Ghosting a non networked laptop?

[reggiep]

Hi All,

I have just been informed that we are getting a trolley of 20 laptops that will not be connected to the network.

I'm concerned about how I am going to keep the laptops up to date and was thinking of using ghost.

As we are a CC3 school I am not using ghost at the moment so I thought I would ask you chaps the following...

 

• Can I ghost a laptop from a dvd
  
• Can I ghost a laptop from an external HD
  
• Can I use an alternative to ghost
  

 

Cheers

[sparkeh]

I had to do the exact same thing. PITA

 

Now this might not be the best way but I had limited time and resources and this was the best I could kludge together

So I set one up, ghosted it onto an external HD.

Copied the image back to the original machine (changed IP address - very important)

Got hold of a cheap old switch and plugged them all in.

Ghosted them from the image on the original machine (set them off at intervals so as when they finished I had time to change the IP address before I had two machines with same IP).

Bob's your mother's brother.

 

I believe you can do it from ext HD and DVD as well.

[reggiep]

Thanks Sparkeh,

So does ghost "see" the external HD?

I have only ever used ghost on a statard workstation to another ide HD!

 

Thanks

[Sirbendy]

I tend to do it using a USB drive plugged in that has a copy of ghost itself and the image on, and boot the machine with PEBuilder..which gives you a windows-y shell and access to the drive.

 

Is a PITA though.

[LeMarchand]

I have found that an ext HDD does the job a lot faster than using DVDs or the ancient network in one of my schools (obviously on a one-machine-at-a-time basis!). Times are around 90-120 mins on the network (and it tends to slow down the whole network), 45-60 mins DVD/s, 20 mins ext HDD.

 

I use UBCD4Win with Ghost slipstreamed to boot up the machine (remember to plug in your ext HDD first!) which does add a few more minutes on to the time.

 

I've also used Drive Image XML, which isn't as fast as Ghost but is free! (It's also included as part of UBCD4W and - I think - the BART disk).

[reggiep]

I have not used UBCD4Win before but thanks for the tip. It looks like a good piece of kit to have at hand.

[reggiep]

I tend to do it using a USB drive plugged in that has a copy of ghost itself and the image on, and boot the machine with PEBuilder..which gives you a windows-y shell and access to the drive.

 

I have not used PEbuilder before. Is it pretty straightforward to use?

[sparkeh]

Thanks Sparkeh,

So does ghost "see" the external HD?

I have only ever used ghost on a statard workstation to another ide HD!

 

Thanks

 

Yep.

 

Ok let me rephrase that. It 'should do'.

 

To be honest, I am not too keen on Ghost and it would be worth looking at alternatives. I had a few issues during the process and some had to be reimaged.

[plexer]

Just because they won't be "connected" to the network in normal use does that mean you can plug them into the network to ghost and update them?

 

Seems daft to have unconnected laptops but there we go.

 

Ben

[Sirbendy]

it's what UBCD is based on.. UBCD will do the same.

[HodgeHi]

Can you not stick the image onto a network share, insert the ghost DVD and then point the disk to the image on the share to restore?

[Domino]

@hodgehi : yeah that will work too, however they aren't connected to the network

 

What we've been doing, which might also be useful, is splitting the harddrive into two partitions, and putting a second copy of the ghost image on the other partition - then if you want to restore settings to your original image you can do a ghost across the partitions. May come in useful if you get them being mucked up

[richard.thomas]

• Can I ghost a laptop from a dvd
  
• Can I ghost a laptop from an external HD
  
• Can I use an alternative to ghost
  

 

You can ghost from a DVD

You can ghost from an external HDD

You can use alternative.

 

We use ghost and FOG here (FOG is open source = free!) and is a very nice piece of kit..

 

We PXE boot our computers to image them using FOG or Ghost, this is probably the best way and allows you to multicast the machines, i.e. image 100s at a time. Our current record is 75 computers in one go. I'm hoping to beat that this summer

 

FOG is here

[Sirbendy]

looks interesting...can it read or use existing ghost images?

[superfletch]

@HodgeHi / DosBox,

 

Best bit of s/w for imaging over the LAN I've found is Acronis TruImage (v11) you load the Boot CD / DVD and can basically browse the network for wherever you've stored the image files. (There are a couple of issues like it won't put \'s in from the keyboard - you need to copy and paste them) but apart from that it is awesome and FAST!!

 

EDIT - Did a Primary school suite of 20 PC's in under 3hrs (including all the classroom/laptop traffic getting in the way) I found that fairly suite - geddit... suite!! - EDIT

 

@ LeMarchand - "an ext HDD does the job a lot faster than using DVDs or the ancient network in one of my schools"

 

Surely thats just the "ancient network" though aint it?

Cat 5 Ethernet is way faster than any external HDD isn't it?

 

I haven't had the luxury of trying an SATA Ext HDD yet but USB 2 seems a great deal slower than ethernet overall.

Edited June 19, 2008 by superfletch

[superfletch]

@ LeMarchand - Sorry didn't read your post properly...

 

still Cat 5 gotta be the quicker though if you went crossover / straight through?

[bossman]

Got to agree with you there superfletch, Acronis is just first class used it with external hardrive wd 120gb once i had built first laptop to how i wanted just imaged to external HD and did the rest by just booting from the cd and loading the image, took 5mins per laptop had to do 20 so less than 2 hours tops Brilliant!!!!

and you can upgrade the image by adding to the previous image the software just does it for you easy peasy.

[HodgeHi]

I now use net-restore coupled together with Netboot where the images and net-install set are located on a XRAID with a 4Gb fibre channel connection to the server and the server with a 1Gb connection to the network as are all the clients.

 

Takes about 15 minutes to re-image both OS X and XP partitions. All i got to do now is aggregate the link to the network on the server and it should be a little quicker.

 

I have only got around 10 machines to do like this though at the moment although i will soon be rolling it out to another 40 machines.

 

I prefer the network method over DVDs / HDDs especially if you want to have more than one going at the same time.

[sparkeh]

I prefer the network method over DVDs / HDDs especially if you want to have more than one going at the same time.

 

Of course, but the OP stated that they were not to be networked.

[HodgeHi]

But to image to a drive across a network does not mean they are part of the network as in using network-based accounts. You can image workgroup machines using ghost and restore a workgroup-based image all from a network share or am i missing something.

 

Someone mentioned a single switch a doing it that way. If you were gonna do that then you may as well just patch it back to the main switches and get the image from the server.

 

Unless they are looking at bandwidth usage, or ip address usage from the dhcp or not wanting dns records added? The way i read it was that they were not to be joined to the network for account access.

[Ayaz]

I can vouch for Acronis True Image, very good bit of sw. I wonder if anyone know the answer to this:

 

You have two identical laptops. You install XP using the serial on the sticker on one, including all drivers and sw. You make an image of that machine and deploy that image to the second laptop. Will the second one have the same XP serial number as the first? If so, after image deployment can you change the second laptop so that it uses its own XP serial number?

[SYNACK]

I can vouch for Acronis True Image, very good bit of sw. I wonder if anyone know the answer to this:

 

You have two identical laptops. You install XP using the serial on the sticker on one, including all drivers and sw. You make an image of that machine and deploy that image to the second laptop. Will the second one have the same XP serial number as the first? If so, after image deployment can you change the second laptop so that it uses its own XP serial number?

 

You may need to use sysprep on the imaged machine to make it ask for the new serial number. I think that ghost corporate has this feature built in without the need to use sysprep but I could be wrong.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577

[Ayaz]

Ive used Sysprep only once and it seemed to go through ok although it takes abit of setting up. Just wondered if Microsoft had a utlity to chnage the serial number of the laptop, make life a lot easier than using sysprep.

 

edit - thats exactly the type of tool i was looking for. Now I can just create an image of the first one, deploy it to the other, change the key with the tool, change the computer name, user account. Would I need to give the 2nd laptop a new SID as well, i.e. will it have the same SID as the first laptop?

Edited June 24, 2008 by Ayaz

[sparkeh]

Just out of interest, does it really matter if the laptops use the same serial? I mean I know really you shouldn't do this but you are clearly licensed to use the OS on all the laptops, is anyone really going to kick up a fuss if they discovered you cloned one and they share a serial?

[Ayaz]

Just out of interest, does it really matter if the laptops use the same serial? I mean I know really you shouldn't do this but you are clearly licensed to use the OS on all the laptops, is anyone really going to kick up a fuss if they discovered you cloned one and they share a serial?

 

You have a point I suppose but I just want to be extra careful. I went on a training course and the guy there was saying how there is this organisation that has similar powers to Customs and Excise. They can into any school/organisation and look at all the software you have installed and say to you, where are the licenses for these? Although we have the correct ones on the sticker of each laptop, if I use just one on all its like a volume licence key which it isnt so just to be safe.