• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Disk Image Question

6

6string

n00b
Joined
Mar 4, 2012
Messages
12
I'm new to this forum so nice to meet everyone.

I have a question. I'm going to start using Clonezilla at work, however I support different types of PC's. Example: Dell Latitude Laptops, Dell Optiplex 745's, Dell Optiplex 320's, HP laptops.

I'm going to need an image for each type of machine, right? I can't use a Dell Optiplex 745 image on an Optiplex 320. Am I correct in my thinking?

Thanks!
 
Yes, the hardware is different. Therefore different hardware drivers are needed.

But I would suggest you backtrack a bit and explain what you are trying to achieve.
 
There are times when a PC needs to be formatted and a fresh OS install is in order. Then drivers, software installed, RAM upgrade, and then re-deploy to the user. This could be because of a virus or the user simply needs a memory or hard drive upgrade. I like to always keep a PC on deck for these types of reasons. It keep the down time to a minimal and the user can keep on trucking along. In my opinion if a user gets a nasty virus it's not worth my time or the users time to clean it. 75% of our users, use the same programs day in and day out. I'm thinking I will use Clonezilla to at least have an OS and driver image for each type of PC cutting my re-load time in half. Any suggestions?
 
How many PCs in total are we talking about? And how many varieties? If the latter is large, you may find that a scripted over-the-network install is more manageable than an ever-increasing number of images.
 
What OS are you imaging? Vista and newer versions of Windows are pretty lax about hardware changes. Just install all the necessary drivers for each system and you'll be pretty much set from my experience. Having a ton of images could quickly become a nightmare at which time Quartz' suggestion is probably more practical.
 
When I used to have to do a lot of imaging (supporting hundreds of machines for trade shows, etc), we had an image per motherboard. Mostly, this was because every board change we had included a different chipset.

If some of your machines included the same chipset, it's probably less critical.

I would agree that newer operating systems are a little more tolerant of changes than XP was. Same with Linux; I went through several hardware changes (including whole system) with my Untangle box and never had to reinstall.

However, it never really took me very long to create an image, so it wouldn't be a whole lot of extra work to just create images for each machine type. Maybe what I'd consider if you have a lot of machines is to do "opportunity imaging": create an image when you have to rebuild a specific machine type the first time, and then you just have it.
 
iroc409 said:
Maybe what I'd consider if you have a lot of machines is to do "opportunity imaging": create an image when you have to rebuild a specific machine type the first time, and then you just have it.
Click to expand...

This is a good idea, but it leaves the issue of keeping your images up to date. All those Windows Updates. All those Java, Acrobat Reader, Flash, etc updates too. (For the latter, I recommend a subscription to Ninite.)

Let me be clear: the OP is thinking along the right lines. An image library will help him immensely. It just may not be the best solution.
 
Quartz-1 said:
This is a good idea, but it leaves the issue of keeping your images up to date. All those Windows Updates. All those Java, Acrobat Reader, Flash, etc updates too. (For the latter, I recommend a subscription to Ninite.)

Let me be clear: the OP is thinking along the right lines. An image library will help him immensely. It just may not be the best solution.
Click to expand...

We ran into this issue of course. What I generally did is what you state. Every so often, I would do an updated version. Honestly, it only took a few minutes to create the image when you do it inline as opportunity arose. We had a huge image library for specific tasks.

We generally had a baseline image that we would start from. Then for events, we would use the base image to install a machine and then configure it for the event (event-specific software, etc). Then we would create another image from that master machine, and then go on to image the other 150 (or however many they needed).

After imaging, we'd always run Windows Update, AV updates, etc. Usually I'd just monitor it, and when updating took too long, that's when I'd create a new image.
 
If you are planning to image machines with Win7 (seems to work for Pro and Enterprise), you can use the built-in 'sysprep' to prepare a generic image that can be applied to most of those systems. you can also use gimagex to capture and deploy the actual image. The scripts for sysprep can be a pain to configure, but once they are done you are good to go. let me see if i can find the tutorial we used... only a few models (mostly the opti760) have given us trouble

http://blog.brianleejackson.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-–-start-to-finish-v2
 
Last edited:
Wow, thanks for the suggestions. I'm supporting 250 users and I'm trying to replace a lot of legacy equipment (windows 2000, office 2000) yes you heard me correctly. However I would say 85% of our machines are the types that I posted and are using XP. The HP machines are Windows 7 (5%). It shouldn't be that hard to image four or five different machine types. I realize I'll have to do the updates and such, but good grief it beats starting from XP SP1 and updating to SP3. Anything to save me some time will help. Thanks for your suggestions.
 
6string said:
Wow, thanks for the suggestions. I'm supporting 250 users and I'm trying to replace a lot of legacy equipment (windows 2000, office 2000) yes you heard me correctly. However I would say 85% of our machines are the types that I posted and are using XP. The HP machines are Windows 7 (5%). It shouldn't be that hard to image four or five different machine types. I realize I'll have to do the updates and such, but good grief it beats starting from XP SP1 and updating to SP3. Anything to save me some time will help. Thanks for your suggestions.
Click to expand...

Ah, 4-5 machine types should be gravy, especially if you have a fairly static software load (general office software, company software, etc).
 
Agreed. This does, though, sound like the perfect excuse to rationalise your client base and do a thorough refresh.
 
I've the same problem. I work in a school district, and support close to 2000 pc's. In addition to re-imaging computers for virues we re-image every machine during the summer.

The solution I use is the Microsoft Deployment toolkit, along with Windows Deployment Services (boots computer across the network and connects to imaging process).

The benefit of this solution is that drivers are abstracted from the image. The deployment process examines the machine and combines the windows installation with the appropriate driver library for the specific make and model.

This is a very powerful solution. Give it a look, hope this helps. :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top