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PC Wipe Off & Application Migration

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by xpertdragon 1 view

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I actually have 2 questions in one on this posting:

1.) I am curious to what other IT Support Professionals and Techs do when it comes time to Wipe a computer clean and start from scratch, fresh, anew, however you want to look at it. With all the utilities that are around today, the simple "Format" command seems old-fashioned and an old way of doing things if you will. What Utilities and or methods does everyone use these days? For instance, sticking in a boot disk, issuing a command, and wiping a computer clean. I am interested in both Secure (As much data deletion on the sectors as possible) and Non-Secure methods besides "Format". Thanks.

2.) I am still in search of software that will help with Application Migration. Something that allows you to take a common set of installed Applications, Bundle them up, and distribute them onto different PCs with different OS's, such as Windows98, 2000, NT. I know such software exists out there somewhere, and is similar to Ghost. Thank you very much.

Paul M. Chavez

5 replies

by thechas

Part 1:
I use the OS startup disk, and fdisk the drive when I wish to start over from scratch.

I have a hot swap bay in my main PC that I use to back-up files from the drive, and copy the OS and driver files onto a logical drive in the extended partition.

If I just want to wipe out the OS, I place the drive in the hot swap bay, and delete the files in the root folder of the boot drive, and the Windows folders.
This way, I can be selective, and leave the users favorites. startmenu, and shortcuts in place.
I still need to re-install the application software, but the users "custom" settings are maintained.

Many IT pro's use a drive image, and wipe the drive, then install the image. The image is akin to a backup, and has all of the pertinent applications, drivers, and OS patches already in place.

Part 2:
The previusly discussed imaging is one way.
Intellimirror is another.
On-Track's Fix-It Suite has an application back-up and removal tool that is suppossed to be able to remove and transport applications between PCs.

Chas

by shanghai sam

As far as format and fdisk, I still use and like both of them. I will on occasion use symantec's gdisk, as it is a little more versatile and seems to do a great job removing partitions, but I always use fdisk to create partitions. Partition magic and it's ilk are mainly overlays and don't save logical drives as well.

I have actually given up on cross platform migration solutions. I prefer to create one image (done with full installs initially) and use that to "ghost" workstations which will use that set of programs. Even just in the windows family, migration seems to create driver and registry problems that take as long to fix as it does to create an image from scratch in the first place.

by xpertdragon

Thanks for the Advice. Sorry, I couldn't award points on this one, as you hit the "User Deleted" status. There will be other chances though. Everyone in this forum is very helpful.

Paul M. Chavez

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