Disk Cloning Via Drive Imaging

[NETWizz]

Hi,

I am writing this to get some opionions.

Which do you prefer Ghost 9.0 or TrueImage 8.0.

Both are fully capable of saving and restoring an image.


I have used the following software successfully:
Novell/Zenworks 4.0x Desktop Imaging
Novell/Zenworks 6.5.04 and 6.5.1.0 (currently)

Ghost 6.0, Ghost 2003, Ghost 8 (32-bit)

Acronis TrueImage 8.0
Ghost 9.0 (Actually newest version of Power Quest Drive Image, which Symantec acquired)

Partimage 0.6.4


All I can say is I have had success with all of them and to elaboarate:

Ghost 6.0 won't always work with 2000/XP

Ghost 2003/8 Work okay no guarantee they will work with large drives though. Still no DMA support in DOS.

Ghost 8.0 32-bit runs in a dos window on top of Widnows. You have to boot a live version of windows to use it successfully. If you make a live image with it, you are insane and goodluck. At least it a bit faster.

Ghost 9.0 Boots you into a minimal Widnows. Requires a system with about 256 MB ram (not a problem for me but it is a problem for a roomate). You can't make an image from a cold start. You must do Hot-imaging, which is a good feature. Still, I don't like Hot Imaging because I don't trust it. I know files are in use, and the registry changes and a lot of other thigns durring normal use. It works better than I exected though. Almost Identical to Power Quest Drive Image (Ghost 9.0 is PQDI repackaged). Fast

Acronis True Image.
You can make hot images or cold images. It is very because it always uses UDMA. Supports minimal boot cd. E.g. takes your computer from cold start to imaging in about 5 seconds. Basically it starts bare bones unix/linux (not really sure what distro) then a minimal X windows gui. Looks just like the windows version and you can even make an image!

Novell/Zenworks 4/6.5 you must have a Netware Server running Zenworks Desktop Imaging. It may be possible to install that component on some windows servers now, but you must have a server runnigng the service. It is very fast and offers great compression like many of the programs above. UDMA support and very very fast. Drivers a bit difficult to configure at first though. Way cool feature, Allows computers on the network to do a Network Boot via PXE (Pre-Boot eXecution Enviornment) or Manged Boot Agent (another name for it). With PXE, you boot to the network as follows. The BIOS starts the NIC and tries to get an IP via DHCP. Upon reciving DHCP info, the DHCP server gives it extra info including BOOTP info, and the IP of a TFTP server. Using UDP, the computer boots a tiny DOS kernel for Zenworks (I belive it is DR-DOS). Within seconds it TFTPs down to Memory a Linux kernel and then uses loadlin to boot the kernel. The kernel is decompressed and Initrd is loaded. Another file is transferred containing the / directory, which is mounted in RAM along with the entire file system. The whole transfer is less than 32 MB more than likely and takes place in moments.

Linux ofcource loads UDMA support and Network drivers. Obviously, the imaging program was transfered to the file system in memory.

Advantage #2 MultiCast. Using IGMP, a group protocol and an IP address in the Class D (multicast) range, the Imaging software assigns a secondary IP which is very strange. Each workstation is given a high number IP that is the same, and instead of the subnet mask they get some group id mask. Essentially, it is not unicast and it is not broadcast it is multicast. You setup a network session by giving the session a name, dictating clients, and finally dictating a master station. The master station multicasts to the entire group via one IP stream. The packets are delivered simotaneously by the Network Hardware (Switches) to all the Workstations in that IP group. Assuming they are on the same session, they accept the packet as part of the image. This is awsome for deployment. E.g. 60 workstations all imaged in 15 minutes kind of deployment :)


Partimage:
Free Free! Very fast uses full UDMA. Supports USB and even Firewire (maybe), SATA, SCSI, Servers, ATA, Desktops... FAT/FAT32/NTFS and filesystems I haven't heard about for unix like systems mostly! You can use NFS or even SMB (Microsoft) network support! NTFS is said to be experimental, but I have used this program to do images many times and I must say it reads and writes NTFS partitions to disk flawlessly. The only problem will be if you compress yorur drive and it can't read the NTFS partition info. Before using this, you will need to be Linux Novice.

In other words, to use a USB drive you need to know how to mount it! To use a network share, you must know how to mount it! You should know how to save and restore the partition table and the master boot record too before using it.

Overall, it is one of my favoritie programs.



Finally back to the origional question:

TrueImage 8.0 or Ghost 9.0

[Brazucs]

I have TrueImage 6.0 and it never failed me. I've really only used it once to partition my biggest hard drive, though.