[Mike_Original]

Hi,

I was pleased to have this update yesterday and to see that it now includes Smart Copy for ext 4.

I have been using HDClone Standard since 3.2, but now for the first time when booting 3.8.4 from my floppy I see the option to use SafeMode.

It would be helpful to know when and how SafeMode might be useful to me since, although generally delighted with HDClone, I do occasionally have a few problems.

My regards

[Alex]

Pressing 'S' on start now shows the available Safe Modes. Previously, you had the memorize the varying key strokes to disable certain features. Now, the new system loader will show each option:

V -> forces VGA, even if VESA (True Color) would be available. This might help in case the VESA bios of the graphics card is defective.
B -> forces VGA via the BIOS. Usually, VGA is initialized by special port accesses to the graphic hardware. If B is pressed, this initializations are done via calls to the BIOS prior to starting Symobi and therefore no driver of Symobi can interfere here.
D -> does not use any help of the BIOS initialization at all. If the VGA bios is defective, letting the BIOS do the initialization might not work, so this key instructs the loader to do nothing at all and the graphics driver to do the complete initialization and not rely on the BIOS.

I -> no IDE. This disables the IDE (ATA) driver for Parallel IDE and Serial ATA in compatibility mode. Usually, this is not intended, but if the system freezes on startup, this might help.
S -> no SCSI. This disables the SCSI drivers, for the same reasons as for IDE.
A -> no AHCI. This disables the AHCI driver, which is used to access most of the Serial ATA drives (only a small percentage is accessed via the IDE driver).
U, O-> no UHCI/OHCI. This disables the USB 1.1 drivers used for USB mice and keyboards on most computers except for the very latest, where no USB 1.1 controllers are to be found anyway. UHCI can be found on Intel and VIA mainboards, whereas OHCI is found on all other boards.
E -> no EHCI. This disables the USB 2.0 driver. All devices connected should work nonetheless, but only at USB 1.1 speed (lest the UHCI and OHCI are disabled as well).
the USB drivers should be disabled if the system freezes at startup. Trying different variants of U, O and E should bring the culprit.
F -> no Firewire. This disables the Firewire driver.
N -> no network access. As of now, HDClone does not use any network, so this option has no effect.
P -> no APM. HDClone disables APM (Power Management) for hard disks, because otherwise they might power down during usage. If disabling APM leads to a system freeze, pressing P will avoid this.
Q -> no IRQ. This turns all active drivers in a interrupt-less mode, which increases compatibility and sometimes speed at the cost of higher CPU usage. Only to be used if during normal operation there appears to be a conflict with different devices sharing one IRQ channel.
C -> use Cardbus: Initially, this enabled the Cardbus-aware PCI subsystem. As of HDClone 3.8.4 this though activates the old PCI subsystem, and the new PCI subsystem is on as default.
1 -> use only one CPU. HDClone at the moment only uses one CPU, so this option has no effect.

[Mike_Original]

Hi Alex,

Thank you for your prompt and helpful response. However, I do not pretend to understand all the technicalities so I will use your explanations to experiment and then I will report back.

My regards

[Mike_Original]

Hi again Alex and all readers,

There are three advances I would like to achieve though I strongly suspect they are already available to the vast majority of HDClone Standard 3.8.4 users.


I do not expect miracles because:
My motherboard is 8 years old, though it is 2.0 GHz, and I have
two internal hard drives, probably both are at least four years old,
a Hi-speed USB 2.0 3-Port PCI Card,
a recent external 250 GB USB drive with 9 partitions,
and 2 of the fastest USB sticks.
Dual boot W98SE (FAT 32) and Ubuntu (Ext 3) are on my main internal drive and all other media are used only for restoration. I only clone Partition to Partition.

Using the final version of HDClone 3.2 my cloning speeds were/are:
To my second internal drive an excellent result of some 20 MB/s
To my external drive and USB sticks some 10.5 to 11.5 MB/s. Cloning back @ 14 MB/s.

Now using 3.8.4 my 3 desires are:
(1) Avoidance of multiple attempts (sometimes as many as 5 caused by errors) when cloning Ext 3 to my external drive. I tried using the SafeMode option ´C´ which on three trials seems to be a complete cure.
(2) I could not make Partition to Image copies (using any version of 3.8) and I raised a Support Ticket. The Miray support team were really helpful and seemed to come close to cracking this when they provided me with a tailored CD which seemed to work as expected, but as I have so many partitions it did not show all of them.
(3) Cloning to my external drive and sticks is faster using Smart Copy but much of the expected time-saving is lost because there is a drop in the basic Data Rate by about 1/3rd or so with a maximum now of 8.5 MB/s (even if I untick Smart Copy).

I repeat, that with older equipment I do not expect miracles and I am generally delighted with 3.8.4 where cloning speed to my second internal hard drive has improved substantially to 25MB/s - 28 MB/s and I have never used Verify (as it was not available when I started with 3.2 Basic so I thought it not usually necessary) and the product (after numerous clone backs) has never let me down.

I am hugely impressed that the product works using only a standard floppy disk and that is to me, and surely to experts, an engineering masterpiece. I can easily live with the minor problems listed above, but I will be most pleased with any suggestion(s) that I might try.

My regards

Added:
I have just corrected a few words which slightly improves the sense and meaning.