Best software for Win7 drive imaging?

A

awdark

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 22, 2003
Messages
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I want to stick to the old style of creating images and the whole Windows AIK is appealing but too much work to learn.

At work we used Ghost to create images of drives we have connected over USB. We don't bother with PXE boot and our standardized hardware helps me stay sane and not install a new OS and driver set I encounter on every new order of hardware.

Ghost 8 seems to dislike Win7

Ghost 15 seems catered to the end user who wants to create ghost images of their drive. It's a tedious process which has a slow interface and I have found it to be incredibly unreliable. More often than not images will give BOOTMGR not found. Why? I'm not sure but I do not like it. It doesn't allow me to image entire drives and instead creates a file for each partition which can't be recovered if I use a different sized drive.

I currently want to suggest the purchase of Acronis which allows me to backup an entire drive and restore the drive onto any sized drive and it will properly expand the partitions to fit the new drive the way Ghost did before.
 
I've used Acronis quite often for that same process -- Works beautifully. Just remember to get the correct version of Acronis to match your Windows OS being imaged: home or server.
 
I've noticed the older versions of Ghost do not properly copy the system partition (hidden 100MB partition), it will copy it without the hidden flag.

I've found a couple programs allow you to create a bootable media that allows direct disk-to-disk cloning, that works well with Windows 7. The programs are Active@ Disk Image and EASEUS Todo Backup. You have to install the application to a workstation (not one being imaged) and create the boot disc first, then boot to disc and either copy the disk to an image on another disk, optical, or disk-to-disk.
 
CloneZilla SysResCD

Great for work for standardized hardware, and at home I just use other software to expand or shrink my partition.
 
I use Ghost 11 for windows cloning and it works well with Windows 7.
 
I've been pushing FOG a lot lately. I used to do a lot with WDS, but FOG will deploy printers and snapins which is very nice. If you are not doing mass deployment, i like activedisk as it's simple and works very well.
 
Wow thanks for all the replies so far. Going to have to start generating images with them to try it out.

Just a bit fustrating when file formats can't be standardized. I just looked at FOG and it sounds.. better than I thought. We never bothered with PXE mostly due to the complexity of trying to deal with figuring it out and for the same reason didn't try clonezilla which I may have been using incorrectly (or used the wrong version).
 
whitek said:
^ ignore all above - bloat bloat bloat bloat

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm
Click to expand...


PTNL said:
LOL -- You're confusing "bloat" with "features".
Click to expand...

This is actually some impressive software, don't let the shitty website fool you.

1 - It doesn't require any installation. You can run the thing from a USB stick. That alone freaked me out. I always lock my PC now when AFK... :eek:
2 - It creates a true raw sector image. One of the few you can use with Forensic software, like Encase, if I recall correctly
3 - You can browse images or restore them to VM's. Impressive given it's size and non invasive nature.

Seems pretty feature rich to me. Just without the bloat.
 
Chrisroman said:
This is actually some impressive software, don't let the shitty website fool you.
Click to expand...
At no point was I questioning the software's quality. The response was made against the blanket statement of "bloat".
 
awdark said:
Wow thanks for all the replies so far. Going to have to start generating images with them to try it out.

Just a bit fustrating when file formats can't be standardized. I just looked at FOG and it sounds.. better than I thought. We never bothered with PXE mostly due to the complexity of trying to deal with figuring it out and for the same reason didn't try clonezilla which I may have been using incorrectly (or used the wrong version).
Click to expand...

PXE is very nice if you do more then a few computers a month. At all of my clients sites I have fog set up on a desktop and i use that to image. If you only plan on doing a few images here and there, take a loot at activedisk. It's like 50 bucks OTF and works very well and it's very simple to use.
 
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