Ghost 2003

**Tacklebox** · March 7th, 2004, 10:45 AM

Has anyone copied an image to store on a network? I'm using Ghost 2003 and copying images using disk to disk. I'm having no problem doing this, but I would like to store certain images by dept.(HR, Eng, Finance, etc.) I tried doing this , but the peer to peer option is grayed out, even when I try using the network boot disk. I followed the steps in the manual, but no luck. This would save me alot of time as I am in the middle of upgading or machines from NT to XP.

**Matridom** · March 7th, 2004, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by Tacklebox

Has anyone copied an image to store on a network? I'm using Ghost 2003 and copying images using disk to disk. I'm having no problem doing this, but I would like to store certain images by dept.(HR, Eng, Finance, etc.) I tried doing this , but the peer to peer option is grayed out, even when I try using the network boot disk. I followed the steps in the manual, but no luck. This would save me alot of time as I am in the middle of upgading or machines from NT to XP.

make sure that when yout at the dos prompt, you've mapped the network share as a letter, and that you have the permissions to write to that folder

**mongo69** · March 8th, 2004, 10:43 AM

First off is ghost loading the drivers for the NIC on both machines. It sound like the NIC is not loaded. Are you connecting to the right IP? Are you uploading the images to a share on a server or do you have a computer that is just a Ghost server that you are uploading images to? Make sure you are connecting to the Ghost server as a Master not Slave.

**Gollo** · March 8th, 2004, 11:19 AM

Don't try to peer them like you are doing. Set it up so that it dumps it to a shared drive on your server. I did this last summer for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

**Tacklebox** · March 8th, 2004, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by mongo69

First off is ghost loading the drivers for the NIC on both machines. It sound like the NIC is not loaded. Are you connecting to the right IP? Are you uploading the images to a share on a server or do you have a computer that is just a Ghost server that you are uploading images to? Make sure you are connecting to the Ghost server as a Master not Slave.

I want to upload the images to store on a network server. I'm not going to get to this for another day or so, but I'll post how I make out.

Thank You.

TB

**Tacklebox** · March 8th, 2004, 11:33 AM

Originally Posted by Gollo

Don't try to peer them like you are doing. Set it up so that it dumps it to a shared drive on your server. I did this last summer for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

I'll try it.
Thanks Gollo

**PuterGeekGirl** · March 8th, 2004, 11:48 AM

Originally Posted by Gollo

Don't try to peer them like you are doing. Set it up so that it dumps it to a shared drive on your server. I did this last summer for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

Yep, thats how we do it...works slick!!!

**CeeBee** · March 8th, 2004, 01:29 PM

Originally Posted by Gollo

Don't try to peer them like you are doing. Set it up so that it dumps it to a shared drive on your server. I did this last summer for the first time and I couldn't believe how easy it was.

Agreed. The bad part is that you can get an average of 1-2 NIC drivers on a floppy, so if you have various NIC adapters you'll have some work to do.

**mongo69** · March 8th, 2004, 02:10 PM

I agree with you all but hard drive space runs out real quick when your saving 1-2 gig compressed images and backing up all that info can get kind of costly in tapes. I have is so my Ghost server rests itself back to the listen mode after every image. I had to write a batch file for it but it works great. No Server overhead no real network traffic works fine. I did this with Ghost 2003 not Enterprise Edition

**Gollo** · March 8th, 2004, 04:23 PM

Originally Posted by mongo69

I agree with you all but hard drive space runs out real quick when your saving 1-2 gig compressed images and backing up all that info can get kind of costly in tapes. I have is so my Ghost server rests itself back to the listen mode after every image. I had to write a batch file for it but it works great. No Server overhead no real network traffic works fine. I did this with Ghost 2003 not Enterprise Edition

I understood him to want to clone an image of a fresh install of windows tweaked to each departments specs (sertain software for accounting but not for eng. etc). To me the easiest and most cost effective way for him to do this is to dump them on to the server that is currently there. This also means that he only needs to make (if the hardware is the same on all machines) one boot disc and use it on each system and at the very most one disc per hardware config. But if you have the extra machine with the space then the way you have it setup works just as good. What do you mean by "no real network traffic"?

**olsonde** · March 8th, 2004, 04:37 PM

If you want to do multiple images, there are some things you need to think about...

Is there a baseline image that almost all users have (Office, Acrobat Reader, Winzip, etc.). If so make a baseline image. Treat everything else as a add-on. For the add-on's your could use a tool like Wise InstallMaster or Installshield to create automatic installable "packages". These package can be run on your image, or pushed to it with tools like Microsoft SMS, LANDesk, Zen, etc.

If you are imaging Windows NT, 2000, XP, or 2003, make sure you use a SID manipulation tool (Ghost Walker, sysinternals SID Changer, or Microsoft sysprep). This will avoid SID conflicts.

If you need to support more than 2-3 different NICs, you may want to look at Windows PE (Preboot Environment), which is a version of Windows XP that can run from CD, DVD, or PXE (Preboot executable environment). A good source of utilities and information for Windows PE is http://nu2.nu where you can find BART PE (you'll still need a WinPE license from Microsoft). Windows PE works with Ghost32, which comes with Ghost Enterprise Edition.

Regardless, on your floppy or bootable CD you should add a line to map to a network drive (net use: g: \\server\share) in the autoexec.bat, then install ghost.exe to the share. You can add a line to the autoexec.bat to launch ghost after the drive has been mapped.

**munester** · March 9th, 2004, 10:50 AM

I use Ghost 2003 and burn my image to my DVD burner, this way I can store my images on a shelf instead of taking up hard drive space on my server. the DVDs are bootable to ghosts interface. Also this way does not use up network bandwidth. The image size varies from 2 Gb, to 4.25 Gb depending on the departments specifics. The laptops I am ghosting are WinXP machines and it works like a charm, just have to rename and join the domain after ghosting (log into local machine on first boot after ghost). To get the image for each department I tweak a laptop from that dept. run all appropriate updates etc... Then pull the hard drive, put it in my tech tower as a master on the secondary ide channel, run Ghost and the rest is history.

ps, make sure and delete the computer from active directory before you rename and rejoin the domain on the ghosted machine if you are using win2000 server.

**kpataska** · March 9th, 2004, 03:06 PM

What I like to do is keep a 120gb hard drive with a ghost directory and then other directories that contain images. Speed and convenience. Granted, you have to open the case of the PC, but this isn't 20 years ago. I keep the drive set on cable select and rarely have to change it.

Hope this helps!

Kenny P.
Visualize Whirled P.'s