Chapter 13: Cloning Disks with Sysprep

Overview

Disk imaging entails taking a snapshot of a computer's configuration, which includes Microsoft Windows XP and applications such as those in Microsoft Office XP, and then deploying that snapshot to other computers in the organization. It's essentially like installing Windows XP on a computer's hard disk and then copying that hard disk to other computers. Use disk imaging to deploy clean Windows XP installations in large organizations when hundreds of computers require the same configuration. Disk imaging is more effective when organizations have standard hardware configurations, but with a tweak here and there, it is a method that can be used in companies that tend to purchase the computer du jour.

Even though I say that disk imaging is for large organizations, I use it in my small 10-PC shop. It's more convenient and much quicker to install Windows XP from a disk image than by running the setup program from scratch. This is a major productivity boost for me because I install Windows XP a dozen times a week.

Disk imaging has two personalities: good and bad (no ugly). First the good: Disk imaging is the fastest way to deploy Windows XP. Rather than installing the operating system from the CD, which can take up to 45 minutes, a disk image installs in less than 10 minutes. And with multicasting technologies, you can deploy disk images to many computers at the same time. Possibly the biggest benefit of disk imaging is that you can include third-party applications and custom settings to standardize desktop computers throughout the enterprise, and you do all that without requiring user interaction. Now for the bad: You can't use disk imaging to upgrade from an earlier version of Windows because you're replacing the hard disk's contents. That means users' documents, settings, and applications are lost unless you use the User State Migration Tool that's on the Windows XP CD. Also, disk imaging requires somewhat compatible sample and target hardware configurations, although you can mitigate this issue a bit using the techniques you learn in this chapter. An additional concern is that multicasting can bring a network to its knees, so you must manage the rollout so that it doesn't affect the productivity of users. The last problem is that deploying disk images to remote computers is difficult—but it's not impossible if you can fit the images on CDs.

The benefits of disk imaging far outweigh the potential problems, particularly in large enterprises. Disk imaging got better with Windows XP than it was with Microsoft Windows 2000; new Windows XP disk-imaging tools significantly reduce the number of disk images that you maintain now. Microsoft's Web site is full of case studies of companies that have reduced their image count by 60 percent. One company reduced its image count from 50 with Windows 2000 to one with Windows XP. That's impressive! This chapter shows you how to reap those benefits for yourself. After I introduce you to disk imaging, I'll focus on how the registry fits in to the disk imaging process.