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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Applications => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on November 11, 2022, 05:16:47 pm

Title: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Martin Iturbide 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
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: ivan 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Martin Iturbide on November 12, 2022, 12:43:12 am
Hi Ivan

This is not a VM, it is real hardware.

Regards
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: ivan 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Neil Waldhauer 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Matt Walsh on November 13, 2022, 05:02:51 pm
You can also clone the OS/2 partition from DFSEE.
Matt W
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Martin Iturbide 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 ?

Regards
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: ivan 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Martin Iturbide 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 :)
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Attis 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski 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!
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dave Yeo 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: ivan 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? 
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Neil Waldhauer 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.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 23, 2023, 01:57:32 am
Another consideration with large partitions is chkdsk time if a full chkdsk is required, maybe not too bad with a SSD. When I purchased a 2TB USB drive for backup purposes, I created a 1.5 TB partition for backing up OS/2 including a lot of source files, chkdsk would fail due to lack of memory after I backed a bunch of stuff up.
Being USB, a hard crash or whatever meant a full chkdsk.
Which reminds me Dariusz, you posted a bunch of chkdsk flags earlier, could you repost them?
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dariusz Piatkowski on January 23, 2023, 05:20:01 am
Hi Dave,

...Which reminds me Dariusz, you posted a bunch of chkdsk flags earlier, could you repost them?

here is what I have:

Code: [Select]
Check FS content
 
  Usage: chkdsk drive: [/A] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/F[:n]] [/O] [/P] [/V]
 
    /A      Enable autocheck mode (undocumented)
    /B      Perform LVM Bad Block List utility processing only
    /C      Process ifdirty after logredo
    /D      Enable debug mode (undocumented)
            all log messages written to stdout in english
    /F[:n]  Full check
            0 => read only (default)
            1 => prompt for permission for each repair
            2 => preen (default if n omitted)
            3 => Assume permission given for all repairs.
                 If exiting with clean file system, invoke LVM Bad Block
                 List utility processing on the way out.
            Note: :1 and :2 are converted to :3
    /O      Omit logredo (undocumented)
    /P      Enable pmchkdsk mode (undocumented)
    /V      Verbose messaging (ignored)
 
  Both / and - prefix supported
  Options are case-insenitive
 
  Called as
 
    chkdsk drive: /F /A [/C]
 
  for autocheck
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: TeLLie on January 23, 2023, 07:34:57 pm
Hi All,

I think it's from this where those flags coming from ;)

http://www.2rosenthals.net/wordpress/jfs-chkdsk-options-on-os2-1020/

Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 23, 2023, 10:54:34 pm
Thanks for the list. Unluckily, I was hoping for a simple logredo option such as runs during boot for those cases where the system crashes etc with a USB HD plugged in as it takes forever to do a full chkdksk on the USB drive.
Quicker to boot to Linux and do a fsck where the default is logredo and takes a minute or so.
Title: Re: Creating an OS/2 image from HDD
Post by: Pete on January 24, 2023, 06:39:58 pm
Hi Dave

If my system crashes with a USB drive attached I find it much quicker to power off (HD) or unplug (Flash) USB drive then reboot.
When booted I attach the USB drive, open a command window and chkdsk the USB drive while getting on with other things - such as writing this  :-)

Regards

Pete