[ghost] Image Netbook without doing it over network?

[Little-Miss]

Is there a way of doing this? Never had to think about it before. Through an external HDD or something?

 

I have 20 Netbooks at Hogwarts but i cant Ghost them over our VLAN as Link2ICT have got Spanning Trees disabled on our switches. I can get it temporarily sorted but it means getting forms signed from our head and the head of the neighbouring school who's switch we are attached too. Basically a load of faffing.

 

I was going to attempt to image them with an image ive already got for a slightly older model and sort the drivers out or i can create one from scratch, but basically i need a way of putting that image on the other 19 without having to cart them to our school site, image them and take them back again.

 

Any ideas?

[Michael]

Yes you can and typically it's how I image (a lot of the time) as USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 file transfer speeds from an external hard drive will always be quicker than doing it through a network.

 

The images I create are typically anywhere between 15GB to 25GB. This can take a long time over a network, especially when you try imaging multiple machines.

 

Personally I don't use Ghost, but I suspect there probably is an option to Ghost from an external hard drive (I would of thought).

 

Also, on a separate note, if you're imaging XP this doesn't always work imaging over different types of hardware. If you're imaging Windows 7, the 'generalize' option allows you to image on completely different hardware out the box. Windows 7 does an excellent job installing most if not all hardware devices. This is where XP shows its age, as you end up spending more time finding and installing drivers it doesn't have.

[Singist]

I've used Clonezilla on a USB stick, booted from it and used an External HDD (local dev, created a folder called images). That's just one at a time though. not sure how else you could do it any faster without a network of sorts. How long have you got? Depends how fast your ex HDD is and how big the image is. Usually takes about mins per image.

[plexer]

Can you not acquire a switch and setup you own local network just to do this?

 

Ben

[MYK-IT]

As mentioned you could create an image on 1 laptop and ghost to an external UDB HDD (or even multiple DVDs)

 

Then you could either:

 

1) connect external USB HDD to each and every laptop and Ghost accordingly, or

2) with a pc/laptop with Ghost Server installed, connected to the same local switch/lan as the other 18 laptops use Ghost Boot wizard (to create a bootable Ghost USB Pen Drive) to boot up each and every other laptop onto the network, then initiate a ghost multicast session accordingly.

Edited December 5, 2011 by MYK-IT

[Little-Miss]

I havent bitten the windows 7 bullet yet! Too many other things to worry about at the moment!

 

They're gonna have XP on them (which will probably cause more issues i know).

 

Right, this is going to be interesting...

[Little-Miss]

Ooooh! I never thought of that....will have a dig around in my cupboards!!!

[irsprint84]

get PING (Partition isnt Ghost) takes me 5 mins to image locally via USB HDD with that

[Duke5A]

We use a lot of netbooks in our district, and many are in carts of 30. Every year we image them with a fresh load. The process goes like this:

 

1. Pull out netbooks and hook up all thirty to a switch
   
2. hook up the switch with a single uplink to the building LAN
   
3. PXE boot netbooks with WinPE from WDS
   
4. setup up another laptop or desktop on the switch that has a local copy of the image and start a ghost cast server
   
5. Run Ghost32 on the netbooks and join the session
   
6. unplug the uplink to the building LAN so we don't flood the network with broadcast traffic
   
7. start the image process
   
8. once the image process finishes the uplink to the LAN is plugged back in so the machines will join the domain
   
9. install software using scripts
   
10. Rinse, lather, repeat for other carts
    

 

You can even modify WinPE to auto start Ghost to join the session once it comes up if you want.

 

Our XP base image is only 5GB with Office installed so the entire process only takes 40 minutes with a gig switch. As a bonus, this can all be done off of battery power, so no need to break the cart down.

[Duke5A]

Another thought, if PXE booting across VLANs is an issue too, you can this...

 

I've had to image machines that were offsite before, so I would export my WinPE wim image off of our WDS server and use these instructions to dump it to a USB drive. Create bootable Windows PE 3.0 USB drive - 4sysops If you've got a big enough stick, you can copy the entire image onto it too and use Ghost32. Makes for a nice compact on-the-go solution. 32GB sticks are coming down in price now too (or however big you need).

[Little-Miss]

Ok, im being a retard...i'll happily admit that. I dont seem to be able to focus on anything...

 

Got a desktop switch cus i cant find anything else. Ghost is installed on my machine and plugged into the switch. If i boot from LAN its obviously trying to connect to DHCP which obviously isnt going to respond as my XP Machine obviously isnt a DHCP server.

 

This is when i need the USB stick isnt it? So this is where i use the Ghost Boot Wizard and this is where i get stuck! lol

[Little-Miss]

lol ok, booted ghost32 from usb...doesnt see ghost session though.....

[Little-Miss]

I can do it from local USB drive but dont really wanna do 20 like that....

 

EDIT: Didnt work!

Edited December 6, 2011 by Little-Miss

[Bezwick]

You could always try using this on you xp client?

 

Dual DHCP DNS Server | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

Got a desktop switch cus i cant find anything else. Ghost is installed on my machine and plugged into the switch. If i boot from LAN its obviously trying to connect to DHCP which obviously isnt going to respond as my XP Machine obviously isnt a DHCP server.

[Jamo]

Clonezilla - About

 

Clonezilla is so much easier btw, you can create a recovery DVD which you can use on multiple stations etc.

 

Alternatively why not set up a WDS or MDT server? Bit confused about why you cant ghost over a vlan because of spanning tree? PXE boot to a remote vlan won't work without IP helpers, if you have symantec ghost just pxe boot to your domain and use the menu to chose the local hard drive or USB to take the image from?

[Little-Miss]

When ive tried pulling it from USB it crashed at 32%...

[Guest TheLibrarian]

IIRC whenever I've used Ghost over a switch that is detached from the main network I required DHCP, DNS / WINS.

 

For this I used TFTPD32 TFTPD32 : an opensource IPv6 ready TFTP server/service for windows : TFTP server on the temporary Ghostcast 'server'.

 

It probably goes without saying you'll need a copy of ghostsrv.exe on the temporary Ghostcast 'server'.

If the image coming from a USB drive is a problem then copy the image to a local drive.

 

DO NOT CONNECT THIS PC WITH A DHCP ETC. SERVICE RUNNING TO YOUR MAIN NETWORK.

 

 

The other way would be to get something like this: Dual bay USB3.0 docking station - Storage Depot

 

This way does require taking the drive out of the netbook, but it does work very nicely and if you have USB 3 very quick.

[Duke5A]

I can do it from local USB drive but dont really wanna do 20 like that....

 

EDIT: Didnt work!

 

Can you PXE boot from this location? The idea is to have your switch setup, all your netbooks plugged into it, with a single desktop/laptop also plugged into it that has a local copy of the image and the Ghostcast Server executable. The switch will have a link plugged into your building network so you can PXE boot all of the netbooks. Once they're booted, you can use Ghost32 and join them to the Ghostcast session that is being hosted off of the desktop that you have plugged into the switch with the rest of the netbooks. Before you start the imaging process, unplug the link to the building network and let it go. Once the Ghostcast session finishes, plug your switch back into the building network so your freshly imaged netbooks can pull DHCP address and join the domain.

 

You're still booting off of the school network and relying on it for addresses, but the Ghostcast session is being hosted off of the network. This will get around any issues you may have with not being able to multicast across VLANs.

 

Hope this helps...

[smudge1977]

Hi

 

If you dont mind purchasing software try acronsis. it is what i use and works great i did a batch of 30 machines that were to bee off network and using one to install all software. just need usb drive and boot cd which comes with it.

 

Its in usual places to evaluate :->

 

rgds

James

[techie211]

You could always try using this on you xp client?

 

Dual DHCP DNS Server | Free software downloads at SourceForge.net

 

this is what I use. Makes my laptop a DHCP server. and with a switch I can image 15 at a time. depending on image size. I use Hiren's BootCD v9.9. comes with TCP/IP with Ghost.