Creating image for other OS from within windows

[TSThomas]

I work for a company which needs to make small specialized PCs running Windows so they can run a specific program, hopefully on an 8gb CF card. I'm in the process of stripping down a copy of Windows 7 to be small enough for that, but that's something else. I need to be able to install the reduced copy of Windows 7 and our own software and then probably use Norton Ghost to create an image that I can just apply to every one of these computers we make in the future. Is there a way of creating this image from within my main OS instead of just creating and booting to a separate partition?

 

[JDFan]

Sounds like RT Se7en Lite might do what you are wanting !

 

[Mu33rto]

You don't want to make an image from within an operation system... To slow and nothing but problems. Ghost,Altiris,acronis and clonezilla all will let you boot from a CD to make an image. Out of all those apps clonezilla is free but doen't have a good UI so I might be hard at first. Also before you make the image you might want to sysprep the system. If the image is too big with the installed programs you can also try a program like http://www.flexerasoftware.com/products/adminstudio.htm might come in handy to reduce the software size and installation time. So just store the windows image on the CF card and the software either on a server or external HDD. Or even better make an image of everything installed and just add the image to an external HDD.

 

[das_stig]

Take a look at this tutorial on how to create a custom unattended install, you should be able to create the perfect W7 installationf or your cutsom pc.

http://theitbros.com/sysprep-a-windows-7-machine-%E2%80%93-start-to-finish

 

[TSThomas]

Thanks for the responses! So I would use RT Se7en Lite to reduce the size of the OS before installation so it would fit on a 8gb CF, then I just install it on a partition of the drive and use the cold imaging feature of norton ghost to create an image. Does the partition need to be exactly 8gb?

 

[Mu33rto]

I migrated away from ghost a long time ago so im not really sure about there cloning scheme. But good practice is make a smaller partition size than what youre going to store it on. The card you have is 8Gb but it won't hold that much info once you format it. Format it and see how big it really is and that how big you should make the partition. Ghost should compress the image so that should give you some wiggle room. Or you can always do the installation and resize the partition to it smallest size and clone it.