wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

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doubleddav
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:54 am

wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

Post by doubleddav »

Hi There,

I'm trying to capture a live system with a pipable image going to stout,then apply from stin which in turn writes to a disk. I thought this would be cool as you could clone a live system to an arbitrary sized disk.

Here is what I'm running from cmd on a Windows 10 x64 machine:

Code: Select all

wimlib-imagex.exe capture --snapshot --pipable c:\ - | wimlib-imagex.exe apply - f:\
Below is the output:

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Scanning "c:\"
14 GiB scanned (56819 files, 7921 directories)
Excluding "\\?\STC_SnapShot_Volume_21_0\Windows\CSC" from capture
28 GiB scanned (202292 files, 36428 directories)
Excluding "\\?\STC_SnapShot_Volume_21_0\swapfile.sys" from capture

Excluding "\\?\STC_SnapShot_Volume_21_0\pagefile.sys" from capture

Excluding "\\?\STC_SnapShot_Volume_21_0\System Volume Information" from capture

Excluding "\\?\STC_SnapShot_Volume_21_0\$Recycle.Bin" from capture
28 GiB scanned (202325 files, 36447 directories)
[WARNING] Creating a pipable WIM, which will be incompatible
          with Microsoft's software (WIMGAPI/ImageX/DISM).
And there it sits indefinitely. Is what I'm trying to do possible? Is my command incorrect?

Thanks
synchronicity
Site Admin
Posts: 472
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:31 pm

Re: wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

Post by synchronicity »

The problem is that the pipable WIM format includes all the file checksums before the file data is sent (in order to be similar enough to the regular format for everything to work without having to code everything very differently), so all the file checksums all have to calculated beforehand; and there's no progress message for that.

So your command will work, but you'll just have to wait a while, with the amount of time depending on your source data size and storage speed, before anything else seems to happen.

I'll look into adding a progress message for the file checksumming when I have time.
doubleddav
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jul 27, 2018 2:54 am

Re: wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

Post by doubleddav »

OK cool, thanks for that.I'll try again and just leave it and see what happens.

Just to double check, when I run the command Windows disk read activity goes high - which I expect - but there's no write activity on the destination drive. Should I expect activity relatively quickly?

Thanks
synchronicity
Site Admin
Posts: 472
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:31 pm

Re: wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

Post by synchronicity »

Again, it depends on how much data is on the source, since it has to go through the source data first.
lvw
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2023 8:46 am

Re: wimcapture pipable direct to wimapply

Post by lvw »

Did you successfully transfer live system to another partition/disk?

If yes, what arguments with apply command you use?

We have encountered boot issue when using wimlib to restore but worked by using dism++.
(same backup .wim file captured by wimlib)

Thanks.
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