Need a GUI for image x not a problem go here
untested myself but worth a repost from http://www.911cd.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=19355
I've been playing around with ImageX from the Windows AIK and can confirm that this is a kickass app. I try not to get too excited about software as my partner's already written me off as a sad geek, however this is really worth checking out. I won't post much about ImageX here as there's plenty of information about it in the WinPE user guide (and online) - check out these links if you want to find out more:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista....
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/.....
The important stuff is basically that it is a file based backup solution, it (sort of) supports incremental backups and the output file(s) can be mounted and edited easilly.
The good news is ImageX works fine under BartPE - check out Malice's post in this thread here for a plugin (it's post #20).
I've just finished some testing on a fresh install of Windows XP. I booted into BartPE after the installation had completed, but before XP install had booted. The XP partition (C: under BartPE) was 1.22GB (including pagefile). I ran ImageX using the following code to backup XP:
CODE
IMAGEX.exe /capture c: d:\XP_backup.wim "XP_Master"
The output file d:\XP_backup.wim was 461MB - backup took approximately 3 minutes.
I then booted into the XP partition and added about 63MB of programs - then booted back into BartPE and re ran ImageX using:
CODE
IMAGEX.exe /append c: d:\XP_backup.wim "XP_01" /verify
The XP partition size was 1.89GB with the new programs (and pagefile), the backup took about 3 minutes again and d:\XP_backup.wim (now containing two images) was 514MB
I rebooted into XP and made a few changes - removed pagefile; turned off automatic updates, firewall and system restore; installed 3 hotfixes; switched to classic view and installed Office 2003 (just WORD and POWERPOINT). The new XP partition size was 1.34GB. I then rebooted into BartPE and appended another image using:
CODE
IMAGEX.exe /append c: d:\XP_backup.wim "XP_02" /verify
The backup took about 3 1/2 minutes and d:\XP_backup.wim (now containing three images) was 613MB
All of the images contained in XP_backup.wim restored successfully. Restoring was fairly straightforward - I reformatted the c: drive before applying (restoring) each image in XP_backup.wim. The disk does not need to be reformated however I didn't want any existing data leaving on the disk.
The main drawback with using ImageX is that the bootsector needs re-installing as only the files from the partition are copied and applied. This is not a major problem as Vista contains bootsect.exe which can reinstall XP's bootsector.
bootsect command (where e: is drive with Vista DVD)
CODE
e:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 C:
ImageX command (where 1 is the image to apply)
CODE
IMAGEX.exe /apply d:\XP_backup.wim 1 c:
To apply the second image I ran IMAGEX.exe /apply d:\XP_backup.wim 2 c:, etc...
It took longer to format the c: drive than to apply the files from the images in XP_backup.wim. Just to make sure each image could be edited individually I then mounted the 1st image contained in XP_backup.wim and removed ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini and about 400 drivers and commited the changes. I then formatted c:, used bootsect.exe and applied the 3rd image from the wim file - XP rebooted without any problems on the restored partition.
My experiance with backup software is admittedly pretty limited (I've never even seen a copy of ghost let alone tried using it) but I'm seriously impressed. ImageX is command line only so scripting backups shouldn't be a major problem. Oh, did I mention it's only 372KB + it's included in the WAIK which is free to download!
diddy
