Ghost Solution Suite

Hello everyone,

We have a number of standalone computers that run critical applications. We have created backup images using various products. But I would like to standardise this, meaning to just have one solution that we can use to create a backup image of all our standalone computers. I am also looking for a solution that is hardware independant.

I am investigating the Ghost Solution Suite and would like to propose this solution to my manager.

Can you share your experiences with me if you have used this solution for your standalone computers? if not Ghost Solution Suite, then what solution do you use and can you share with me your experiences?

NB. We have ITMS Suite 7.1 but the standalone computers that I am refering to are not configured to the "standard" of our organisation and thus not connected to our network.

Thank you in advance

If you need to create images of standalone computers, then you will need a portable USB hard disk that boots to WinPE and runs an imaging tool.

The Ghost product has the Ghost Boot Wizard tool which can be populated with the necessary device drivers to support your hard disk chipsets, and you will need to provide the necessary Vista 32 bit device drivers (as WinPE V2 uses the Vista kernel).

Here are a couple of links that may help you with this:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH110134

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/do-i-have-correct-driver-winpe

The following article describes how to build your own WinPE V2 solution:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/readyadventures-winpe

-and it also has a link to a similar solution based on WinPE V3 which uses Win 7 drivers.

As WinPE can be equipped with a GUI using an HTA file, and also can run WMI queries, you can build an automatic solution that can detect the target machine and perform the necessary imaging operations, either backup or restore.

Hi EdT,

Thank you very much for your reply , I will check out the links that you gave

Regards

And...more easily, I use Ghost along with bootable CDs (DOS networking).

No BartPE, just a simple 2.88" virtual floppy containing a packed ghost and NDIS2 DOS drivers.

If you're looking for an easy solution, there's always http://www.netbootdisk.com/ - the only downside to that solution is that some newer Realtek and Intel network cards aren't included. First, create the floppy, then read it to a .IMA file which can then be used in Nero over and over again.

PS - you did say "stand-alone" - if you use the flag -fdsp when cloning, no reactivation of Windows etc. is needed if you create unique backups of each and every PC. On newer computers, you might also wanna defrag the computers and then use the flag -ntexact (which will make the images work on a lot of newer controllers with UEFI disabled).

That's my $0.02...