Ok, so I love hate love hate use Symantec Ghost 8. It’s been very good to me over the years. The past two days I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to capture an Image for a SATA II laptop drive. Yesterday, it was my main focus. After throwing my hands in the air I got in touch with my wife who went to training for Ghost here. She went over everything I did and tossed her hands into the air too. So I called Symantec only to find that our maintenance has lapsed and I need to purchase an upgrade to “maybe” fix this issue This took me more than two hours on the phone to find out; 98% of which was on Hold.
So now for lots of reason’s I want to look for another Imaging solution…. So I thought I’d get some input…
So what are you using?
How well do you like it?
Is it expensive?
Is it Open Source?
Are there limits on the amount of machines you can deploy images to?
Does it run on Windows?
Help me… I’m about to give up the Ghost!
You may want to check out the upcoming release of Windows Deployment Services (WDS) which will be released with Longhorn Server and Server 2003 SP2. Server 2003 SP2 is currrently in Release Candidate stage so we should see a Release To Web (RTW) pretty soon. WDS is the Microsoft replacement for RIS. I haven't dug into it much but is defintely worth looking at.
Posted by: Dustin | January 11, 2007 at 09:00 AM
For image deployment, we've been using RIS for the past 2.5 years. Once we figured out the "network driver isn't included in the Volume License Media issue" and a couple of "upgrade the BIOS to fix some PXE issues" we've had great success deploying with RIS -- and as Dustin pointed out, we'll be looking at the next incarnation -- WDS.
For archival images where data retention is the goal, unfortunatley we, too, have the love/hate relationship with Ghost.
Posted by: Bryan Johnson | January 11, 2007 at 10:02 AM
I've been using SystemRescueCD (www.sysresccd.org) to image PCs at NewPointe, and I must say that I'm quite pleased with it. It's basically a Linux LiveCD that includes utilities for moving partitions, MBRs, and partition tables anywhere you want, including Samba shares. With a little scripting, I've been able to almost completely automate the process. In addition, the CD includes a tool that allows you to resize partitions...extremely useful if you have to pull an image back onto a smaller HD.
The RescueCD is open source and does not limit you to the amount of systems that you can image. It is Linux, but once you go through the process a couple of times, it's really quite easy. If you'd like to try it, let me know and I can take you through the whole process.
Posted by: Dave Mast | January 11, 2007 at 10:05 AM
With Ghost you may need to set your SATA settings to legacy in the bios for Ghost to be able to read it. I think that is what I have done in the past to make it work.
dj
Posted by: Darrell Jordan | January 11, 2007 at 10:24 AM
I've used G4L and G4U with varied success. I've had to switch which one I use depending on the hardware.
It has worked very well for me. You have the technology in place to use Microsoft's tools. I had to opt for an open source solution. I have been able to make it work for our environment very well. From box to user takes about 30 minutes. That is good enough for us.
Posted by: Shellie | January 11, 2007 at 11:30 AM
We've also used G4U with a lot of success, only thing is that it doesn't do multicasting.
Posted by: Andrew Mitry | January 11, 2007 at 12:07 PM
You can boot from Windows PE (BartPE is better and ubcd4win is one step above barts) and have the SATA drivers. Put Ghost on the PE disk and then you should be good. Ghost32 runs so much faster. Also, if you use PE to boot, you can have XP drivers for the NIC as well. (again, making it faster). There are plugins made for ghost 8 on the barts site.
Posted by: Danny Ybarra | January 11, 2007 at 08:16 PM