Well, I got Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) installed, and even got Compiz-fusion running (with all the shadows, 3d effects, and stuff like that). But because I still haven't found a good Outlook clone that ties securely into our Exchange server, it is time to get back to business.... Vista Business.
I rebooted with the UBCD4Win in the CD drive, and with the USB drive plugged in that we saved the image to yesterday. Not surprisingly the live version of XP we are running on this disk was unable to properly mount the linux partitions, and therefore considered my USB drive as the "C" drive.
I still fired up Self Image and told it to grab c:\backup\HPdc5750\whateverIcalledTheImage.img.gz and put it on Hard Drive #0
It warned me that sometimes when you wipe a drive clean and put a new image over it, you will loose all of the data on the drive you are wiping clean. (Actually, according to them, it happens 10 times out of 10.)
I figure we really don't need Linux on this machine anymore, and I click OK, and it starts decompressing the image and saving it to the hard drive.
In the time it took me to write all of this, it has gotten to 30%. That's probably because I'm decompressing a 20GB file from a USB drive, and because I type fast.
I would guess that when I save the images to a partition on the internal drive in the future it will go much faster. But hey, it has only been about 5 minutes, so 10 to 15 minutes to restore a computer isn't bad!
---Waiting for the image to finish restoring---
Well, it looks like the blank space was being restored pretty quickly, so it has been 25 minutes and we are now at 75%.
Fortunately I had a few other support tasks to take care of in the meantime, including a triple Americano at the cafe we have here. Mmmmm fresh roasted espresso!
---Still Waiting---
Oops! I ran out to help with a support call and came back and it was done! So I don't know how long it took.
I do know that it took no more than 40 minutes, but it may have been just 30 or 35. Either way, when you factor in getting the USB Drive, CD, and kicking the person off their computer, I can expect about an hour of downtime for the user.
Kind of cool.
--Rebooting--
--Logging into Vista Business!--
It works!! That is AWESOME!
Considering I installed a separate boot manager (GRUB, which came with Ubuntu Linux), changed the partition table dramatically, and have wiped the drive a total of 2 times, and I'm able to flawlessly log back into a fully functional Vista Business Environment, I'm pretty excited!!
Wo0T!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Adventures in Drive Imaging: Part 2 - Making a Need for the Image
Well, now that I've got a new drive image, what's the point if the computer is working well?
I could install viruses.. virii... uhm... malware, but I'd rather not, so I won't.
Instead, I'm going to install Linux! Ubuntu 7.04 desktop to be exact. I'm running it on my laptop at home and I really like it. I've been running Ubuntu for a few years now, and it is great for lazy people like me who want to ease into a new area. Now that I'm used to the interface I'm getting more comfortable with the command line. It is like Linux with training wheels, but like any good kids bike, not only is it free if you can run fast, but you can also take the training wheels off when you are comfortable with it.
I popped in the Desktop CD, checked its integrity, and it seems like a pretty stand-up CD so I went into the live CD environment. Everything booted fine, I've got a good 1280x1024 display by default (unlike Windows' 1024x768 default on the same machine) so I went ahead and double-clicked the installer.
I think there were like 6 choices to make, such as what language I speak, and what language keyboard I use, and what time zone I'm in, then it asked me about the drive to install it on. I selected the option that wipes the entire drive and installs Ubuntu on it (since that is the simplest)
It seems to be stuck on the "downloading package list" part, which makes since, since it is plugged into the corporate network which won't let it on the internet until I assign it a static IP.... oops... clicking "skip".
Now it is finishing up the install, which should take another 30 seconds or so. (Pretty quick on this AMD Athlon 64 X2 machine)
I am now restarting into a nice reliable non-networked Ubuntu machine, giving it an IP address, then restarting for grins. Oooh! 78 updates!
The crazy part, after installing them all and restarting, there shouldn't be any more updates after that... they roll them up quite intelligently rather than having me update, reboot, update, reboot, rinse, lather, repeat. Like other operating systems I know. (emphasis on plural... Windows isn't the only non-free popular operating system that has done this to me...)
Anyway, long-story short, I installed Linux. It took about 30 minutes because I wasn't paying attention to the fact that it was trying to download stuff when I had it blocked at the router from seeing the internet. Oops...
Join us tomorrow for the conclusion - Reluctantly Restoring, where we will attempt to go from Linux to Vista in less than an hour.
(It is impressive considering it will have all of the exact preferences, user accounts, passwords, etc. that I set it up with previously. If this all works, we'll be installing XP and making an image of that, since I'm not ready for Vista yet.)
I could install viruses.. virii... uhm... malware, but I'd rather not, so I won't.
Instead, I'm going to install Linux! Ubuntu 7.04 desktop to be exact. I'm running it on my laptop at home and I really like it. I've been running Ubuntu for a few years now, and it is great for lazy people like me who want to ease into a new area. Now that I'm used to the interface I'm getting more comfortable with the command line. It is like Linux with training wheels, but like any good kids bike, not only is it free if you can run fast, but you can also take the training wheels off when you are comfortable with it.
I popped in the Desktop CD, checked its integrity, and it seems like a pretty stand-up CD so I went into the live CD environment. Everything booted fine, I've got a good 1280x1024 display by default (unlike Windows' 1024x768 default on the same machine) so I went ahead and double-clicked the installer.
I think there were like 6 choices to make, such as what language I speak, and what language keyboard I use, and what time zone I'm in, then it asked me about the drive to install it on. I selected the option that wipes the entire drive and installs Ubuntu on it (since that is the simplest)
It seems to be stuck on the "downloading package list" part, which makes since, since it is plugged into the corporate network which won't let it on the internet until I assign it a static IP.... oops... clicking "skip".
Now it is finishing up the install, which should take another 30 seconds or so. (Pretty quick on this AMD Athlon 64 X2 machine)
I am now restarting into a nice reliable non-networked Ubuntu machine, giving it an IP address, then restarting for grins. Oooh! 78 updates!
The crazy part, after installing them all and restarting, there shouldn't be any more updates after that... they roll them up quite intelligently rather than having me update, reboot, update, reboot, rinse, lather, repeat. Like other operating systems I know. (emphasis on plural... Windows isn't the only non-free popular operating system that has done this to me...)
Anyway, long-story short, I installed Linux. It took about 30 minutes because I wasn't paying attention to the fact that it was trying to download stuff when I had it blocked at the router from seeing the internet. Oops...
Join us tomorrow for the conclusion - Reluctantly Restoring, where we will attempt to go from Linux to Vista in less than an hour.
(It is impressive considering it will have all of the exact preferences, user accounts, passwords, etc. that I set it up with previously. If this all works, we'll be installing XP and making an image of that, since I'm not ready for Vista yet.)
Adventures in Drive Imaging: Part 1 - Making the Image
Somehow I have gotten to this point without ever making an Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. Well, that all changed this morning when I made my first "UBCD4Win". The only customization I did was to update AVG Free Edition with the latest virus definitions. (making this CD obsolete tomorrow, rather than last month)
It looks like I could even have installed Kapersky if I wanted to spend the $$. Cool.
The idea behind UBCD4Win is the same as BartPE, to the extend that I don't know the difference, other than I installed UBCD4Win rather than BartPE, purely by chance.
What's this got to do with imaging? Well, I'd tell you, but I'm too busy getting off topic.
By restarting the computer with my UBCD4Win in the drive I was presented with a weird version of Windows XP that doesn't run off the Hard Drive, instead it runs from the CD and from memory. (So make sure you have enough RAM, or this could potentially be uncomfortably slow!)
I've got 1GB of RAM in this machine, and it worked just fine.
It has Drive Image XML and Self Image in the package, and while I've only used Drive Image XML, I was more curious about Self Image because it also grabs the boot sector, cool!
So step 1 was to make a Drive Image XML copy of each hard drive partition from the computer to an external USB drive. (Since I'm comfortable with Drive Image XML, I felt it would be a safe "backup")
Step 2 was to use Self Image to copy the entire disk (including 2 extra partitions HP made to contain restore software and drivers) using Self Image. Because I wasn't using the hard drive, none of the files were in use, so it was quick and reliable.
Step 3 was to re-do step 2, but this time with an NTFS enabled USB drive, since the final file (for this 75GB Hard Drive) was around 22GB, and FAT 32 only supports around 4GB per file. (boo FAT 32!)
And, that anticlimactically concludes Part 1 of Adventures in Drive Imaging. Visit us next time for Part 2 - Making us need the image, where I will describe how I formatted the whole drive and installed Linux, just to make sure I totally changed the Hard Drive's contents and layout.
It looks like I could even have installed Kapersky if I wanted to spend the $$. Cool.
The idea behind UBCD4Win is the same as BartPE, to the extend that I don't know the difference, other than I installed UBCD4Win rather than BartPE, purely by chance.
What's this got to do with imaging? Well, I'd tell you, but I'm too busy getting off topic.
By restarting the computer with my UBCD4Win in the drive I was presented with a weird version of Windows XP that doesn't run off the Hard Drive, instead it runs from the CD and from memory. (So make sure you have enough RAM, or this could potentially be uncomfortably slow!)
I've got 1GB of RAM in this machine, and it worked just fine.
It has Drive Image XML and Self Image in the package, and while I've only used Drive Image XML, I was more curious about Self Image because it also grabs the boot sector, cool!
So step 1 was to make a Drive Image XML copy of each hard drive partition from the computer to an external USB drive. (Since I'm comfortable with Drive Image XML, I felt it would be a safe "backup")
Step 2 was to use Self Image to copy the entire disk (including 2 extra partitions HP made to contain restore software and drivers) using Self Image. Because I wasn't using the hard drive, none of the files were in use, so it was quick and reliable.
Step 3 was to re-do step 2, but this time with an NTFS enabled USB drive, since the final file (for this 75GB Hard Drive) was around 22GB, and FAT 32 only supports around 4GB per file. (boo FAT 32!)
And, that anticlimactically concludes Part 1 of Adventures in Drive Imaging. Visit us next time for Part 2 - Making us need the image, where I will describe how I formatted the whole drive and installed Linux, just to make sure I totally changed the Hard Drive's contents and layout.
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