Recovery Discs

[MikeyK18]

Hi, i was wondering if any of u guys could give me a bit of advice

i custom build pc's im looking for some software which can create system recovery discs instead of handing out a pile of single discs

any suggestions?

 

[Norris_309]

Symantec Ghost will do it.

 

[David]

i woudl suggest nlite to create custom XP install with all the drivers on you need, or something liek norton ghost or other imaghing software.

google nlite (or vlite for vista) its free and works well

 

[MikeyK18]

any other 1's than ghost?

im just looking st the customers point of view than its handier to have 1-2 recovery discs than using an windows installation disc

 

[David]

read my post!

 

[MikeyK18]

i did read your post, im lookin for something that will incorporate drivers and software into the recovery disc(s)

 

[David]

thats what nlite does...will do most of your install for you including putting in their key, it's got sys prep embedded. Advatange of nlite is that you can bung loads of drivers in there and windows finds all the hardware automatically. whereas an image will have an exact copy of a hard disk so bring along bloated sofware with it.

Otherwise at work, we use Acronis, which is fantastic for imaging.

 

[FiDoDiDo]

Ghost, we have ours setup with scripts that run backup and restore from CD.

 

[MikeyK18]

thats what nlite does...will do most of your install for you including putting in their key, it's got sys prep embedded. Advatange of nlite is that you can bung loads of drivers in there and windows finds all the hardware automatically. whereas an image will have an exact copy of a hard disk so bring along bloated sofware with it.

Otherwise at work, we use Acronis, which is fantastic for imaging.

does the Acronis TrueImage allow for a bootable image of the hard drive?

 

[David]

indeed

 

[Mike_182]

nLite. Lets you put drivers, service packs, individual updates etc in there. If you're building custom PCs it's definately the most professional way about it, as I hate using Ghost and I hate even more when people send you recovery disks with a ton of software that you never need. Just fills up the registry for the fun of it.

Also, if you're clever and the software you're installing has a silent install mode you can incorporate it... I'm thinking Office 2003 and Transform files, or whatever 2007 calls them now with it's custom install wizard, there's things like BACS for Broadcom NICs which I know do silent installs...

 

[MikeyK18]

can this load a setup of windows both xp/vista alike already activated of will activation need to be done everytime with NLite?

could someone who knows a bit about this program maybe drop me a PM??

 

[MikeyK18]

bump

 

[MikeyK18]

bump

^

 

[MikeyK18]

bump

 

[16v_jon]

I use PC Angel which installs a hidden image on the hard disk if windows goes wrong the customer just presses f10 they can then reinstall windows and keep documents etc or do a format and backup everything else into a folder so its not deleted.
For installing or hard disk failiures then i use custom nlite disks.