Ok, heres the situation:
Say I have two computers, and want to be able to "reset" them to a certain state, i.e. clean install with only the needed apps without actually doing the manual labour involved(Quite a lot of apps)? The research I've done says I could use a third storage computer and Ghosting utilities and the question(s) for you is: How would one best go about setting up this kind of stuff, any good tutorials/howtos? Are there any free ghosting utilities except g4u & partimage(*nix-only? I could use them in a pinch but that'd be harder..)?
Thanks in advance!
There is a whole new world beyond these walls. Break them down.
I have a couple of computers I take care of at work that I installed a piece of software, called "Returnil Virtual System" that when activated, makes a record of everything on the computer (and makes it an ISO available to you for a backup if you want), and then all changes on the C drive are "virtual", meaning if you reboot the computer, the drive goes back to the way it was when it was locked. Then if you need to make changes (updated virus definitions, new windows updates, etc), you can just reboot the computer and unlock the drive, make your changes, and relock it again.
Interesting, but not quite what I need. I'd like for the computers to function normally, retaining data between power-ons and such but with basically a one(or slightly more)-click reinstall option.
There is a whole new world beyond these walls. Break them down.
if you're comfortable using a linux live-CD, it's quite trivial to do, you can just create a raw copy of the whole hard drive with basic tools and you're set.
The drawback is that a raw dump will also save the contents of unused parts of the hard drive, resulting in a bigger image than needed. I could tell you how to do better when saving/restoring a linux system, but found windows to be too touchy for such things. Windows really likes to have a fit when things changed during a reboot. If you really need small images, you might want to use a solution that's specialized for windows and cares to deal with it's quirks.
anyway, here's how I'd do it.
a) install the system as you'd like it, defrag the hard drive.
b) boot from a linux cd
c) optional, for better compression: mount the hard drive, create a file and fill with zeros until the drive is full. (cat /dev/zero > /mnt/hd/zero.tmp ; rm /mnt/hd/zero.tmp). Unmount again.
c) plug in external USB hard drive and mount it. Alternately, mount a network share of the second computer and burn the image later, (although I doubt it'll fit on a DVD)
d) dd if=/dev/sda bs=4096 | gzip > /media/usb-drive/hd_image.gz
done. replace blue stuff with whatever's appropriate for your computer.
Repeat for the second computer, unless they're completely identical (but again, windows can be touchy when it notices it's been booted from a different drive than it's been installed on.)
to restore a computer:
a) boot from a linux cd
b) plug in external USB hard drive (or insert dvd, if you burned it), mount it.
c) zcat /media/usb-drive/hd_image.gz >/dev/sda
reboot, done.
keep in mind that doing it this way will save and restore the whole drive, not just the system partition, thus you'll lose ALL data kept on this drive. Also keep in mind, that you'll be restoring outdated software and need to update drivers and other apps anyway.
I'm not sure which OS you are talking about, and this might not be what you are looking for, but...
I once bought a larger HD to replace my older one, which besides being rather small was not very reliable (surface scans were starting to find bad sectors). I wanted to move my entire linux system from the old HD to the new one, without having to go through installation procedures or anything: Just a pure copy of the entire system from one HD to another, so that when I replace the HD, the entire system will look exactly identical to the old one (except that now there's more disk space, naturally).
In linux this happens to be laughably easy: a simple "cp -ax . directory_where_the_new_hd_is_mounted" in the root directory of the old HD did the trick.
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjavík, Ísland
I haven't used it myself, but my friend uses something called "clonezilla" and it's supposed to be really useful. It's also free.
This seems to be it:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/
I have a couple of computers I take care of at work that I installed a piece of software, called "Returnil Virtual System" that when activated, makes a record of everything on the computer (and makes it an ISO available to you for a backup if you want), and then all changes on the C drive are "virtual", meaning if you reboot the computer, the drive goes back to the way it was when it was locked. Then if you need to make changes (updated virus definitions, new windows updates, etc), you can just reboot the computer and unlock the drive, make your changes, and relock it again.
Well, the program only locks the C drive, so if you have multiple hard drives (or partitions, I believe), those are free to be used however. Also, you do have the ISO that's created for a quick reinstall if necessary.
But it's your computer. Use it how you want to use it.
