I am trying to understand how the Mark 5 HMI running WinXP creates virtual drives(or drive letter links) without those drive letters being listed in Windows device manager.

I need to understand how GE set these HMIs up. If I need to rebuild a box I need to know how the F: and G: drive are created. Normally I would expect to see them managed in Device Manager. There is 1 hard drive (WD 74.5GB) and it is split into 2 drives as shown in Device Manager as C: and E:. I just don't see how we get F: and G:, which are apparantly mapped to C: and E: somehow, but not listed in the Device Manager. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Two things; maybe more.

First: It's pointless trying to understand why GE does what they do with their Mark V HMIs. Many of us gave up trying a long time ago. It used to be done with a script, but it might now be done with some background service setting. Have you looked in the TCI Control Panel applet?

Second, if you need to "rebuild" a GE Mark V HMI, you're going to do it either from a "ghost" image (I think they're using something called Adonis or Acronis or some name like that now) to create bootable recovery disks which you should regularly make after any changes to the HMI or Mark V configuration software. (You do make these recovery disks, don't you?)

And, if you don't, you need to have back-ups of the CIMPLICITY project and unit-specific files to install <b>AFTER</b> you install the eTCSS CD files, which will make all the necessary modifications to all the required files and scripts and settings to recreate the psuedo drive mappings.

So, make sure you make regular recovery disks using the utility which GE (should have) provided. OR, live dangerously and make sure you have the most recent versions of the eTCSS CD and CIMPLICITY Licenses and back-ups of the unit-specific files so that you can start from scratch.

Sorry, but there's just some things that are worth knowing, and others that are not. You might try doing an Internet search for methods of mapping psuedo drives with WinXP (or even look in the WinXP help files) if you want to see how they might have done it.

As for me, I spend my time doing anything besides trying to understand how (and why) GE does anything with their HMIs. By the time I figure it out, they change it!

 

I offer this information as what I know from the MKVI. I think that the MKV is mostly the same. F and G drives are "created" by the TCI (Turbine Control Interface" service when it starts. F: drive is a mirror of your "site" folder, G: contains files for the TCI service. TCI is the service that helps the MKV interface with Cimplicity for alarms, events, etc. I hope this helps, I am confident that CSA will be able to provide more information for you, but the main thing is that F: and G: are pseudo drives, you won't find them in windows device manager!

One point I ask is I have never seen a MKV running WINXP. The MKVI only started running XP a couple years ago, till then it has always been Win2k. As CSA already said, a good ghost image or Acronis back-up is worth gold in the event of a hard drive failure. GE has there own "disk backup" program usually installed on the HMI, funny thing is it looks just like "Ghost". I back-up my machines with Acronis, mainly because its faster and can be done with the HMI running, whereas ghost has to run on its own so you can't use the HMI while its running, and its very "slow".

More information than you wanted most likely, I'll stop now.

 

Thanks for the info. I do regular backups. This question arose while writing the procedure for backup and restore. We started with Ghost but the issue is that Ghost needs to shut the box down and it takes awhile to make an image. We don't always have the downtime (during my schedule). So we started doing a copy of the F: drive which contains the Site directory and Cimproj project info. With that we would need to rebuild the machine with the latest possible Ghost and update the F: drive info. I was concerned that when rebuilding the system I may have to create these drives but it seems like TCI may be creating these drives. I think I need to get a spare PC to verify our restore capability and ensure these images work and the drives do get created properly. I also am looking at a better hard drive.

 

Thanks for your reply.

5 year old plant originally had W2K HMIs. 2 years ago we upgraded to XP. Originally supplied with Norton Ghost. Recently we needed to add NERC CIP compliance including back up and restore as well as intrusion detection and a lock down of ports. GE solution for all this included Acronis. We were skeptical of Acronis as we found it on a free ware site, combined with issues we had with their intrusion detection software, we opted out and are trying to manage it all ourselves (including, by the way, successful replacement of the Allied Telesys switches with a Cisco product that our IT department can manage).

I am curious to know if you have done an actual restore from the Acronis images. Testing the restore function is a requirement of NERC/CIP and has been a challenge for us with the Mark 5 and Ovation DCS. It looks like we will buy a spare PC and do restores on it to prove they work (for both Mark 5 and Ovation.) I am also looking at better hard drives for both systems so I will need the flexibility I think Norton has with restoring to a different size hard drive. Does anyone have experience with upgrading the hard drive?

Thanks again for your reply.

 

The virtual drives are created in the autoexec.bat file using the old DOS "subst" command. As stated above any reasonable GHOST like tool should be used to clone a harddrvie.

 

I have done this using Acronis True Image 9.0 on my steam turbine HMI. I restored to a new-in-box hard drive and dropped that drive into my HMI, successfully connecting to the MkV. My CTG HMI won't accept the Acronis installer though, so I'm still not fully backed up.