If you're using Windows XP (don't know about Vista, haven't had to try) you can use the ext2fsd Ext2 filesystem driver to make it possible to re-write the ext2 partition, and therefore the GRUB conf file, from a Windows script, therefore making it possible to have Windows automatically reboot and re-image itself. For the actual imaging you can use dd, as already pointed out, or PartImage, both of which will handle NTFS partitions. Booting SystemRescueCD runs an autorun script that checks a network drive for a disk image of that machine (use the network card's MAC address to identify machines) and reimages the machine if it finds one. I partition the drive to create a small ext2 partition, then install the GRUB boot loader set up to allow booting to either Windows on the first partition or SystemRescueCD on the second partition. In fact, several backup programs, including my current favorite for imaging and cloning, EaseUS ToDo Backup Free, allow you to make small incremental image backups, recording how the contents of the drive change day to day.For Windows client machines on my network, I use SystemRescueCD, a boot-from-a-CD Linux distribution that you can also install on a harddrive partition. Imaging makes more sense for backup, because you can put multiple image backups onto one sufficiently large external hard drive. Then you swap the old drive for the new one, and restore the image to the new drive. I suppose you might choose imaging if you don’t have either an extra bay or a USB/SATA adapter, but you do have an external drive with sufficient free space. You plug a third, spare drive into the PC and create the image file on it. Imaging, on the other hand, requires you to do all of that twice. You plug in the new drive-either in a spare bay, or through a USB/SATA adapter-launch the cloning software, and do the job.
If you’re moving to a new drive, cloning is the easier solution. If it’s the drive you boot from, only cloning or imaging can reliably make a working copy.
But you can’t just drag and drop an operating system. Why not just drag and drop? That’s fine for an unbootable drive.
0 kommentar(er)
