Backing up the contents of internal flash

Post by **angrymeat** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 7:26 pm

two ways i know of boot with knoppix and ude dd . If you dont know how to do those I suggest the other way .
The other way requires these things .

a powered usb hub (meaning has an actual power d cord and does not rely upon usb power to power it. )
I picked up a cyberpower one at walmart .

a usb flash drive that supports booting .
Again I picked up a pny 4 gb from walmart for $14

a windows 98 boot disk image
This was a pin in the but I had to put some damn virtual g floppy drive emulator deal on my pc and extract the image . you well im nice you just need to download the file below

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=86072d7425fbbe2761d4646c62b381cb3202eb010f3090e3c95965eaa7bc68bc

The hp usb format tool
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

and finally ghost.exe
This too was a pain in the arse im leary on posting mine but meh who cares lets see how long it lasts
i think i got mine form one of those not so happy toreent places

but you can find them on a ghost boot disk .
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=86072d7425fbbe2761d4646c62b381cb3202eb010f3090e3c95965eaa7bc68bc

ok now that you have all of that lets get started

put your usb thumb drive into your pc and open the hpusb format tool
select your usb drive from its drop down
select fat for the partition type
click create a dos startup disk and browse to the extracted 98 boot disk image
hit start
ok now youe thumb drive is bootable with dos
put your ghost .exe on your thumb drive

that wasnt so hard was it

now hook up your powered usb hub to the lone usb port on your dt366

hook a usb keyboard into one of the ports
hook your usb drive into another port
hit the power button on your dt366 you will get a blue screen start spamming your f1 key until you get to your bios screen
go into the ide config and make your primary boot device usdhdd
hit escape out to the main bios menu and hit save and exit

you should see a windows 98 logo in a few seconds after that you will have a wonderful C:
now type ghost.exe

the ghost app will come on and you can backup your current config at that point the app is pretty self explanatory .

this whole procedure also works for flashing a .gho image onto the unit as well.

i know i probably left something out feel free to let me know and good luck this stuff took me a coupld of painfull days to figure out.

Jason.Young · Post by **Jason.Young** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:31 pm

Man you are awesome.

Well I was thinking of flashing a new image on mine, the one its running it not that great.

Now I was thinking of trying a linux image ot XP Embedded, I wish someone had a imabe. Not sure how hard it will be to build

I also found the flash drives in these are not to bad I can pick up a 2 GB for like $27

Now I guess that leaves me with Memory have not even looked at what kind and how much

But thanks a lot for your time.....

Post by **angrymeat** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:46 pm

the memory (ram) is hardwired into the board and not upgradable that I can tell. as for flash for these you cannot boot to the onboard cf only the 524meg onboard flash or usb. look around the forums lots of discussion on those subjects. I take it you currently have ce 5.0 ?

Jason.Young · Post by **Jason.Young** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 5:49 pm

Yeah Ce 5, That would be ok but they stripped all the goodies out of it.
I really want to be able to read PDF Most Tech docs. Cant find any that work. If I found that I think I would be ok

Web Browser and PFD Reader woudl give me a nice little Ebook Reader / Web Tablet

Post by **volkswagner** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 11:50 am

I got two of these units. On happened to arrive without a factory restored partition. I was booting to Target Stores and would not complete the boot without the available network. Nice red bulls eye boot splash and all.

I am running the DD command to create an image of the CE 5.0 drive.

I am curious how it will work out since fdisk reports:

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Disk /dev/hda does'nt contain a valid partition table

I will try to apply the flashed image to the Target machine to verify it works.

I am not sure what ude is for?

EDIT: Just read your other post. It is a typo, use, not ude......I was a little worried I may have missed something.
s
Anyone know what should the block size be? I have been using the same tutorial for a while. I have used on larger drives. They recommend

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bs=32256

What do you think?

Jason.Young · Post by **Jason.Young** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:19 pm

I did find how to replace the (Internal Flash Drive) from another post. Its just a IDE 44 Pin Flash Drive. though, If I cant upgrade the ram then that would be no use.

I am going to break it down one day when I get time.

is your flash drive partioned in 2, I have a 17 MB and a 487MB

Post by **quotaholic** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:40 pm

Yes that was the original partition config I saw in my DT. Since then I nuked it. The 17 meg is like a boot partition. CE was in the 487.

quotaholic

Post by **volkswagner** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:50 pm

In windows two flash drives are listed.

FlashStorage - 17.6MB Used, and 14.8MB Free = 32.4 MB
FlashStorage2- 0 Bytes Used and 465.8MB Free = 465.8MB

That sums to a 498.2MB total

I am concerned with the result of my dd.

When I run fdisk after the dataDump, The partition on the flash drive still says it is a Linux partition. I was expecting the same "doesn't contain a valid partition table" as the source was listed that way.

I think I mixed up some commands by using a drive for "if" and a partition for "of". I never actually performed it that way. I usually use partition to partition or drive to drive.

I will hold off until I hear a little advice from someone who is not such a newb as I am.

It won't be tragic if I bork the one machine. I do really want a slick Linux on there, but I wanted to have the backup of a MS-Windows if so needed.

Fleegman · Post by **Fleegman** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 4:15 pm

@volkswagner

I suggest you use DD to create a clone of the entire drive ... it's only 500mb anyway, so you can easily burn it to a CD for an easy restore. The benefit of creating a RAW image of the entire drive, is that it will keep all partitioning structure. This is the best method for creating a disaster recovery solution.

Here's what I suggest:

Boot into the WebDT using a Linux USB boot method, make sure you're using a large enough USB drive to save the 500mb image file (attach an external keyboard & mouse to make things easier).

Once you get into Linux, find out what "sd letter" the internal drive's are attached to (eg: they could be sdb1 and sdb2).

Unmount both partitions.

At a terminal prompt, type the following to make a RAW image of the entire drive:

dd if=/dev/sd? of=/path-to-save-file/imagename.img

Replace "?" with the letter that corresponds to the internal drive. Using the example above, if partition 1 was sdb1, and partition 2 was sdb2, then we would use sdb as the source.

Wait (this is the tough part)

Once the image is saved, burn it to a CD or DVD.

Now, do whatever you want to your WebDT

When you need to restore it back, just do the following:

dd if=/path-to-save-file/imagename.img of=/dev/sd? (again, replace ? with correct letter)

*Note:
The above steps can be used to create a RAW image of any drive you want to backup -- very handy for disaster restores.

Post by **angrymeat** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 8:54 pm

the ce 4.0 install itself is only something like 37 megs its insanely small. you can also use the ghost method of backing up as well its all a matter of preference I only used the ghost method initially because it was what my xpembeded images was built for. I used the dd earlier and worked great as well. I would suggest however unless you are very comfortable with your touchscreen typing that you hook in a usb keyboard when you do it to limit typos

Post by **volkswagner** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:15 pm

I had no luck restoring from the image. I have two units. I am trying to cloan one.

On the unit which boots WinCE I performed the following steps.

Try #1 with the following setup;
Boot with a 1Gig USB, NimbleX on Partition1 400MB (allows 141MB free space for changes), dd winCE to Partition2 525MB, ~45MB free space

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dd if=/dev/hda of=dev/sda2 bs=32256

Results

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16253+1 records in
16253+1 records out

524288000 bytes (524 MB) copied, 1126.32 seconds, 465 kB/s

Shutdown and moved USB to second machine and booted NimbleX

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dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/hda bs=32256

Results:

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dd:writing /dev/hda : No space left on device
16254+0 records in
16253+0 records out
524288000 bytes (524 MB) copied, 878.8 seconds, 597 kB/s

Well it does not look good. I made the USB partition 1MB too large.

Tried booting anyway. Here is the error

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No boot device present. Halting.

Using Ubuntu on my laptop, I created an image my original custom NimbleX USB drive, and saved it locally. With my USB drive being listed as /dev/sdc, I issued the following"

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dd if=/dev/sdc of=/nimblex/nimblexWinCE.img

I also wanted to create an image of just the 400MB partition containing NimbleX, so I issued the following.

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dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=/nimblex/nimbleOnly.img

This is how I created my second NimbleX USB drive:

Using Gparted I created two partitions on my second 1Gig USB stick.

Partition1 400MB FAT16-
Partition2 sized with remaining space on drive, formatted to ext2

Using my new image file I added Nimblex to the 400MB partition.

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dd if=/nimblex/nimbleOnly.img of=/dev/sdb1

I now used my newly created USB to boot my known good winCE machine. Once booted into NimbleX (yes, the new image booted flawlessly) I created my image file of the internal drive on my WebDT.

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dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/sda2_removable/img/winCE.img

1024000+0 records in
1024000+0 records out
524288000 bytes (524 MB0 copied, 966.104 seconds, 526 kB/s

That looked great to me, so I shutdown and put that USB stick in the Target machine. I boot Nimblex and issue the following.

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dd if=/mnt/sda2_removable/img/winCE.img of=/dev/hda

Output was similar to above, all looked good.

So I shutdown, removed the USB and try to boot, but still get the error...

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No boot device present. Halting.

Any clue where I went wrong?

david_halliday · Post by **david_halliday** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:27 pm

Perhaps the block size is to big, dd may be padding out the original image and thus the restore will not fit on the other device. Try bs=512 on both the backup and restore.

Dave.

Post by **angrymeat** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:43 pm

The ghost method I posted in the faqs is super simple for cloaning a system to another.

Post by **angrymeat** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:44 pm

oh and I think i read some units are 524 others are 512

DyncNene73 · Post by **DyncNene73** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 3:49 am

on the bottem.. go to veiw topics and choose from the begining that should show them... noones posted there in a while so you have to search for an earlyer date....