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USB-connected Imaging with Ghost Solution Suite 3 

Jun 29, 2015 12:58 PM

Ghost Solution Suite 3 offers an excellent toolbox to the imaging administrator. It is clearly designed to allow central management of imaging operations, but there will be times when addressing the needs of a specific department or device will necessitate using a different function of the technology, such as when the use of the network is not possible, or not desirable. Many organizations may have network usage restrictions, or may have a machine that is for some reason "air-gapped" from the network. This article will show you how to use Ghost Solution Suite 3 to handle these situations.


Prerequisites:

You will need a method to boot the client machine(s) into a Pre-OS environment. Click here for steps to create the boot media necessary for this operation. These instructions assume that you have boot media created with those instructions. This method also requires a USB-connected storage drive.

To Create an Image

1. Connect your storage device to the machine you wish to image via USB.

2. Boot the machine with a stand-alone boot disk with Ghost (see Prerequisite, above).

3. Ghost will launch. If it does not launch, at the command prompt type Ghost64.exe and press Enter (if your boot disk is 32bit, type Ghost32.exe instead). Ghost will launch.

4. In Ghost, choose Local > Disk > To Image.

Local_ToImage_0.JPG

5. It will ask for the source drive, and you will typically be choosing Drive 1. Please ignore 'Drive 80 - OS VOLUMES'. Also note that your USB drive will show up on the list. If there is any confusion, check the 'Size(MB)' column to verify it based on size.

USB_ToImage.JPG

6. Make sure you select the USB storage drive in the 'Look in:' dropdown menu at the top, then specify a filename for the image file.

USB_ImageName.JPG

7. Select the compression level. We recommend using 'Fast' compression.

USB_Fast.JPG

8. Proceed with image creation.

 

To Deploy An Image

1. Boot the machine with a stand-alone boot disk with Ghost (see Prerequisite, above).

2. If your boot disk automatically launches Ghost, close Ghost. You will have a command prompt.

3. Ghost will launch. If it does not launch, at the command prompt type Ghost32.exe or Ghost64.exe and press Enter. Ghost will launch.

4. In Ghost, choose Local > Disk > From Image.

Local_FromImage.JPG

5. It will ask for the source image. The source image will be the USB drive; WinPE will assign it a drive letter. Select the appropriate *.GHO file from that location.

USB_select.JPG

6. Select the destination drive to which you wish to deploy. Note that the drive that is the source for the image is in red text and cannot be selected.

USB_destination.JPG

7. Proceed with image restore.

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Comments

May 24, 2016 11:08 AM

Thanks, Randall.  That was the issue.  getting the dreaded "An internal inconsistency has been detected" when attaching an external USB drive to write the image to regardless of which winpe I use, but I will try and work through it.  thanks again for the help.

May 20, 2016 11:31 AM

Hi there!

Are you using the Boot Disk Creator from the Standard Tools installation, or the Ghost Solution Suite (console) installation? They each have their own Boot Disk Creator. The console BDC does not include the Ghost executables. The Standard Tools BDC will include the Ghost executables, but you must have the OEM extensions chosen in your boot configuration, as per #4 in this linked article. If your intention is to use USB-connected imaging, I would recommend making sure that you have Standard Tools installed and follow that article I linked, making sure OEM extensions are chosen in #4 and also with "Stand-alone boot" selected in #15.

Thank you,

Randall Newnham

May 19, 2016 05:50 PM

I am using a trial of 3.1.  This screen does not launch, and neither ghost32 or ghost64 are on the media.  Any ideas of what is going on?  Is this a limitation of the trial software?

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