Best Free Imaging Solution for a business

[Wallify]

I work for a small business and lately we have had a quite a few computers that are in need of re imaging. Currently we are using an old and outdated version of ghost left by the guy that was here 2 people before me. I am not really happy with it and would like to move on to something better. Our budget is already set for this year so FREE is about my only option right now. Optimally I would like something that I can update easily (so when we deploy the image I don't have to sit for 3 hours waiting on windows updates every time) and would be able to build different imaged for each department.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[VistaKing]

Hi Wallify

Take a look for Windows Deployment Tool Kit 2012 Update 1 . You will also need Windows AIK

:ar: Download MDT 2012 Update 1 from Official Microsoft Download Center - WDK 2012 UPDATE 1

:ar: Download Windows® AIK for Windows® 7 from Official Microsoft Download Center - Windows AIK

A good backup profile tool to use in Enterprise enviroment is USMT that comes with the WINDOWS AIK .

It copies network drives, network printers , and profiles You could add what you want to back up .

:ar: User State Migration Tool 4.0 User's Guide

   Note

ALL these programs are FREE

You could also PXE boot .

 

[Wallify]

I was looking into that, but didnt see an option for imaging multiple machines at one time. Every year we replace a whole department and it would be awesome if we could hook them all up to a switch and image 20 of them at once. This does look like a viable option for doing the one to ones as computers come in in need of repair though.

Thanks for the quick reply King

 

[SIW2]

There is one that is very simple to use - free for business, too.

Might be worth looking at for your one to ones.

AOMEI's free data backup software for disk, partition, system and file backup & recovery for Windows Oss.

 

[VistaKing]

Wallify

I wouldn't recommend imaging a lot of PCs at once that will slow your connectivity speed . What program did you use to image 20 PCs altogether ?

 

[Wallify]

We were using ghost 5 I believe and we were doing 10 at a time though. I have been on the errand boy end of a mscc2012 mass imaging project though. In that we did a whole school district in a few days. We had probably 40 running at a time. and it took about an hour or so for the group. I was more or less just summer work and sent on the boot to PXE errands and report back with errors though.

 

[VistaKing]

Yeah I remember using Ghost 7.5 back in the day . Now everyone is going to Windows Deployment Toolkit. Easy program to use . You use Windows AIK to edit the answer file ( Autounattend.xml) .