Dual boot setup(2 drvs) using MDT 2010 on WDS servre

[w7super]

Need to know how to image(a monolithic image not packages) a computer with 2 separate hard drives (Dual boot Os Win 7) using a windows server 2008
running wds and mdt 2010. I work for a school and have a classroom that needs these 2 separate drives. The capture and imaging of one drive is not a
problem, but the dual boot process has been challenging in that I cannot find much information on the process. A Vhd will not work for this classroom so
I need to figure a way to image first drive(PXE boot), then reboot and pxe boot back into server for the next image of the 2nd drive.

I have tried with another using a 2nd task sequence and changing the drive number but without success. Right now I am in the learning stage of using
this new imaging process(mostly successful) but the dual boot has presented some difficulty. I have about 2 months to figure this out before this
classroom will need this capability.

If anyone can present some ideas on how to accomplish this, I would greatly appreciate it.



Thanks in advance.
w7super

 

[cluberti]

MDT doesn't handle this entirely well, but if you're OK with editing the boot sequence once you're imaged (or automating it in a command-line step somewhere near the end of the TS) then you can do this just by running a command line and using imagex to apply the WIM to the second drive. You'll have to play with diskpart and scripts a bit if you need custom partitioning, but if they're physically two separate drives that should be easy to do with the stock partition and format step in a TS without any diskpart script work. Just make sure drive 1 gets partitiioned and formatted just like drive 0 does in the partition/format step of the TS, then near the end use a command line step to run imagex directly and apply the WIM to the second drive. Given you already know the server will have two drives, and your first image will go to your first drive (drive 0) and your second image will be going to the second drive (drive 1), you can just imagex drive 1 with the second WIM. You can then create a .cmd that imports a bcd store that will make the second drive bootable (the Custom Tasks folder in the TS is a good place for these two steps), and call that from a command line step as well.

So, to recap:

• For the Format and Partition step, configure the disks/partitions the way you want - I'm guessing you will leave disk 0 as-is, and just add disk 1 steps (make sure you give that second drive a variable, you'll need it for imagex /apply)
• For the application of the second WIM to the second disk, you add a TS command line step in the Custom Tasks folder to imagex /apply the WIM to the second drive (using that variable as the target drive of the imagex command, so you don't need to know the drive letter just in case)
• For making it bootable, you add a second TS command line step in the Custom Tasks folder to run a .cmd file (stored in %SCRIPTROOT%) that executes the necessary bcdedit steps to import a bcd that makes the second disk bootable as well. This would require that you get it working first, export the bcd from that working install, and import that bcd to the "new" machine via bcdedit commands in a script in your TS.

Make sense?

 

[w7super]

Thanks for the response. I will look at trying this.