image onto.

This partition should not be traversable, or get a drive letter in Windows. Any ideas?

[IcemanND]

You will need to change the partition ID back to what it was before you changed it to 07 so that it would be visible. You should also be formatting it the same as it was when you captured it, though this might make little difference this depends upon what "OS" the recovery runs.

[Tripredacus]

OK as I am understanding things, I need to find the command that changes the disk type. Ghost shows me this information about both volumes. Ghost is our current app for imaging this build but it runs really slow.

Disk 0
61177MB ID=07
15139MB ID=12

So when I originally captured the second partition, I had assigned it a drive letter after selecting it.

On deployment is the problem. I can do the C drive just fine, but as for the extra partition...

Create Extended Partition
Create Logical Partition

Then what? I know how to image now without using the drive letter.
Format the partition? Drop the image then change the drive type? Before or after I drop the image onto that partition?

I have read elsewhere that you can't change the partition type in diskpart, and Microsoft's site makes no mention of such a thing. It does say that Partition Magic can do it but I need to make this totally automated.

[IcemanND]

I don't think you are going to be able to create the partition setup you need without third party tools.
You may be able to create the partitions (they should be two primary partitions I believe) but you will need something to change the recovery partition to type 12.

[Tripredacus]

IcemanND, on Sep 11 2007, 04:06 PM, said:

I don't think you are going to be able to create the partition setup you need without third party tools.
You may be able to create the partitions (they should be two primary partitions I believe) but you will need something to change the recovery partition to type 12.

Hmmm... so I have to change the type before imaging... Is there any tricks for getting a USB key to be detected in the PE? We could just launch a program that way. Unfortunately, I do not have the computer with the AIK on it, so I can't recreate my boot CD... :\

[IcemanND]

With PE 2 I have not had a problem with just plugging usb keys in and having them recognized.

[Tripredacus]

On a testing machine I was able to use the command

SET ID=12

To get the desired effect. No additional software required. I will get to do a full on test next week. Then I will have to learn to script a .cmd to do it all for me!

[IcemanND]

how are you installing the boot manager to boot from the recovery partition?

[Tripredacus]

IcemanND, on Sep 14 2007, 04:45 PM, said:

how are you installing the boot manager to boot from the recovery partition?

I first need to have access to the source image, which totally depends on what orders placed. I did not think about a boot manager...

In related testing, I have a PC that I successfully create a C drive NTFS with the size posted above, and a FAT32 ID12 hidden partition with no drive letter. I then dropped a WIM onto the C Drive, but it is the WIM for that machine and not the one I use for the test. The problem I encounter now is that after the image dropped, on the reboot, it gives the "Cannot find boot media" error. I booted back into PE and checked things out with diskpart and all the partitions are set up correctly. I also checked the boot.ini and it is correct. Since it is possible that the recovery partition requires additional files, I will have to look at one of the completed builds to see what is different.

Any suggestions on files to look for besides the boot.ini?

[tap52384]

It could be the MBR that needs modification to find the hidden partition and recover the computer; I figured out that from DISKPART if you select the hidden partition as a volume, you can assign it a drive letter and then use ImageX to capture it. I now have to figure out how to restore the Thinkvantage MBR so that the F11 functionality that leads to the hidden partition and gives options to recover the computer will be intact.

[Tripredacus]

tap52384, on Oct 15 2007, 04:51 PM, said:

It could be the MBR that needs modification to find the hidden partition and recover the computer; I figured out that from DISKPART if you select the hidden partition as a volume, you can assign it a drive letter and then use ImageX to capture it. I now have to figure out how to restore the Thinkvantage MBR so that the F11 functionality that leads to the hidden partition and gives options to recover the computer will be intact.

I have taken a break from working on that problem for right now. The network was recently re-organised and getting WinPE to work properly again had taken some time. We decided to stick with using Ghost for multi-partition images for now but perhaps I can look into this again in a couple weeks.