disk imaging

[nekrum]

Hi all,

Anyone recommend any good disk imaging tools? We're upgrading our entire system and would like to do an image of each server and workstation once they are prepped to enable rapid recovery if anything fails. Don't want to spend a fortune!

Thanks in advance..

[agent006]

Symantec Ghost. The corporate version, as the home version is pants.

[ThePassenger]

agent006 said:

Symantec Ghost. The corporate version, as the home version is pants.

Yep, the corporate version is excellent. You can deploy boss build images of all the various PC types, even (I believe) autoinstall images of stuff like XP. Then push out smaller snapshot images off registry injections, apps, IE favourites... anything that can make a change to your master machine that Ghost can detect. Full on scheduler, WOL support from the clients. blah blah blah

I believe something called Acronis also exists? I've heard of it but never actually seen it. As Ghost Corporate is one of the few things I would actually use from that company.

[nekrum]

The master machine thing didn't occur to me - that would be ideal. How does that cope with different hardware as we run mixture of machines?!

Thanks

[theboss]

nekrum said:

The master machine thing didn't occur to me - that would be ideal. How does that cope with different hardware as we run mixture of machines?!

Thanks

Windows XP comes with a deployment tool called Sysprep. You basically prepare a master machine with patches, applications, settings, etc. then you 'seal' the build with this Sysprep tool and take an image of the disk with something like Ghost.

The first time you deploy the image and boot the machine it enters a Setup routine a bit like Windows setup, it will scan for PnP hardware, etc. however it will retain all of the previous customisations and applications you installed.

Generally if the machines are of similar architecture a single build will work for all of them... you would need different builds if the machines use different HALs or for example if some are AMD x64 and others are Intel x86... same with laptops vs desktops, etc. of course in the future it's best to keep your machines to a common vendor / product line for ease of management.

[roadsweeper]

ThePassenger said:

I believe something called Acronis also exists? I've heard of it but never actually seen it. As Ghost Corporate is one of the few things I would actually use from that company.

We are an Acronis reseller. It is excellent software, but it is intended for recurring backup of individual machines and is hence licenced per server and includes all kinds of features not needed for a one-off backup like this. As a result, it is not an economic choice and I'd suggest Ghost as others, including yourself, have already mentioned.