trooper11
October 17th, 2007, 07:15 PM
Ive been trying alot of programs recently for an easy to maintain recovery and restore system for a number of pcs on a network.
My situation is this:
I have 10 pcs that I want kept at a baseline image (restored to that baseline whenever the computer is restarted) (Windows Vista PCs) and I have 1 pc that servers as the storage of an image created from this baseline configuration.
On the basline configuration part, Ive really liked trying out DeepFreeze. It did exactly what I wanted, keeping everything avialable for access, while at the same time all I have to do is reboot a pc and its back to the clean initial configuration. I also like that this process adds very minimal time to boot up and the app itself cant be accessed without a password. I would prefer not having to reboot the pc everytime I want to disable it to update the baseline config, but its not a deal breaker for me.
On the backup image side of things, Ive liked Acronis True Image Workstation, but it doesnt have multicast support or support for modifying SIDs (since each pc needs its own unique name and network ID to function properly on the network, I have to manually fix each pc whenver I want to load a new image). Doing this on so many pcs, I really want to be able to image all the pcs at once instead of one at a time (considering it takes TI up to 6 hours to image one pc at a time).
I would also like an option to just update each pc's image, not reimage it from scratch everytime (as it is in TI) since most of the time the new images are just from updating programs, etc.
The best situation would be if there was an app that could handle both sides of my needs, but any alternatives would be welcome. I am happy with DeepFreeze, so my main thing is finding a good alternative to TI, if it happens to take over the duties of DeepFreeze, thats good too. Thanks for any input on this.
My situation is this:
I have 10 pcs that I want kept at a baseline image (restored to that baseline whenever the computer is restarted) (Windows Vista PCs) and I have 1 pc that servers as the storage of an image created from this baseline configuration.
On the basline configuration part, Ive really liked trying out DeepFreeze. It did exactly what I wanted, keeping everything avialable for access, while at the same time all I have to do is reboot a pc and its back to the clean initial configuration. I also like that this process adds very minimal time to boot up and the app itself cant be accessed without a password. I would prefer not having to reboot the pc everytime I want to disable it to update the baseline config, but its not a deal breaker for me.
On the backup image side of things, Ive liked Acronis True Image Workstation, but it doesnt have multicast support or support for modifying SIDs (since each pc needs its own unique name and network ID to function properly on the network, I have to manually fix each pc whenver I want to load a new image). Doing this on so many pcs, I really want to be able to image all the pcs at once instead of one at a time (considering it takes TI up to 6 hours to image one pc at a time).
I would also like an option to just update each pc's image, not reimage it from scratch everytime (as it is in TI) since most of the time the new images are just from updating programs, etc.
The best situation would be if there was an app that could handle both sides of my needs, but any alternatives would be welcome. I am happy with DeepFreeze, so my main thing is finding a good alternative to TI, if it happens to take over the duties of DeepFreeze, thats good too. Thanks for any input on this.