Software to automatically restore loaner laptops

[netsysadmin]

I know this is a little off topic, but I know that a good amount of you guys here are enterprise people that may have a better idea than the software forum.

I am looking for some software to automatically restore loaner laptops at my job? I have looked at deep freeze and it looks good, however we dont want the laptop to lose all added programs...settings...etc after a reboot. We would to specify when it should return back to its original state. We could reimage them, but that takes to long. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

John

 

[nweaver]

reimaging takes too long? Should be less then 10 minutes for a decent sized XP Pro image (well, maybe more with a slow laptop HDD, but still under 15 I would guess)

You could try the imaging/restore stuff from Persystant (sic?) that can be setup to work standalone, or with a server.

 

[netsysadmin]

Well sometimes we need to get them back out quickly. Also another issue with the images is keeping them up to date with all the MS updates/patches. That can take up a good amount of time also since we have to rebuild the image frequently.

John

 

[JackMDS]

You need an image, you need to Read the har drive so there is No miracles, it takes time.

http://www.Acronis.com has an array of very good products for this pupose.

 

[RebateMonger]

If they are standalone PCs, it'd seem like Windows Home Server could actually do what you need:
If you plug the laptop in overnight, then WHS would image it automatically. If you tell WHS to restore the PC, it would do so, to any image date you choose.

Unfortunately, WHS isn't available yet. :frown: And it can only handle 10 PCs.

 

[nweaver]

It takes even less time to make an image....so you push an image down once or twice a month (MS doesn't patch daily) and then you push it back up (again, less then 15 minutes usually using Altiris across the network for me)

 

[jlazzaro]

Acronis or Symantec Ghost. Both take about 10-15 min to push an entire image across the network.

Symantec also has multicast to image multiple pc's with the same stream. very useful...