Hard drive "image" creation and restoration via network

m0dm0 · 21 Nov 2009 at 16:54

I've freshly installed Windows and all the software and drivers that I use.

Could someone please suggest something which will allow me to create an "image/snapshot" of my hard drive in it's current state and place it on my home server so that I can quickly restore this "image" via the network if I need to.

I'm thinking if the "image" is ~2GB, then at ~100Mbit/s should take about ~3mins to restore which is great!

theheyes · 21 Nov 2009 at 17:37

You can do this with CloneZilla, but for 1 computer it might be easier to just bang it on an external hard drive.

May I ask what version of Windows you are using? A 2GB image seem a little small for Windows + software.

m0dm0 · 21 Nov 2009 at 17:47

It's an nLited Windows XP.

CloneZilla looks like it will be able to do what I want, although at first glance it does seem quite complicated.

theheyes · 21 Nov 2009 at 19:16

It looks complicated but if you do some reading and are careful it's not too bad. Once you've worked it out you just do the same thing each time. You've just got to watch out you don't get disks/partitions mixed up but this goes for any such software.