ImageCast 3.0
Karen G. Lawson, Dan Staedtler · Information Technology and Libraries · 1999
Microhouse http://www.microhouse.com Imagecast IC3 is Microhouse's latest hard disk drive-cloning software. It will clone FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, as well as nonstandard file systems. It has two modes of operation, either stand-alone or multicasting using the software's control center. The software comes with a CD-ROM, the license floppy disk, quick-start card, and a user manual. The quick-start card gives enough information to get started, and the user manual is divided into easy-to-follow sections that are well written and illustrated. The floppy disk with the license is used to unlock the client software to allow more than ten simultaneous multicast downloads and to unlock the advanced features. Stand-alone operations are performed from a single workstation; multicasting requires installation of the ImageCast IC3 control center. Installation of the software is easy with the InstallShield Wizard, which uses standard prompts for destination directory and complete and custom setup. Once the software is installed, installation can be customized to fit the environment. In stand-alone mode one drive can be cloned to another in the same machine or the hard drive image can be saved to a file server for later cloning onto a single or multiple machines. The key to this process is a DOS client boot disk that created with the native file server network protocol (IPX/SPX, NetBEUI, or TCP/IP). The disk boots up the computer, logs into the server, and then presents a menu of options. Here the hard drive image can be cloned locally, saved and restored and imaged from a server, and hard drive information reviewed. There are also command line parameters in the client so that the save and restore process can be customized for various hard disk variations or for fully automated operations. The Iowa State University library used the previous version of ImageCast in stand-alone mode to clone Windows 95 onto older machines, and the newest version continues to operate faster than installing from scratch with a Windows 95 CD-ROM. On a Novell server with a moderate level of traffic, uploads or downloads for a 250MB image took only ten minutes. The key to the whole process is creating a model image with generic video and network drivers and including the Windows 95 CAB files. Capturing the OEM version from a new computer from one of the major PC manufacturers works quite well. After the image is downloaded and the computer is rebooted, the Windows 95 hardware discovery process customizes itself to any variations in hardware devices. All that is left to do is to change the computer name and network addresses to the specific settings for that computer. Using the control center and multicast mode provides the full power of the software. Hard drive images and even individual applications can be pushed to multiple machines at once. Windows 95/98 and NT systems can be set up with registry values and individual network information including a unique SID for NT. In addition, remote image or file downloads and rebooting are available. Use of the control center is not intuitive, but the manual does an excellent job in explaining the various operations necessary for setup. First a multicast client boot disk must be built, then the Post Configure injector added, and finally the Remote Reboot programs added to the model computer to be cloned. …