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Experiences w/ Drive Imaging Software?
"This policy of providing no way to backup and restore a fully installed system is impossible for corporations, of course. So Microsoft technical support representatives recommend sector-by-sector disk image duplication,
even though it is against Microsoft policy. Copying each sector of a hard drive bypasses Microsoft's copy protection by which Microsoft punishes all users, even if they are honest.
Sometimes Microsoft technical support recommends using 'third-party' disk image programs. For example, sometimes support representatives
recommend using Symantec Ghost.
All of the disk image duplication programs I've used have problems, in my experience. So, here's a question: What program do you use? What has been your experience with it? Can you recommend a program, or recommend staying away
from one?
Here are my experiences:
Symantec Ghost sometimes fails with non-specific error messages. Uninstalling
Ghost does not uninstall all the Ghost software. Symantec is one of the companies using copy protection, so using Symantec products may be a case of jumping from the Microsoft frying pan to the Symantec copy protection fire; also, you have no assurance that the copy protection will not become worse in the future.
PowerQuest DriveImage and DeployCenter have an uncertain future. PowerQuest
was bought by Symantec. This was after PowerQuest released DriveImage 7 with problems. The sale cannot be a happy event for those who spent hundreds of dollars on DeployCenter.
I've tried Acronis True Image. I've had better luck with it than with Symantec or PowerQuest
products. However, like the others, it sometime gives non-specific error messages that say something like, 'I've failed, and I'm not going to tell you how to troubleshoot the problem.'
Fred Langa, publisher of LangaList, recommends BootIt. I have no experience with it.
I haven't tried g4u, free, open source software provided under the BSD license g4u has the drawback that it writes only through FTP. There is no way to write to a network drive or a CD-R.
It's disgusting; people just want to make functional backups, but to do it they are dragged over the coals."
I mean, I've probably forgotten more ways of doing disk backups on Linux than Windows has available :-)
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I used to use PowerQuest Drive Image and Partition Magic back in my Windows days, and they were good, solid products. I haven't used the latest versions since I don't use Windows anymore, but I hear that they've gone to Product Activation. If that's true, I personally wouldn't buy any more of their stuff, but that's a judgement call I guess.
I ususally make milestone ghost image. That way, uninstalling software cleaning takes 2 minutes.
Ghost has worked fine for me in the past, but I really like Novell's Zenworks server. I haven't tried Ghostcast so I'm guessing they're somewhat similar, but Zenworks uses a 3-disk Linux boot floppy system and their image program can back up and restore onto local and server-based images. With some finagling, you can just create those floppy disks and copy straight from one drive to another (and unlike dd, it's a file-by-file rather than bit-by-bit copy).
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
It is experimental, but has worked for me on several win2k NTFS machines.
Doh, Forgot to preview on parrent and noticed lots of typos......good thing didn't major in english...
I fail to see what the linked MS KB article has to do with drive imaging for backup or transferring purposes.
/. story. If you're looking to take all of the files on the HD (including those in use or flagged as being important to the OS) then you can use the native W2K/XP backup utility to back up to a file. No tapes are necessary. If you want to do a full restore to the same system, you can do so. If you want to restore to another system you can do so.
The article clearly states that MS does not support drive imaging as a *deployment* method. Nowhere does it say that disk duplication software is not allowed ever.
Back to the question hidden at the end of the
There are other misleading statements in the original poster's message. He includes a link implying that Ghost is Microsoft's recommended tool for drive imaging when the KB article says nothing of the sort.
So Microsoft has crippled file systems, their policy on imaging sounds laughable to you, none of the disk imaging software is adequate for your discriminating tastes, and HOLY CRAP you just realized that you can't XCOPY a fucking modern operating system to another computer.
Why on earth are you sticking with a platform that you obviously despise? Your best solution seems to be, move to another platform already! Listen carefully, Linux is calling to you... You sound like the type of user who would rather use a platform he hates and constantly complain about it, instead of actually solving his own problems.
Your second best solution would be, write your own damn imaging software. Seriously if Ghost is so deficient it should be pretty easy to write better software, right?
The fact that Microsoft doesn't support disk imaging doesn't mean it isn't possible. Everyone does it, and by everyone I mean like 99% of fortune 500 companies. If they can all figure out how to use Ghost perhaps maybe YOU are doing something wrong? I've never had the problem you describe with Ghost, either.
Oh and finally? You're actually completely wrong. ASR along with backup software (such as Windows Backup) can completely restore your system from media in the event of a crash.
dd to a disk works if the destination volume is equal to or greater than the source volume size. The destination disk then has a partition table that doesn't reflect the drive's true capacity. (Much like formatting a 160 GB drive for only 128 GiB.) If the resulting drive is to become your volume for regular use, you can edit the partition table to allocate the rest of the disk as an empty partition and use that space for whatever purpose you have in mind.
Of course, then your next dd will need a drive of that size or bigger.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
We had this problem also, and was able to work around it by forcing 'unicast' mode in the session. Configuring multicasting on our Extreme switches did not solve the problem..
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow "
Is that funny/witty because it should be 'To whom are you going to speak it'?
The author of the "story" is wining and bitching about how hard it is to make a functional copy of a Windows installation and how supposedly this is some kind of "license enforcement" issue when anyone with half-a-brain can read the KB article themselves that the reason it's not supported and will cause problems is that you're violating the internal security policy of your own network by having duplicate machine SID's on your network. To make it work you have to change the SID, but since MS obviously feel it's not reliable enough they're recommending it as a workaround (since, hey, if anyone could just change the SID no questions asked we'd get another Slashdot article about how Windows is fatally flawed). Had they simply put in a safety that stops the image from working completely, I'm sure the crap would have flown even further.
Not to mention that there are perfectly fine methods for doing large-scale Windows roll-outs for those who need them, which don't involve 3rd party software kluges like Ghost.
Yeah, but the notes immediately below that are more assuring. It says that if it can't handle your NTFS partition, it will tell you (with an error message) during the backup process. Thus, you shouldn't be stuck later with an image you can't restore.
Backing up linux/Unix is a matter of backing up the filesystems with tar/dump/ufsdump/whatever to tape. Restoration involves booting from CD, reparitioning the disk and restoring from tape, installing a boot block and rebooting. If you're being picky, you shut down apps first and backup from single user mode, but 99% of companies get by fine with live backups (other than Oracle and DBs etc).
As far as I'm aware, the only way you can possibly back up a live NT system fully is to run disk mirroring and break off one mirror and back up that using some drive imaging. Restoration involves a complete restore of the entire filesystem, however.
But the Windows 2000 CDs we have as part of our licensing program are different than the kind ordinary mortals obtain. They don't require product activation codes, serial numbers, etc. (or any product activation at all, actually). Windows XP is the same way, as are Office 2000 and XP.
I don't know whether that affects drive imaging software or not. I've used g4u to create and use images of Win2k and WinXP machines without problems (well, none that seemed specific to imaging), and I had never heard of "sysprep" (reading up on it now).
I would really like to have an "Ask Slashdot" where all of the people who say "You just don't know how to administer a Windows network; if you did, it would be perfect" get the chance to tell us where to go to learn this fabulous information. I'm used to working with Linux and prefer it heavily, but right now my job is to maintain/upgrade a Windows+Novell network, and I still want to do a good job. I am gradually discovering things like SMS, but in many ways still feel lost. If there really are ways to make all this crap behave, I'd sure like to know about them.
Do keep in mind that I work for a financially troubled state institution. Sitewide MS licensing is already paid for as far as Windows and Office, but suggesting $$$ on software or training is not helpful. I don't mind reading, though.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
1. UNIX ACLs anyone?
2. cscx goes overboard on original posters poor choice of words in saying that 'NTFS is fundamentally broken' when he really means that 'Windows is fundamentally broken' as the problem with live FS backups lies in MS's file locking design which ultimately comes back to their brain damaged DLL design. What do you mean I can't unload a DLL without rebooting? You put something that you might want to remove later in a HASH TABLE? Dumbasses.
3. The SID attached to the host, which cscx exhorts the virtues of, is ultimately useless and a nuisance as hosts outside a domain/AD with the correct user credentials can still use network services. So why the hell do I have to dork around with sysprep?
In answer to the initial poster's question, I use Symantec Ghost Enterprise to solve most of these problems. Yes, it has strange error messages. Try looking them up in the manual, and then posting them to the Symantec support group (although they are totally useless when it comes to using ghost to image linux, yech, it corrupts the ext3 logfile) If you read the manual, no, really read the manual the tool is amazingly powerful. If you don't read the manual you'll just give up on the install and load everything by hand because it'll be quicker.
Ssh may be a better idea than netcat.
Saving random seed...