BartPE - awesome tool

[Nolonemo]

[Original post problem solved]

Just got a BartPE bootable USB thumb drive made, and this is one awesome disaster recovery tool. To the default applet load I've added Acronis Trueimage, Acronis Disk Director, and Nero Burning Rom. I'll probably throw in a password recovery tool and in my final build. There's driver support for the T23 NIC, so I can network the Bart-booted TP if needed.

The great thing about booting from the flash drive as opposed to a CD is that the DVD/CD drive can be used for burning data off the HDs.

It took me a little while to get my head around it, but well worth the effort in the long run.

For info, http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder. BartPE is freeware.

You need a XP SP2 CD to make the BartPE disk/drive (you can make a bootable CD instead of a flash drive).

To create the BartPE flash drive use PEtoUSB, also freeware http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=petousb

[wpwood3]

I've been using BartPE via CD for quite some time. Indeed, it is a great tool!
I'll have to check out the thumb drive idea... What's the capacity of the thumb drive you are using?

[carbon_unit]

Another great tool based on Bart PE is the "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows". I use this all the time for virus/spyware cleaning and disaster recovery.
At first it seems complicated to build but once you figure it out, it is really easy to customize. Looks like it can be put on a thumbdrive too check out post #9 .

[DIGITALgimpus]

I'd highly recommend adding this to your toolkit as well:
http://www.sysresccd.org

saved my butt a couple of times.

[Nolonemo]

I put it on a 256MB thumb drive (the total size of the BartPE files is around 210MB, I think). How big the install is depends on how much stuff you want to add beyond the default load.

For kicks I made a version that included Office 2003, and that came in around 500MB (that one I put on CD)

I caught an error in my first post (now corrected), the tool you want to use to put the Bart PE on a flash drive is PEtoUSB (not PE2usb). Advantages over PE2USB are:
1. GUI instead of command line
2. Will make the drive bootable so you don't need a separate utility for htat
3. Has option for selective overwriting, so you can update the Bart PE install without having to write everything to the drive all over again.

Highly recommended freeware.

[Nolonemo]

Some updated information for anyone who stumbles on this thread....

Here's a neat tool that lets you put any bootable image on a thumb drive. So you could just use the same .iso you burn to disk to create the bootable thumb drive.

I also discovered an "upgrade" to Bart PE, Reatogo PE Builder. This uses the PE Builder Engine, modified to add a bunch of XP stuff, so the install looks and acts pretty much like XP. It also will detect and extract drivers from your machine to include in the build, and has utilities to autoconfigure plugins, etc.

For me, the only real advantage of the Reatogo approach is that I could grab video and wifi card drivers without having to figure it out myself.

The down side is that the minimum build is over 256MB, so you need a minimum 512MB flash drive if you want to go that route (I like the flash drive because it give me access to the optical drive for pulling data off the machine.

Another downside seems to be that you have to run a reg file on any network computers on which you want to access network shares. Plain old Bart Pe doesn't have that limitation.

Anyway, you can check out Reatogo here: http://www.reatogo.de