Desktop imaging options..

[Auger282]

Just wondering how you guys handle desktop imaging (or not).

Software, processes, quick applications, migration tools.

My company really only sets up maybe 6 computers at most at a time.. mostly we would use this to speed up the "factory restore" process when we recycle a workstation before it hits someone elses desktop.

Our big concern is we dont think our network could handle 5gig images downloading off of a server for ghosting. And we arent sure if a HD copier is the way to go.. this is why I'm asking you!

Thanks for any information you can provide!

 

[SjrH]

Get yourself a couple of USB drives and make them bootable using something like Barts or Netbootdisk. You can boot off of these USB drives and load ghost locally to lay down your image from the USB drive. No network bandwidth problems, and its a lot faster IMO.
I've used this method for both full build and sysprep built images with very few problems.

 

[Spirit]

Just us a separate switch. Have a wee PC with all your images on, stick it on its own mini switch 8 port would do, stick the target machine on the same switch and bad a bing.

Unfortunately I think the USB HD option although faster won't let you do more than one PC at a time.... I think.

Iain

 

[Auger282]

I think you are correct.. that would be the down side to USB Imaging.. depending on the time savings it may be worth it to do the USB thing..

Like I said we (at most) do a roll out of 6 at a time.. nothing to crazy...

I had also considered a local server.. Thanks for the suggestion... is that what you use?

What software do you use to image?

 

[Mich]

Simple solution.

Get yourself a USB DVD burner. Find a 'default' PC. One that is set up, but not customized for any particular person or area. Install Norton's Ghost on that machine and create an image on a DVD.

Then all you have to do is insert that DVD in a machine you want to restore (make sure BIOS is set to boot from CD?DVD), boot it up, and you have a default PC.

-If it ain't broke, break it and make it better.

 

[Spirit]

I use powerquest to image it took me about 3 days to get it working and understand what the hell I was doing but its been bought by symantec now and I haven't bothered to upgrade it yet.

I guess the main advantage is for that I can start 5 machines go off come back an hour later and they're ready for final instalation tweaks... favourites, printers etc.

I use an old P3 500 with a 120GB HD as my image server...

Bare in mind that imaging to PC's with vast different hardware is unlikely to be successful.

Good luck,
Iain

 

[Rick998]

Hi Auger282,

We use 80Gb Freecom HD2-Pro USB 2 hard disks to carry our disk images around with us. We also use a boot CD which has both USB 2 and USB 1.1 drivers on. As an example, it takes about 2 minutes to re-image a Compaq DC7100 or D530 using USB 2.

See thread779-1113459 in the Win XP forum for more info. about using Ghost, especially in the environment you describe, i.e. recycling workstations. This is probably best done using a partition image for speed.

I've also been testing Acronis disk imaging software and have - so far - found it to be faster than Ghost and the compression is better, i.e. the Acronis-created disk image is significantly smaller than the Ghost-created disk image when using highest compression in both programs.

Hope this info helps...