This week I updated a number of our servers..
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Purchased new hardware as our existing servers were getting close to 5 years old in many cases and there is only so long you want to trust old faithful. So I decided in the process of moving the servers I would also upgrade the OS's to the latest versions, so decided to image the first machine I setup after I'd applied all relelvant fixes and Service Packs etc.
So using some software that can take an image of the drive and store the image on USB drive, DVD-R, CD-R etc. I created my first image. The software also provides the ability to create a boot CD so that you can boot from a CD and install the OS.
During this process I noticed all the new machines had the ability to boot from a USB device, so I thought hhmm, maybe I could create the boot disk for the imaging software onto a little thumb drive. Well when I first tried, the software put everything it needed onto the thumbdrive but the boot drive didn't contain any boot kernel so whenever I tried to boot I got an error. Bummer, mustn't be possible, but then I thought, nah has to be possible otherwise why would there be the option?
After some Googling I managed to find a little HP utlity (which runs on none HP devices) that will format a USB drive and also install the relevant system files if you have them available. So to do this I used: HP Utility and pointed it at an old Windows 98 CD for the system files.
Then I reinstalled the imaging software and voila it booted!
So this has got me thinking, you can buy a 512mb thumbdrive now for less than $40, and you could probably install knoppix Linux on it versus a CD, or if you wanted the version of Windows someone has done that boots of a CD, and put all your important files and apps on it. Then wherever you are, as long as you can find a machine that can boot from USB, you will always have the files you need with you.
What's really crazy, is if I went back and used nothing but Windows 3.1 and SmartSuite and Notes 4.x I'd probably still have 400 Mb free on the USB device. I know SmartSuite and Windows 3.1 on todays machines perform quicker now on modern machines, than the most recent OSs and Office Suites do.
Purchased new hardware as our existing servers were getting close to 5 years old in many cases and there is only so long you want to trust old faithful. So I decided in the process of moving the servers I would also upgrade the OS's to the latest versions, so decided to image the first machine I setup after I'd applied all relelvant fixes and Service Packs etc.
So using some software that can take an image of the drive and store the image on USB drive, DVD-R, CD-R etc. I created my first image. The software also provides the ability to create a boot CD so that you can boot from a CD and install the OS.
During this process I noticed all the new machines had the ability to boot from a USB device, so I thought hhmm, maybe I could create the boot disk for the imaging software onto a little thumb drive. Well when I first tried, the software put everything it needed onto the thumbdrive but the boot drive didn't contain any boot kernel so whenever I tried to boot I got an error. Bummer, mustn't be possible, but then I thought, nah has to be possible otherwise why would there be the option?
After some Googling I managed to find a little HP utlity (which runs on none HP devices) that will format a USB drive and also install the relevant system files if you have them available. So to do this I used: HP Utility and pointed it at an old Windows 98 CD for the system files.
Then I reinstalled the imaging software and voila it booted!
So this has got me thinking, you can buy a 512mb thumbdrive now for less than $40, and you could probably install knoppix Linux on it versus a CD, or if you wanted the version of Windows someone has done that boots of a CD, and put all your important files and apps on it. Then wherever you are, as long as you can find a machine that can boot from USB, you will always have the files you need with you.
What's really crazy, is if I went back and used nothing but Windows 3.1 and SmartSuite and Notes 4.x I'd probably still have 400 Mb free on the USB device. I know SmartSuite and Windows 3.1 on todays machines perform quicker now on modern machines, than the most recent OSs and Office Suites do.
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