Author Topic: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD  (Read 10707 times)

Martin Iturbide

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Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« on: November 11, 2022, 05:16:47 pm »
Hi

I haven't done this in a long time, not with DFSee, and I'm not a DFsee power user, so I'm asking for help.

There is a person that have an OS/2 Warp 4 (HPFS) IDE hard drive, and I want him to take a image of the main OS/2 partition.
He does not have OS/2 anymore, but he can connect the IDE drive to Window.

I want to recommend him to use DFSee, connect the IDE HDD to Windows and create an image of the drive (Using DFSee for Windows). But I'm not sure of the following.

1) Is it ok if he takes the image from the IDE HPFS HDD, while he is on Windows? or does he need to boot DFSee with an USB flash memory?
2) Which format does DFSee uses to create images?
3) Is there any special recommendation on the settings on DFSee to create that image?
4) Once I get the image, is there any way to browse inside it to take some specific files, instead of restoring the partition somewhere?

I'm posting some images of what I see on DFSee, but it is the first time I will be using DFSee for this.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
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ivan

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #1 on: November 11, 2022, 10:31:54 pm »
Hi Martin,

You are on your own with anything in vBox (doesn't work on my OS/2 machines) but if it is a real hard drive making an image of a single partition or whole disk with DFSee just works assuming it is from - to another real hard disk.  In fact that is how I cloned most of my OS/2 machines.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2022, 12:43:12 am »
Hi Ivan

This is not a VM, it is real hardware.

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Martin Iturbide
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ivan

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2022, 06:53:35 am »
Hi Martin,

Sorry I was mislead by your second picture which had a vBox mentioned.

In that real hardware case there should not be any problems.

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2022, 03:14:59 pm »
I didn't see anyone answer your specific questions, so here goes:

1. According to the docs, it is just fine to attach the drive to Windows. Don't let Windows format anything. DFSee should work.
2. DFSee will back the drive up to some IMZ format. I do not know if this is a published format.
3. If handling >2TB files is an issue, let DFSee break the data into <2TB pieces. I also use smart backup, but check if it works.
4. You can browse the backup for sure, but I think you can also browse the hard drive.
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Matt Walsh

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #5 on: November 13, 2022, 05:02:51 pm »
You can also clone the OS/2 partition from DFSEE.
Matt W

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2022, 10:18:43 pm »
Thanks for the feedback.

I still have a doubt about:

4) Once I get the image, is there any way to browse inside it to take some specific files, instead of restoring the partition somewhere?

Can I surf the files inside of the image to only get one file, like config.sys, or any other? Can I do that on DFSee or I need an extra tool? Any tips on how ?

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Martin Iturbide
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ivan

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2022, 11:39:55 pm »
Hi Martin,

Yes you can.  It is all under the 'image' option, you may need to open DFSee in expert mode to see all the options.

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #8 on: November 15, 2022, 03:59:50 pm »
Thank you guys. I will be doing some testing and see what I learn in the road :)
Martin Iturbide
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Attis

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #9 on: January 22, 2023, 11:58:22 am »
Hi Martin,

I don't know if you are done, here's my summary, I've just used DFSee to backup and restore disk images in the past months:
- you can use it outside of running OS/2 or DFSee USB/CDboot. I made backups over usb{2,3} to sata/pata cables in macOS ported/compiled DFSee, needed about 10-12 minutes for a 2GB partition. Trying the same with about ~500 data in a partition trough an old phisycal PC with PATA showed around 1.5 hours time = gave up for another time.
- as Neil wrote you can choose a compressed image version, for disk image its created a *.imz, and *.xmz file. On a 2GB partition, filled above 1GB gave me ~847MB of files. So it is filesystem parsed imaging, not 1to1 disk2image, whatever the image format itself.
- I did both the partition and whole disk image. The latter can give you the ease of mind in restoring, with some Mbytes overhead. Thinking about booting, LVM and DLAT information.
- you can extract any files from the image were available in the original disk. I've had interesting boot/HPFS/LVM problems during one of my MCP2 UPDCD test/project in VM. It became a routine, to use a DFSee CDboot image to clear the HPFS dirty flag, or check if the HPFS contents are available, and try to manipulate/recover/fix LVM/DLAT info.

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #10 on: January 22, 2023, 07:26:34 pm »
This may be a silly question you guys, but can the DFSee created image (is it DISK or PARTITION?) be restored onto a differently sized TARGET?

What I mean is the following:

1) I have a 200G SOURCE (current OS/2 partition on a SDD)
2) I have a 500G TARGET (future OS/2 partition on a NEW SDD)

Can I used DFSee image of the SOURCE to "move" my whole system to the ned SDD?

FYI - I have been looking at doing either the old fashioned XCOPY thing, or RSYNC, or DFSee...was aware that some such DFSee functionality existed, but I haven't investigated any of it. Perhaps DFSee could actually do a real-time copy???

Thanks!

Dave Yeo

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #11 on: January 22, 2023, 07:56:02 pm »
Hi Dariusz, I tried that some time back, ended up with the same size partition as the source. IIRC, it could be enlarged.
Doing it with xcopy or rsync would be better, the file system would be correct for the partition size, not sure how important for JFS, with HPFS the directories and such were generated in the centre of the partition for speed. More important is that copying will also defrag the file system. Even JFS can become fragmented, especially if the file system is somewhat full.

ivan

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2023, 12:05:48 am »
Hi Dariusz,
Have you considered creating two partitions on your new enlarged SSD leaving your boot partition at 200 Gb (which is excessive for a boot partition, mine is 2 GB with over 1 GB still free) and putting tools, programs, etc on the remaining partitioned space? 

Dariusz Piatkowski

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2023, 12:26:02 am »
Hi ivan,

Have you considered creating two partitions on your new enlarged SSD leaving your boot partition at 200 Gb (which is excessive for a boot partition, mine is 2 GB with over 1 GB still free) and putting tools, programs, etc on the remaining partitioned space?

What I currently have is the legacy of having installed my original OS/2 Warp3 way back when in the early 1990s I think...LOL...yeah, it's been that long!

Several upgrades later (such as Warp4 for example), with all of my apps having been installed on the same drive as the boot drive I simply do not have the desire to split into the arguably much better approach you suggest.

I figured that if AOS is ever released in UPGRADE mode I'll take that plunge, until then I simply manage what I have.

Therefore in my case I could replicate the 200G drive in as-is layout, and just have the extra 300G left for other uses, maybe move some storage from the boot drive to that one?

The challenge/problem with splitting the SSD into such partitions is that I'm not certain it actually gains anything in terms of performance. It is still the same hardware and having the extra empty space on a SSD is actually a good thing (think overprovisioning).

As is, I will have my current 200G drive which will become that storage space and it being a separate hardware device allocates the full channel to just those disk IOps.

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2023, 01:00:19 am »
The easy way to move your partition is to use zip. Zip your old partition with -qryS. If files are in use, they will not be included, so if you are moving a bootable volume, boot from another volume, or from installation media to do your zip.

Create your new volume, and unzip (no parameters needed). If it is bootable, and you changed file system type, you need to use sysinstx <drive letter> to copy system files.

This method has few limitations about volume size and it defragments your data, too.
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