Use of HDSentinel Portable in Pre-environment

[jspear]

Can HDSentinel Portable be used with a Windows 7 PE bootable disk or usb, so that read and write options can be done to the disk without removing the partition. Specifically I am thinking about the refresh option which currently cannot be done for windows 7 or Vista.

[hdsentinel]

While personally I did not yet test with Win7 PE, but I suspect yes, it should work.
Tested with XP PE: HDSentinel Portable registered was running on a pendrive and could access all disks and perform all disk testing.

There should be no problem with Win7 PE this way because if the current OS is executed from a DVD / USB drive, the file system on the hard disk can be properly un-mounted by Hard Disk Sentinel before the test - this is required for the refresh option you mentioned.

[jspear]

Thanks, when I finish getting my win7 pe done, I'll test it and let you know how it works.

[alan-0000]

Caution :-
HDS is a 32 bit application and may well run under a 32 bit WinPE.

I tried to run the "OCZ Toolbox" under 64 bit WinPE and there was total failure to launch.
I was advised on the OCZ SSD forum that 64 bit WinPE is NOT able to support 32 bit applications.

I then built a 32 bit WinPE and that successfully launched "OCZ Toolbox" and most of the tools worked well,
unfortunately the Secure ATA Erase tool failed - obviously there was something it needed in the 10 GBytes of Full Windows 7.

Regards
Alan

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for the information, yes, I expected that Hard Disk Sentinel should work well on WinPE (32 bit).

Personally I never saw 64 bit WinPE, but if that can't run 32 bit software, I'd say it is not really useful.

The "Secure ATA Erase" will always fail under Windows. The required ATA commands could not be transferred to the device under Windows, regardless of the type of Windows (full / PE). But if it would be possible somehow, the drive would stop responding for Windows during the execution of the secure erase function (this is normal behaviour) and because of this, WIndows will remove it from the system after a timeout condition.
This is why the secure erase is possible under DOS only.

[alan-0000]

I use Macrium Reflect image backup software which can create a Bootable Flash/CD using WinPE, which is a severely stripped down version of Windows Vista/7
On my 64 bit hardware 64 bit Macrium will by default create a 64 bit WinPE which has little support for any 32 bit applications.
64 bit WinPE obviously behave like 64 bit Windows, so any 32 bit applications that need Windows\System32\ executable's will instead be directed to Windows\SysWOW64\
BUT none of that is needed for 64 bit Macrium Bootable Application code so I guess SYSWOW64 has all code stripped out.

If I had 32 bit Macrium then by default it would have created a 32 bit WinPE.

I actually downloaded a 2 G Byte of WAIK from Microsoft and Macrium had a "custom" option which extracted for me a 32 bit WinPE, which almost did all I needed.

Please note that the entire bootable Flash/CD is only 180 MB holding the entire WinPE operating system PLUS Macrium application code.

If I had the time and skill no doubt I could retain sufficient of the 2 G Byte WAIK to do all I needed,
but that would not fit into a bootable CD.

You are partially correct when you say

The "Secure ATA Erase" will always fail under Windows

That is strictly true for any attempt to use any Windows O.S. that is held in the target SSD,
but does not apply if the target SSD is NOT the host of the Windows that is running.
Hence a new SSD may be added to an existing system with Windows running on an HDD,
and when the system boots up into the HDD it is possible to execute the "Secure ATA Erase" of the SSD.
I similarly hoped that 32 bit WinPE would support the tools in the OCZ toolbox, and it supported all 4 tools - but the tool I wanted had a need for a few more Windows executables

My warning to the O.P. remains.
If he has a 64 bit system then any default WinPE that he has available may be trimmed back and not support the essential 32 bit system folders, i.e.
SysWOW64.

Regards
Alan

P.S.
To summarize my experience of WinPE
The minimal default 64 bit WinPE allowed me to attempt a launch of each of the 4 "tools" in the OCZ Toolbox.
I could do so via either a normal GUI select and launch, or via normal CMD.EXE command ;
BUT regardless of how I tried to launch it, WinPE was totally unable to oblige.

The minimal default 32 bit WinPE had no problem with 3 out of 4 tools, they worked perfectly,
only the fourth failed, and the failure might have been due to the SSD needing a firmware update.

The advise given on the OCZ forum was that they expected total failure of the 32 bit Toolbox under a 64 bit WinPE,
and this was a general expectation - not specific to the Macrium Reflect product.

[pusaqall]

I see. Nice to have cleared it up. Several users also having this thought regarding 32bit under 64bit WinPE.