CMS Backup Rescue CD?

I'm having issues with a 160GB SATA CMS Automatic Backup System we just
purchased. The idea is to send this unit with a Dell D630 laptop to a
remote sales person so they can backup their laptop. The software
itself is very slick: just connect the drive to the laptop and it
starts backing up.

However, the rescue CD portion doesn't seem to work very hot. It
appears to be based on a linux distribution. It drops you to a command
prompt where you are suppose to type "image" and then it will figure
out which is the source and target drives for the data transfer. The
problem is that it only detects the external SATA drive in the USB
enclosure, but not the SATA drive within the laptop itself. I placed a
call to their tech support long distance, however, all I kept getting
was "1 customer ahead of you in the queue", so I left a message. So
much for their "365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day" tech
support!

I booted into Bart PE's disc and I can see the internal laptop hard
drive just fine. I copied over the files I deleted as a test, rebooted
the laptop and I was off and running.

Anyone have a solution (hopefully freeware) that I can build where I
can boot the laptop from a CD and have it do a data transfer? I'm
thinking UBCD4WIN, but it would need to handle scenarios where the disk
has been replaced and has no partitions.

Thanks,
Adam

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Adam Leinss <aleinss RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm having issues with a 160GB SATA CMS Automatic Backup System we just
> purchased. The idea is to send this unit with a Dell D630 laptop to a
> remote sales person so they can backup their laptop. The software
> itself is very slick: just connect the drive to the laptop and it
> starts backing up.

> However, the rescue CD portion doesn't seem to work very hot. It
> appears to be based on a linux distribution. It drops you to a command
> prompt where you are suppose to type "image" and then it will figure
> out which is the source and target drives for the data transfer.

That is pretty bad. Even GNU partimage gives you a menu.

> The
> problem is that it only detects the external SATA drive in the USB
> enclosure, but not the SATA drive within the laptop itself.

My guess
would be these jokers forgot to compile in all the SATA controller
drivers or are using a pretty old kernel.


> I placed a
> call to their tech support long distance, however, all I kept getting
> was "1 customer ahead of you in the queue", so I left a message. So
> much for their "365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day" tech
> support!

Seems you were ripped off.

> I booted into Bart PE's disc and I can see the internal laptop hard
> drive just fine. I copied over the files I deleted as a test, rebooted
> the laptop and I was off and running.

> Anyone have a solution (hopefully freeware) that I can build where I
> can boot the laptop from a CD and have it do a data transfer? I'm
> thinking UBCD4WIN, but it would need to handle scenarios where the
> disk has been replaced and has no partitions.

Hmm. If you are handy with scripting under Linux, you could just
modify the bootscripts of Knoppix to do that. Sorry, but this
is not quite so easy to automatize.

Arno