Creating an Image of a Computer

[Infrared digital]

Hi

I am wiping and reinstalling all our machines but would like to be able to restore any machine to its 'new' install state whenever I like. By that I mean - having been formatted and all the main software installed.

Firstly, is there a substitute to formatting a machine ? When I have done it before, it does give the machine a new least of life.

Secondly, I am not sure what the other options are. A bloke in a shop told me to create an image of the system drive - is this correct and if so, how do I do it ?

Thanks

N

[thablanch]

After a clean install, we ghost the machine (can not remember the name of the software..) so when something goes wrong, we put back the ghosted image... and the machines <comes back> to the original, clean, fullinstall

[Infrared digital]

How do you apply the ghosted image ?

Is is on a DVD or a separate hard drive ?

[joconnell]

Normally the ghosting program has some kind of dos based program you can boot from and it'll allow you to select a drive image from a dvd or a hard drive to put onto the disk - great idea, if you do your basic install with windows, max, firefox, photoshop or whatever you can get yourself running really quickly. If you've enough discipline to keep everything away from your c drive so it can be wiped without losing work it's a great thing.

[jacksc02]

one thing to be careful with ghosting is if your ghosting from one machine to another you can have problems with motherboard and video card drivers not matching up. gets really messy!
Norton ghost is a reliable app for doing it.

[glorybound]

Ghosting

Ghosting works well when everything is the same. I managed about 30 architects and I built all the machines exactly the same. I built one, installed everything, and then ghosted the drive. I then cloned the drive, keeping one as backup, and it worked perfectly.

[tricky]

I used Norton Ghost the last time I built my workstation.

[stevesideas]

Does Norton ghost work with win xp 64 ?

[joconnell]

Yep - it's only copying ntfs data so it doesn't give a toss what's actually on the drive itself. There's no difference between 32 bit and 64 bit as regards ntfs either.

[stevesideas]

That sounds like a very cool piece of software...could save a lot of stress.

[joconnell]

indeed - there's also a few free versions of the same thing - if you're organised enough to do it it's great to be able to have a functional and fresh machine up and running in an hour or whatever it takes to copy the image to your drive.

[tricky]

It is good, but you MUST keep on top of it. For instance, I have lost track of mine as various pieces of software have been updated over the last few months, and I have forgotten to do a new Norton Ghost image. If I now restore using the latest Ghost image I have, I will need to manually re install all the updated apps.

I think its a matter of working to a timietable - every friday afternoon, restore from the last image so that the following Monday will be like working on a new system.

[squeakybadger]

vista has its own system imager built in