IT Expert Voice

Backups are all well and good, but if you want to restore a dead system to working order or to set up a few dozen PCs to work alike, then you need imaging software. Learn what’s available and how to put it to use on your new Windows 7 system installations.

Ever have a hard drive burn out completely? I have. It’s no fun. It’s even less fun when you discover that while your backup brought back all your files, it didn’t do such a hot job on your applications, Windows registry, and drivers. You know — all the stuff that spells the difference between a good-enough PC and a PC that works exactly the way you want it to.

And, needless to say, if your business needs to roll out anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand PCs with identical-to-the-last-detail software loads, then drive imaging (also called disk mirroring) software is your friend.

Drive-imaging programs work by making a byte-by-byte duplicate of the full hard drive or selected partition. This way, if your drive does go to that big bit-farm in the sky, you simply slide in a new hard drive and have a working clone of your PC back up and running. Or, if your PC turns out to be as dead as a Norwegian Blue Parrot, you can restore your working system to a new computer with relatively little fuss or muss.

Of course, you could do the same thing by re-installing Windows…. and your drivers… and your applications. But let’s get real. Who has time for that on a work PC?

Equally important for corporate environments, drive mirroring software lets you make multiple master images of pre-loaded desktops. The IT department can, for example, set up a new branch with custom Windows images optimized for, say, the clerical staff, the accounting department, management, and so on.

Imaging software has come a long way in the past few years. Once, making and restoring disk images was something of a black art. Not it’s an almost automatic process. In fact, some disk imaging program can run in the background while users are pounding away on the keyboard instead of the IT staff having to wait for the night-watch before doing their jobs.

So, what are your choices? While this article is not intended to be an exhaustive review of Windows 7 imaging software, here are my thoughts on what’s available now, based on my own and my friends’ experience with a few of the more popular imaging programs.

Before trying any of these yourself, let me give you a word of warning. Do not, I repeat, do not, try to run two or more of these programs at the same time. For that matter, don’t even try to have two installations of these programs on the same system. Because all of these programs use low-level disk-access mechanisms, the odds are they’ll interfere with each other. At best, neither will work. At worst, you may end up wrecking your hard drive structure.

Windows 7’s Built-In Mirroring Software

Since Windows Vista, Microsoft has included its own mirroring utility in the operating system. To get to it, click on Start Menu >> Control Panel >> System & Security >> Backup and Restore >> Create System Image.

You’ll need to create the image in either a remote drive or another partition. (Since part of the idea of imaging a drive is to avoid a messy crash and burn you really, really don’t want to put the image on another partition. I only mention this because I’ve seen people do exactly that.)

The image itself is kept in a folder on the target drive called WindowsImageBackup. You can access individual folders and files within this image by using ImageX, a utility included in Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM). You can get these programs from the free Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).

In theory, you could use this built-in utility to create images to clone a custom Windows image for deployment. However, this is not the recommended way to create deployment images. Instead, follow the exact instructions given in Building a Standard Image of Windows 7 Step-by-Step Guide. For more on this topic, watch Using Windows AIK to Automate Windows 7 Deployment.

What Windows 7’s built-in mirroring utility is good for is, sort of, creating a backup image. I say “sort of” because unlike, say, Mac OS X’s Time Machine, which automatically creates incremental backups, the Windows utility only lets you create complete image backups. That can be very time consuming. On average, over my gigabit Ethernet I see images created at a rate of 30 minutes per 100GBs. So, while Windows’ built-in imaging software is certainly worthwhile, especially since it can now be used over a network, there are better programs for users who want more than the basics.

Beyond the Basics

The latest version of Acronis‘ True Image software continues to provide excellent workstation support. What I like about the Acronis line-up is that it provides just about every option you could want from an image/backup solution with an easy to use interface. I also like Acronis’ speed; while it’s not the fastest imaging software I’ve ever used, it’s fast enough for my purposes. Another feather in Acronis’ hat is the company’s wide variety of imaging and recovery software products, with support for Windows, Linux, and virtual servers across the enterprise.

For Windows 7 in a business environment, Acronis offers two versions. The first, Advanced Workstation, enables you to automates backup and restore from a single console. Or you can set up automated policy-based management backups for up to thousands of PCs. For a branch office, Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Workstation puts backup and restore capabilities into the hands of users and local administrators.

Paragon, like Acronis, offers a wide variety of products for your Windows server and desktop needs, chief among them the Paragon Drive Backup Server. However, in my experience, it’s not quite the equal of Acronis’ line-up. That’s because of two factors.

First, Acronis does a better job of optimizing storage space for back-up images. In brief, Paragon’s images simply take up more room than do their Acronis equivalents. With the cost of storage continuing its ever downward spiral, that may not be an issue; who would have thought even a few years ago that home users could have terabytes of storage on their desktops?

My other problem with Paragon’s offerings, for a large IT environment, is scalability. If your business is in the small and medium business category (SMB) with fewer than 500 employees, or you only plan on doing imaging at the branch level, it’s fine. But, if you want to save all important desktop images to a secure data center, Acronis is for you.

That said, generally speaking Paragon’s prices tend to be a bit lower than Acronis depending on the licensing. For a smaller company in search of a bargain Paragon’s software is worth looking at. Like Acronis, you can try the program for free before buying into it.

The one Windows imaging program everybody knows is Symantec Norton Ghost, currently at version 15. As it happens, I like Ghost… as personal imaging software. It’s the one image program I could give to my local car repair guy, who’s much more familiar with carburetors than computers, and not have to worry about him backing up and restoring his system properly. Ghost is easy to use, supports BitLocker, and I like that it now supports both ftp sites and networked attached storage for images. But, all that said, this is a end-user’s, not an enterprise’s, imaging solution. Home use? You betcha. Corporate? No, just no.

Besides the software I mention here, there are at least a baker’s dozen of other imaging programs that work with Windows 7. What’s important is that, you pick one, test it out thoroughly to make sure that it works for your company and that you can reliably restore from its images, and then deploy it. Regardless of which program you end up with, eventually you’ll be glad you did.

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