I am evaluating drivesnapshot (www.drivesnapshot.de) for backing up and restoring disk images for Vista PCs. I have drivesnapshot backups working on 2 Vista PCs, but on the x64 PC, I cannot get a boot disk working that allows me to see/access the hard disk so I can restore to it.
Here is what I have tried and the results:
– Restore disk that came with PC: goes into a custom utility which does not allow me to get to a command prompt.
– Restore disk that came with and worked with the Vista x32 PC: can access external drive, can run snapshot.exe, but C drive is not mounted, so I cannot restore to it.
– Vista x64 recovery disk, burned from HP PC: can access external drive, can run snapshot.exe, but C drive is not mounted, so I cannot restore to it.
– Vista x64 recovery disk, burned from iso from neosmart.net: can access external drive, can run snapshot.exe, but C drive is not mounted, so I cannot restore to it.
– Windows XP recovery disk: BSOD
– Norton Ghost 9 rescue disk: BSOD
It seems like I'm so close. There must be a way I can mount the hard disk after booting with one of these disks.
Best Answer
So, Tom Ehlert, author of DriveSnapShot, figured out a solution: the BIOS on this PC has multiple SATA disk access settings, the default being RAID. By changing it to IDE (legacy mode), I can use a boot disk and see the hard disk. Then, I can run snapshot.exe from the boot disk, or even from the external drive.