Backup and Restoring Machines..

tHE vAGGABOND

I run a testlab here in work with 20+ machines, running a mixture of 98/Me/2000 and XP.

I have been looking at good way to blow them away when needs be and restore or reinstall them.

I have been looking at Power Quest Drive Image 5 and Symantec Ghost 7.5. Both are ok..

Are there any other similar products? Anyone got a pointer to a good FAQ on using either of the above products, maybe Im taking the wrong steps thus making things more complicated than they should be..

Cake Fiend

Screw that. I've been using these babies in the café for a few weeks, so much faster than software backup systems. Best option would be to get one of the trial packs (3 cards) and try them out for yourself.

seamus

We likey very much Sico. What a good idea.

WhiteWashMan

nice idea sico.

but if you want to go for a software resolution, then ghost is yer man. its easy to use and you can have a new system up and running in minutes.
are they networked systems or stand alone?

Cake Fiend

From what I've used of Drive Image and Ghost, they're both very similar; I used to use Drive Image in the café before we switched to the smart cards.

One major advantage the cards have over software solutions is image netcasting - from what I gather, Drive Image and Ghost both have limits on the amount of data they can powercast over the network; the smart cards don't seem to have an upper limit.

tHE vAGGABOND

Nice idea sico, would have to lobby the budget people hard tho...

WWM - They are all networked on a protected network and subnet with no external access at all..

Renton

I spent ages typing this up, noone even looked at it. Mabye now people will

Its actually not too hard to do, I did it here in the cafe where I work. Very handy since I can reimage a pc in about 7 mins, using a bootable cd with a couple of batch files :cool:

For this guide, im assuming that your pc's use computer names like "Com1, Com2, Com3 ... etc", im also assuming that you're using IDE Cdrom drives, (aoatapi.sys). Infact im making loads of assumptions.

Ill give you a quick run-thru:

Firstly, you'll need

* Norton Ghost (preferably 6.0+)
* A CD Burner
* Blank CD (or more, depending on size of image)
* Patience + Fairly basic technical knowledge

Now, assuming you have all of the above, just do this

Setting up:

Set up one "Model" Computer, on this computer, set its Computer Name to something like ComX, anything that is unique and not already used.

Set it up perfectly, with all the software you need on it, its profiles etc.

Once this is done, You'll want to make an Image of the partition, to place onto a restore CD.

So to do this:

Remove the harddrive from the Model computer, and put it in, (as a secondary harddrive) in another PC which contains a CD Writer.

Boot up from a bootdisk which contains ghost.exe, and make an image of the partition you just set up. E.G. restore.gho
note: If the partition is > 600 Mb's, Use the command line parameter "-SPLIT 600" This will split the image into 600 Mb Chunks

Place this file on the Primary Hard drive. Once everything there is done, you can replace the hard drive into the model PC.

Wait hang on, where are we now

Okay now you've done the following

* Set up a model PC, with Windows installed just how ya like it
* Saved an IMAGE of that partition onto another computer which has a CD Writer

still with me ?

okay lets move on......

Creating a Bootable CD

Back into windows on the PC which now has the Image File saved on it (restore.gho)

Now you have to create a bootdisk, and your Burning software will take a 1.44 Mb Image of that, and place it on the CD (lets it boot from CD)

Get yourself a blank disk, Put it in your drive and set it up as follows:

Start -> Run -> Command
format a: /s/q
copy c:\windows\command\mscdex.exe a:
copy c:\windows\himem.sys a:
echo device=himem.sys > a:\config.sys
echo device=aoatapi.sys /d:restore1 >> a:\config.sys
echo mscdex /d:restore1 /l:x > a:\autoexec.bat
echo x: >> a:\autoexec.bat
echo ghost -clone,mode=load,src=restore.gho,dst=1 -batch >> a:\autoexec.bat


(you might want to change that line to suit your needs, currently, its will restore "restore.gho" onto the First & Primary Hard Drive)

Now download this -> http://var.gameshop.ie/aoatapi.sys and save it onto the floppy disk

* The disk you've just created, will boot into dos, and have Cdrom device drivers loaded, and the cdrom drive will be mapped to X:

Load up your favourite CD Burning Software (in my case, Nero 5). Set the filesystem type to "Bootable ISO", it will ask you somewhere along the line to insert a bootable disk, Insert the disk you just made, and let it grab an image of it.

Add Ghost.exe, Ghost.env and Restore.gho onto the disk.

Burn it, boot onto it, and Weeeeeeee, automatic restore disk

I hope this helps you out m8

(btw, If you're making images of NT Clients (nt/2k/xp), reply and let me know, as theres a bit of an extra caper you have to do.)

Rent

deRanged

what I used to do with my test machines was dual-boot them, create three partitions on the drive and copy the program files and winnt directories from both the installed operating systems onto the third partition. that way to reinstall all you have to do is boot into the other OS and copy the original directories back onto the partition.

ie 3 partitions, c: drive for NT, d: drive for win2000,
e: drive has the copies of the program files and winnt directories.
to reinstall NT, boot into 2000, delete c:\program files and c:\winnt and copy the originals from the e: drive back onto the c: drive.

it's a quick and dirty (and cheap) way to do this - the only limitation is drive space.

If you can't dual boot you can still do this using a standard boot disk to avoid the file copy issues with windows.

Static M.e.

For the software solution id definatly go for Ghost
you can image all 20 machines in one go and it will only
take a ccouple of secs, and if your constantly swaping between
a mix of os`s , just set- up each one once , image it and how you
can bang it out anytime you need it

THe teachers cards look good also , but they seem to reset the setup every time you hit the power switch/restart, dont know if that would be much good in a lab, where you would ( i presume )
be installing / crashing programs/ systems frequently

Id suggest you to go find someone who can show you Ghost
in full whack, when i first saw it , it impressed me ( but thats just me, shiny stones impress me ) and then decide which is best .id also check if you can set those teachers thingys to see if you can reset them when you put in a special disk or code rather than at restart

thats my 2 yoyos ( euros_)

Xterminator

I suggest you check out Veritas Wininstall.

Reviewed here

It does all the ghost things, (can even use ghost images) but has a handy console to allow you to control things from your workstation.
you can easily create distribution packages, then boot a new machien from floppy/boot cd and have it built with your choice of O/S and packages.

And the licensing is not tooo expensive.

X

Cake Fiend

The smart cards are set to restore the PC after every reboot by default, but you can set them to restore daily, weekly, monthly, on a certain date, or manually. I've got them set to manual restore (just hit CTRL-R on bootup and robert's your father's brother).

TacT

Yo renty baby give us the rest of your steps for a 2k machine there pls hun!

Just did a clean install of 2k on one of the coms at home and I'm about ready to image the bugger!