August 12, 200422 yr Does anyone know which method is best overallObviously Imaged PCs are faster at rebuilding than Unattended onesAre imaged systems more reliable?, anyone else have any points on this as i'm really finding it hard to justify using Unattended disks over Imaged ones on our small network.please anyone have any info or links to where i can read up, cheers
August 12, 200422 yr HD Image Pros :===========1) Fast Extraction that help you save many time in comparison to Unattended Installation.HD Image Cons :===========1) You always have to format your HD.2) Difficulties in making updates.Unattended Installation Pros :===================1) You don't have to format your HD2) Easy to update your Unattended CDUnattended Installation Cons :===================1) Normally takes much time than extracting an HD Image; However, today exists fast computers that take only 15-20Mins to install windows
August 12, 200422 yr Yes, imaging-wise, going with norton ghost images is not always the best:1. Your ghost images can't be restored on dis-similar hardware.
August 12, 200422 yr I think they kind of go hand in hand myself. The initial install using unattended so you can customize the OS however you like. When you are satisified with it make an image so you can get it back up as quickly as possible.
August 12, 200422 yr yeah being able to use an unattended install on many different machines is a huge, huge advantage I think.
August 12, 200422 yr Author THIS IS GREAT STUFF KEEP IT COMINGi'm not sure about formatting the pc before the image goes on, in the past i haven't done this.Unattended on the otherhand i do format, albeit only a quick format.With ghost for example you use a boot disk(ghost.exe) and then copy the image over, i don't think it formats but i could be wrong on this.
August 12, 200422 yr ghost makes a sector-by-sector image, thus automaticly formatting (while copying) your partition (or harddrive if you made a hd backup instead of partition). this means that you don't have to format the drive before setting a ghost-image back
August 12, 200422 yr I'd do an unattended CD over an HD image... However, I haven't made one since I just don't have the time...
August 13, 200422 yr Well, there's more to it than just speed. To be able to clone with ghost+sysprep, you have to have the same HLA, and not use diff mass storage drivers (scsi, raid or such).At work, I usually make the basic install with a unattended setup, then install most software, then sysprep/ghost and deploy. We do this for each major type of PC we have, as the hardware (and bundled software) changes and it's less hassle that way.Also, some software doesn't seem to like the way sysprep plays with the SIDs... Sometimes cloning like that causes issues.If you only cloned, you'd end up deinstalling and reinstalling software a lot, then running sysprep for the ?th time... and it's a pain, and it seems that PCs aren't so reliable anymore after playing that game for too long.You can easily update the software on your unattended setup, and all your basic images build from this will be up to date...There's many ways to deploy, many tools, and we all have preferences, there's not just one good answer when it comes to deploying.I guess it's a bit like patch deployment. Many ways to do it too.
August 13, 200422 yr Considering tools such as CaptiveNTFS allowing Linux to access NTFS, and BartPE allowing a mini NT boot, simply boot one of these and InfoZip zip the entire partition, minus the swap file. To restore use your boot environment to format the partition and unzip.It has been gossiped that M$ uses XCOPY to "install" 64-bit OS's booted of of their OPK / WinPE CD.Just files guys, not brain surgery! Customize your CD, install, then zip and reuse over and over!PianoMan
August 13, 200422 yr Author bump can anyone post any links to pros and cons of this type of installseems unattended is leading at the moment overall.
August 13, 200422 yr piano man we are saying that if you have more than one machine and they don't have exactly the same hardware then you can't use that zip file for both machines. Also if you want to change any programs or settings its pretty easy to extract your unattended cd make the neccessary changes quick and then reburn and wolla you now have a cd that will work on any number of machines. If you go the zip file route then you have to install onto each machine type you have make the changes to each machine type and then make a new zip file for each machine.I think the zip file idea would only be good for a single machine type environment and even then I would still just go with an unattended cd because of the uid and other issues and ease of updating.
August 13, 200422 yr No links needed, it's pretty much settled for this site. You will notice that all the top experts here devote their time and talent to unattended. Long and painful experience has been their teacher. Only the others occasionally re-hash the case for imaging.
August 13, 200422 yr Author I actually believe in unattended, but i'm in a position where i have to convince others to convert over.I just need more ammunition...unattended is better because.....But thanks everyone for your input
August 13, 200422 yr I actually believe in unattended, but i'm in a position where i have to convince others to convert over.I just need more ammunition...unattended is better because.....But thanks everyone for your inputImaging is better because you can handle different hardware just as with unattended (just replace the hal.dll with DOS or Linux and you're done). Then again there ist the speed advantage of imaging.Still there are issues that make both unattended and imaging a PITA .M$ should FINALLY update their setupapi.dll such as it scans subdirectories. Integrating a large number of drivers has been a terrible mess since first version of Windows 2000. For 5 years now M$ was unable to add this feature...oempnpdriverspath=<dir1>;<dir2>;<dir3>...... ---> oempnpdriverspath=<dir1>
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