Windows system imaging?


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Currently we are using Ghost 11.5 to clone machines and keep images of them updated to quickly deploy computers. I thought there was an official microsoft sanctioned method of doing this with a microsoft product. We have noticed that several of our laptop models (Dell Latitude E5510 and 5530) do not handle Ghost Imaging well and have a high failure rate and need to be imaged more than once.

 

Could anyone tell me the Microsoft preferred method of this or some other options that might make deployment easier?

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MDT can't do cloning as is, you still have to install each OS and software set manually. Your best bet is to use WinPE and Imagex to capture a generic image that you can deploy across multiple systems (you'll need a pretty large USB drive, probably NTFS formatted). You should be able to dig up some tutorials

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Imagex is vastly superior to Ghost.  File based imaging is infinitely better than Ghost's sector based imaging.

 

Precisely, if you move a system image from a 512b disk to a 4K disk. You'd end up with misaligned partitions

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If your running Windows Server 2008 r2, use WDS (Windows Deployment Services) works like a dream. You can prepare your images with all drivers/software/updates that you need, sysprep it, capture it via PXE + WDS then deploy it using your network. I use it very often and just finished imaging around 500 devices with it.

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