TypeSDragon

For the corporate people, what kind of ghosting or imaging software for PC clients are you guys using? We are using Norton ghost at the moment, but looking to see what else is out there to try. Thanks!

Zapata

norton ghost ownz joo all!

kevin79925

we use that too.

Beelzebub

Norton Ghost.

I run a lab with 100 machines and could never do it without Ghost.

This is a test lab where the machines are re-imaged every month they get loaned to a new group.

Zapata

we ghost 2x per week. 250 machines.

G-UNIT

eclipse23

Norton is the cleanest imaging software of the pack but I hate their add on shit (app distributions, etc.).

I have worked with SMS, Altiris, Zenworks etc. and Norton is the simplest if you are just looking for imaging. Can't beat multicast or DVD images.

NOVAwhiteTypeS

norton ghost or drive image pro either one since symantec owns them both now!!

i perfer ghost

anothercls

Ghost, but if you have multiple machines you need to roll out an image to but dont have the same hardware run sysprep and create the image, then push it out to cd-rom, network-dvd, whatever you want to use to transfer the image.

If you buy from CDW you can get your image put on every machine before it leaves the factory, so you dont have to do any setup.

If you want to do a mass upgrade use RIS on W2k or W2k3.

danny25

norton ghost here too.

Anyone know how to ghost a computer by itself? with out using a relay computer to run GhostSrv.exe?

Zapata

? ghost it to itself? Not possible unless you have two seperate drives on two seperate controllers.

danny25

i was curious. thought it might be possible some how to put an image on a dvd or something, then boot up ghost and point it to the image.

mc222

If you do the following with Ghost you can do just that.
1. Create a Ghost boot disk
2. Create the Image
3. Burn the Image to CD
4. You can then reimage machine whenever you need to

danny25

1. done
2. done
3. images are about 1.5-2 gig, so I'd have to use a DVD
4. how do i point ghost to the image?

Zapata

ooooooh that's what your asking.......lol...fuck yea, we have all our shit archived on CDs/DVDs just incase our file server goes down.

mc222

4. When you startup w/ the boot disk, it should ask you where the image is....A few clicks and you point it to the DVD drive...

I havent used it in a while, bt it was pretty simple from what I remember

mc222

But my question is, why are you doing this? Do you have 2 identical PCs, and you are imaging 1 to match the other?

danny25

just curious if it could be done. I haven't really messed with it. We have all our images uploaded to servers and then we use a relay computer to send the image to the computer we're ghosting.

I was just thinking I could use that at home. I could get a clean install of XP with some basic apps and then take an image of that. So next time my computer get's screwed instead of reformatting I can just ghost it.

Zapata

oh if you can map a drive to your servers then yes you don't need to have the go between.

danny25

^ that's also a good idea I didn't think of.

I just booted into ghost and sure enough, Local - Disk - From Image and then you can browse to an image.

Although with my boot disk it only let's me look to the A drive. I guess I need to load the CD drivers onto my boot disk.

Zapata

yea you can actually split it up

1.win98 boot disk will have CD device drivers


2. ghost disk with ghost software

NOVAwhiteTypeS

i ghost my laptop every 3 months, u can use ghost explorer to even pull files out of the image.

And u can ghost a machine from it self. just have seperate partitions. have a small partition w/ the ghost image then a larger one to dump the image.

watch out for the next version of ghost it'll have all the goodie goodies from Drive Image pro . and also look out for the next partition magic which is also bought by symantec

Zapata

licensing scheme suxor....i absolutely LOVE the product but just so expensive.

SiGGy

Ok, since no-one has mentioned it yet.

G4U

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Not nearly as facy nor user friendly as ghost, but it's free!

heh

Zapata