i've always used ghost, however we stopped using it in favour of Active Disk Image (no real reason for it) but it doesn't seem to support Win 7.
anyway, I am trying to deploy windows 7 to a series of machines, all should be identical however on deploying Vista onto the same machines I did learn some hard drives differ.
I have setup Win 7 in a way I am happy with, local admin accounts, software installed etc etc.
At this point I shutdown the machine as normal via Windows, I ran no extra commands like I had to in the pasta to image Vista.
I have since booted up using my Ghost 15 CD with an external usb hard drive connected.
I selected "backup my computer", clicked next, choose both partitions for Disk 1, i.e. system reserved and c drive. Set the destination folder to a location on my usb hdd. Left compression as standard and all advanced options unticked..
Ghost files are created as expected.
On recovery.
I select the file for the "system reserved" partition, click next, then add "c drive" to the list of drives to recover.
At this point, both drives/partitions are stating that the target drive is "Invalid"
I edit "System Reserved"
I delete all entries for Disk 1, until I have only 1 unallocated entry for the entire disk size.
At this point I select, "Set drive as active (for booting OS)" and "restore master boot record"
click ok
The restore proceeds until complete and I rebooted, removing CD and USB HDD.
Windows 7 boots.
Is this the correct method for backing up and recovering Windows 7 without adding in any complications such as backing up/recovering via a network. (usb is better for us, we have used network but it's not preferred)
Is it possible to automate this process in anyway? i.e. the automatic selected of partitions, automatic ticking of restore master boot, set as active etc.
Would be a great help if this can be confirmed as I am sick of getting unable to boot errors during imaging.
Thanks
Ian
ps sorry for being long winded, just wanted to be thorough