CF & enable write caching on the disk

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gianluca
  • Start date Start date
G

Gianluca

I am using CF card (formatted as NTFS) on CF - SATA adapter:
some time after commit and reboot the CF doesnot boot anymore and
I see: file missing or corrupt WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM


If I disable enable write caching on the disk can this help me?

Regards,

Gianluca
 
Gianluca,

Is this a reproable scenario, since you mention after a couple of commit and
reboots? Most probably you are experiencing flash wear outs. Check with the
CF manufactures website for tools to enable you to figure out if the CF card
has reached end of life.

Write caching affects file data and not NTFS metadata. So unless you are
performing a lot of writes to the CF this is not going to change your
scenario a lot. Have you had a look at any of the write filters?



If the answer is yes, try having a look at the write filters.
 
I'm using EWF Ram Reg.

If I use the same Image, on a sata disk it works well while on CF
(kingston and it is seen as fixed disk)
after commit command and rebboot,
I see file missing or corrupt WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Regards,
Gianluca Facca
 
Gianluca,

I assume you have verified this is not a bad CF card problem/ it repros on
cards from different vendors. I need more input from you to come up with in
house repro so some questions for you.

1) Can I assume that you dont see the corruption problem without EWF (or
with ewf disabled)? I would like to know if the corruption is due to XPe
specific binaires or XP binaries.

2) What is the seqeuence of events that your executing?
- Are you using ewfmgr or ewf API's to perform your operations?
- Is there a time delta between commit and shutdown actions? Try
introducing a lag in between.

3) Since we dont see this inhouse, can you provide more specifics about your
configuration?
- Which XPe release are we talking here SP2/FP2007/FP2008/R2?
- More details on hardware config, flash card + machine + BIOS details
- EWF configuration details: How big is overlay? How full was it during
commit? How much RAM do you have on the test system?
- event logs notification after commit
 
Thank You for Your answer,

1) I use EWF RAM-reg enabled, I did not tried with EWF disabled.

2) I deploy the image on CF (2GB Kingston) and start the machine, Install
some driver, reboot, enable EWF and restart.
After I update some file on the image or I install an USB lan adapter:
corruption happened some time when I use ewfmgr C: -commit and then reboot
by windows start button, and some time when I use ewf API
(I use the example on MSDN: a function named DoEwfCommit, uses EwfmgrCommit
and ExitWindowsex function )

3) I use Feature Pack2007: first I used Slobodan RAM-reg component, but
as -live command was not supported, I updated the image on target
designer to use Feature pack components: so I tried to use ewfmgr
c: -commitanddisable -live and reboot by windows start button, but
The motherboard is IntelDG43NB with 2GB ram.
Bios is NB 0069
On the motherboard I connected two 1TB sataHD (converted to Dinamic and
created two stripped volume ) and a IDE DVD writer
My CF adaptor is a CF-Sata


Today I used a CF - IDE adaptor I did several ewfmgr commit and several
restart using ewfApi and it seems to work.
 
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