How to make a backup image of the LifeDrive´s MicroDrive

[Caitoz]

Hello.

Can someone post an step by step guide on how to make a backup image of the LifeDrive´s Microdrive in Windows?

Thank you.

[dmitrygr]

0. get a linux live CD here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
1. boot into it
2. run "man dd"
3. read
4. use "dd"

[joepagIII]

or you can search out the winimage trick...it seems to work pretty well
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145301&highlight=winimage

[potter]

One can extract the info from the Howto replace microdrive with compactflash in Palm LifeDrive (http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_replace_microdrive_with_compactflash_in_Palm_LifeDrive) howto.wikia.com page.

[Josser]

I backup my LD's HDD at every HotSync using the LifeDrive Manager conduit. You can also mount the drive using Drive Mode and just drag-n-drop the drive in Windows.
Palm® Support Knowledge Library article 39791 (http://www.palm.com/cgi-bin/cso_kbURL.cgi?ID=39791) "Tips for backing up program memory and the hard drive on a LifeDrive device."

[potter]

Josser makes a point. There are two ways to take Caitoz question. I am not sure which way Caitoz meant it. Apparently dmitrygr, joepagIII and myself all took the question in the geeker sense.

[Josser]

Josser makes a point. There are two ways to take Caitoz question. I am not sure which way Caitoz meant it. Apparently dmitrygr, joepagIII and myself all took the question in the geeker sense.
Just trying to cover all the bases . . . :p

[Caitoz]

Thanks to all for posting and helping....

Geeker sense I meant... not just backing up the content of the lifedrive partition like Josser suggested, but making an image of all the partitions and contents of the microdrive.

I wanted to make an image of the microdrive because it may fail someday. In case of dissaster, an image could be easily copied to another microdrive/CF to replace a faulty original one.

I will try using dd for windows as it is explained on the webpage suggested by Potter (THANKS BTW)... if that doesn´t work I´ll try Dmitry´s way. A suggestion by him must all the time be tried.

Potter´s suggestion: http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_replace_microdrive_with_compactflash_in_Palm_LifeDrive

I´ll let you know how that worked out!.

[potter]

Just a note to be aware of: With all three methods mentioned, when it comes time to restore one will need an identical Micro-Drive, or a Compact Flash with similar geometry to be able to restore. The list of Compact Flash cards in the HowTo article referenced is a good list of possibilities.

Also some wisdom from experience, from back in the PC DOS days: I thought my backup software was great, until the day I actually had to use it for a restore, then my opinion changed radically.

[Caitoz]

Also some wisdom from experience, from back in the PC DOS days: I thought my backup software was great, until the day I actually had to use it for a restore, then my opinion changed radically.

Which backup method is best?


Dmitry: Have you restore any image extracted from the method you described? How did it go?

[dmitrygr]

LOL

i've restored more images than you can imagine while making powerdrive
but now i no longer do

powerdrive bootloader can restore from SD card whenever I need it. no need to open the device at all :-)

[Caitoz]

I´ll tell you my intentions:

I´m planning to make a backup image just to have one "untoched" image of the microdrive.

Next I will get a CF, PowerDrive, NuROM and unCache to tune my LD up.

I know now that Dmitry´s had success in his method. What about dd for windows? any successful restoring story?

[joepagIII]

hey you know if ever figure out nurom ill do some tinkering and let you know...and yea ill use the winimage method

[enotar]

hey you know if ever figure out nurom ill do some tinkering and let you know...and yea ill use the winimage method

I try with no succes!
Can describe process to backup & restore PLz?

Tkz

[joepagIII]

which method...?

[enotar]

to use winimage.

[joepagIII]

try here
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145301&highlight=winimage
if you need a virgin image let me know..ill recompress and up it somewhere

[Caitoz]

hey you know if ever figure out nurom ill do some tinkering and let you know...and yea ill use the winimage method

Thank you, let me know about nurom. I will order a CF card to try powerdrive and nurom on it... yesterday I tried a trial of nurom and I couldn´t make it work. I think it´s because of the lack of a reg key.

About winimage, I´ll try that method later today or tomorrow. Right now, I felt like "bricking" my LD and made an image with dd for windows, erased and formatted the microdrive, and on I´m on my way of restoring it. I will post some pics of the process if the LD gets successfully restored. Had to try myself! :cool:

[Caitoz]

Just to complete the threat, I took joepagIII description about the winimage method and it is quoted:

How to clone cf using Winimage
im basicly going by memory any questions just ask
step 1extract image somewhere ie desktop
step 2 open winimage with cf installed in a reader before you open winimage
step 3 in winimage 3rd tab disk restore virtual harddisk on physical drive
step 4 in type of file make sure all are seen...the file looks like this~
i may have missed something ...but thats basicly it
Any improvements someone wants to share would me nice...i know the dd thing works...finaly did it...this is for those who don do cli

[Caitoz]

try here
http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=145301&highlight=winimage
if you need a virgin image let me know..ill recompress and up it somewhere

dd 0.5 backup/restoration didn´t work.

joepagIII, could you upload the image please?

thanks.

[potter]

Note: I wrote this a few days ago, but never hit save. I see that the discussion has moved on, so this may not longer apply.

Also some wisdom from experience, from back in the PC DOS days: I thought my backup software was great, until the day I actually had to use it for a restore, then my opinion changed radically.Which backup method is best?
Sorry about that. Let me clarify for a scenario.

One uses one of the backup methods mentioned previously. All seams well and good. Six months later your micro-drive crashes and needs to be replaced. After much wasted effort trying to restore the image that had been made previously, it is finally discovered that there was an error such that the backup is corrupt and unusable.

Basically: Once you have made a backup image, how do you know that it is correct? Possibilities:
Take it on faith. You did the command correctly and got a resulting file of about the right size.
Redundancy. Use multiple methods. Hopefully one will not make a mistake on all of the methods (unless the problem was with the CF reader (not likely)).
Perform a test restore. This is the only way that I can think of to be sure. However this would then mean having a replacement device now.
Hmm, a though: If someone else has performed a successful backup using one of these methods. It might then be possible to run some sort of check-sum over the part of the resulting image which represents the ROM, ignoring the rest of the image representing the storage and lifedrive partitions. Such a check-sum would be the same over all such backups provided that all have the LD update applied (unless there has been some ROM editing).

[joepagIII]

as per requested
http://mihd.net/6ted875

[Caitoz]

...One uses one of the backup methods mentioned previously. All seams well and good... After much wasted effort trying to restore the image..., it is finally discovered that there was an error such that the backup is corrupt and unusable...
...
Perform a test restore. This is the only way that I can think of to be sure. However this would then mean having a replacement device now.
...[/list]
I was making a test restore and discovered that my restore was unsuccesful. I was reading in another threat (http://www.1src.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111497&page=58&pp=15) that some people were having problems with dd 0.5 but not with dd 0.3. My problem was that I assumed dd 0.5 will do the same job as dd 0.3 and did not make a second copy using dd 0.3. I will try dd 0.3 in the future. Bad for me I did not apply the "redundancy" suggestion (using more methods like winimage or dd in DSL) and ended up with a corrupted image.

In the future, I will also try the winimage and DSL methods as well. This was just a test, the LD I´m using is one unit I can test on, luckily (thanks for the advice potter).

I have not quite yet found "man dd" in DSL, I guess you can just type dd + want you want within the terminal. Perhaps dmitry or anyone else familiar to that method can clarify that.

as per requested
http://mihd.net/6ted875

Thank you joepagIII for the image. It´s a .zip file of ROM I assume. I will try to restore it using winimage as you explained some posts ago. If I have a problem I´ll let you know.

Thank you to all.

[joepagIII]

read the thread...its way simpler than all that cli stuff...imho...and yeah its zipped up

[dmitrygr]

dd is easy
so once you're in dsl you will want to do"sudo su" to be superuser
then you'll do "fdisk -l" which wil llist disk drives. look for one that looks like your CF (correct size) and rememebr its name (which will be something like /dev/sdb).
no just do "dd if=/dev/sdb bs=1M | bzip2 -9 > IMG.bz2"

Then insert a usb-stick and use the GUI to copy the image from the /tmp folder to the usb stick


to restore copy image from usb stick to tmp and do

"bzcat /tmp/IMG.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=1M"

where /dev/sdb is the real name fo your MD (found using the "fdisk -l" command)

[Caitoz]

dd is easy
so once you're in dsl you will want to...
Thank you Dmitry for the procedure. That clarifies eveything.
It seems not too complicated, so I´ll try it when my LD revives.

The MicroDrive of my LD is officially death. I have one LD with a bad MD and another one with a "good" one. The "good" one (the one I was planning to backup) died this morning. It seems that I have to get another MD or a CF in order to make them revive.

I will use joepagIII´s image to boot my device. If that doesn´t work, I´ll use hackndev instructions.

I got a SanDisk Extreme III-004G-A31 for this purpose.

[JavaJiveJump]

You can get a preformatted CF card that will just plug and play PalmOS with LD patch 2.0. ;)

[Caitoz]

My dead LD is not dead anymore.

As I posted before I bought a 4GB CF (SanDisk Extreme III model 004G-A31) and mounted joepagIII´s image using Winimage. I connected the CF to the LD and it booted wonderfully. Now the LD works better, way faster. It took me just 20 minutes or so to write the image to the CF card (compared to the 24-36 hours using dd for windows)... excellent way to restore your MD.

I will apply PowerDrive and nuROM to the LD in a few days after getting my serial numbers from Dmitry.

[javisabe]

Hi people, do you know if I can use a bigger card with the joepagIII method? I got a Transcend 8Gb 133x and a LD with a dead MD.
Thx!

[dmitrygr]

The only way to use the full size of an 8GB card is PowerDrive