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I want to create a bootable USB disk (like Clonezilla) and create images which are saved as GHO/GHS

I also want to restore images back to the PC and do the following tasks (if possible)

  1. Rename the computer using our normal conventions
  2. Join the Domain

I'd prefer a Linux solution but I am open to other systems.

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The imaging software should just plop the image down on the disk. Numbers 1 & 2 should be handled via sysprep and its unattend.xml config. – jscott Oct 24 '11 at 18:37
our bootable flash drives used to be Grub. That was the only piece that was linux. Are you talking about a Linux-based deployment server? – Ben Campbell Oct 24 '11 at 18:43
Any particular reason you want to use a Linux solution to image/deploy Windows systems? Nothing wrong with it, but there are plenty of tools (like Acronis) that are geared toward Windows deployments... – voretaq7♦ Nov 22 '11 at 18:32
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Assuming you are deploying Windows. Your tasks can be baked into any image (See Sysprep). Anything that can deploy an image should do the trick after that.

Alternatively, (and here is my MS plug for the day), if you have a 2008 R2 server setup -- consider using MDT2010. It's quite easy to setup and can easily handle your pre/post install steps. It's included for "free" with your server license. It will provide you with a central management point for your images but still allow deployment from removable media

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I'm pretty sure CloneZilla can do that. Read the documentation. I did it onde with a verry small script or couple of reponse file that you need to put on a server... Probably TFTP with NFS.

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up vote 0 down vote

FOG is a reasonably full-featured imaging & deployment solution (host renaming, domain joining, software deployment, printer management etc.). Uses TFTP & NFS, mostly written in PHP, uses pxelinux & partimage to do the actual imaging.

I imagine it should be possible to install it to a persistent Live USB Linux distro, but I'm not sure where you'd get enough storage space for your images unless you have a NFS server somewhere.

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Our USB drives are fairly large. We have 32GB sticks. Most of our GHO files are between 2GB to 6GB – Cocoa Dev Oct 25 '11 at 15:15
Can it create GHO/GHS files? – Cocoa Dev Feb 8 at 17:42
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