I have a real headscratcher here...

I am making a uniform image for about 15 Dell Optiplex 360's. I am using Macrium Reflect to make the image and restore them with the uniform image. I couldn't use the UNIX based boot disk because of the SATA drives in the Dells, so I created a Universal BartPE Boot Disk Option and added the Macrium plug in. I started with 6 machines and everything went according to plan as far as booting them, getting them to the network share and getting to the image and starting the image recovery download. However, out of the first 6 machines I did this with (using one boot disk and taking it out during the network image download process and moving to the next one) only the first and the last were MOSTLY (and really actually if not actually, technically) successful.

The first and last two got stuck at 99% and the BartPE and Macrium were unresponsive (even though I had replaced the CD in the drive before touching or clicking on anything). However, I was able to hard re-boot them and they booted into the new image just fine and are off to the races.

All the other ones, however, got stuck at somewhere between 33%-48% and were hardware locked (or became so soon after trying to click on anything). I understand they got half an image and will not boot to the image...that's fine. But they will not boot to the BartPE disk either!

Any ideas?

Don't remove the boot media.

Yeah I'll try that next time.

For now...here is what I know.

If I swap the HD out with a working machine, it will boot to that HD and will boot to the CD drive as well. Put the original drive back in and it won't boot.

So...I have the BIOS diagnostics running right now. See if it might point me to somekind of solution that I can fix the problem...otherwise...I could try letting the machine boot past POST with the drive connected, then disconnect the drive and then see if it will boot to the CD and then plug the drive back in...or...I have to have Dell come out and swap me several drives.

Anyone know how a Universal BartPE disk with Macrium Reflect plug in could do this kind of dammage to a drive?

hi alphapotent

Are you sure all the Dell PC's have the SATA controller in the same mode eg AHCI or AT compatible ?

Have you tried using a DBAN CD to wipe the partition data from the corrupted disks.
(reboot after a few minutes no need to run to end of disk)

Sometimes linux boot CD's can startup where Windows based boot CDs crash (due to partition table corruption)

Did you wipe out the hidden diagnostic partition ?

regards

Mike Barnes

Removing the OS CD while it is in use can yield unpredictable results. Same for removing a HD while in use. If you had used an approach that would have loaded the BartPE ISO to RAM before executing it you probably would have been able to remove the CD without problems.

I looked for that first thing, but these Dell's didn't have a place where I could see or change that setting. I'm hoping the diagnostics will shed some light for me on that one. I'm not there at this moment but I will be going back shortly.

I don't know what a DBAN CD is, but I can't boot if I have that disk plugged in...or at least that disk plugged inot the SATA port it is plugged into now. Last nights sleep did give me an idea to try.

I'm going to try and put a good disk (the one I made the image from) in it's place and plug the damaged disk into another secondary port and see if I can drop the image into it from the Windows of a good disk (if the damaged disk won't prevent me from booting still and the damaged disk will recognize).

I shouldn't have. The Optiplex 360's have two partitions that show up during the backup image process. The Dell "Ultility" partition and the Dell "C" partition. I did do an image backup of the "Utility" partition as well because I'm a "just in case" kind of guy. However, when I was doing the restore with BartPE with Macrium plug in, Macrium showed two other places on the disk, however they were unallocated, I believe, and very small. But I know, for sure, that I selected the correct "C" partition to write over, and even if I goofed up like that once...which I really just don't believe I did...but I wouldn't have done that 4-6 times.

Has no one else run into this sort of thing before, or am I the special one?

I thought I did. After BartPE completely loaded, and installed the network and config'd it and after I then ran Macrium and went through the Macrium restore screens all the way until it started downloading the image onto the disk and it showed me the percentage complete progression bar...only then did I take the CD out and move onto the next machines. It worked out for two of them...but not the others. However, I can see that because I made a universal disk, instead of one that was just streamlined for these Dell Optiplex 360's, maybe it couldn't load it all to RAM...but...even still...the ISO is only 300MB and I have 2GB of ram on these.

If I can fix these disks, I will try it with only having the CD in the entire time and not take it out and see if it does it to me again.

Any ideas on a fix? I have a couple to try, but any others would be helpful too.

OK people, I fixed it!

Lessions learned...

1) Don't ever be as dumb as I was and remove a PE disk from the drive, no matter what. It obviously doesn't completely cache, and can do damage like this...

2) If for this reason, or any other, that a PC with SATA drives becomes unbootable, even to any CD...plug the damaged one into the secondary SATA port and put a good or undamaged drive in the primary SATA port and re-image or re-install the damaged drive from either a CD or the OS on the good drive. (Usual config would be SATA-0: HD [Replace the bad drive with a good drive here] | SATA-1: CD Drive | SATA-2: HD [Put the bad HD here - you will probably have to turn this port on, or discover the drive in the BIOS after the swap has been made])

Then once the image drop or reinstall has completed and you are prompted to restart the PC, don't just let the PC restart. Let it power down and get back to the BIOS screen and then turn it off. One push of the power button at that point should do it. Now take out the godd drive you used and put the bad drive back into it's place. Now turn on the PC and go right into the BIOS setup (to either redicover disks again or turn off the SATA-2 port that is no longer being used). Save the BIOS and restart. It should boot to the previously damaged disk again and you're on your merry way.

I'm posting the details for any newbies that need that level of proceedure details.

Thank you all for responding and helping me think this through...since I obviously wasn't do so to begin with! LOL!

Thank you for the update alphapotent. It's always good to hear of happy endings.


It can be done but not with a normal BartPE CD. You need to use a method like this where the actual ISO is written to the CD and then the ISO is loaded into RAM before it is booted.