[pauledavey]

Chaps\chapesses,

I have the latest version of Winpe from Microsoft and deploycentre library from the now sold powerquest.

there is a winpe imaging tool in powerquest called PQIDeploy. I have put this in to winpe and created some scripts and all looks good.

The strange thing is that it seems to take longer to image the 1st hd to the 2nd hd or from the hd to a network drive, than it did using the old version of pQIDeploy which ran in DOS!!! I thought the winpe version would be quicker as it has teh 32bit drivers loaded for disk access..

Has anyone else got any idea's on how to speed this up a bit, or has anyone else seen this at all?

Many thanks in advance,
Paul

[pauledavey]

*bump*

Any idea's?

[Jotnar]

Do the images your creating under WinPE have a higher compression level than what you used before? If you can track down ImageCenter32, its a WinPE GUI for PQIDeploy.exe that was created by a guy at PowerQuest and can help you make sure your command line is ok. I know that for me imaging over the network was slower in DOS because of the network drivers. Seems to go faster in WinPE but maybe thats just me.

Cheers

[pauledavey]

Jotnar,

Thanks for the reply.

The compression is the same as I used before. The network driver on this machine is the driver from HP, added in to the WinPE distribution using the drvinst.exe tool (broadcom 10/100 adaptor in an HP DC7100\HP DC530)

Do you know where I can get the GUI you speak of, as Powerquest have now been bought by Symantec, it is very hard to get anything out of them.

[Bilou_Gateux]

Can you post some of your scripts and their purpose. I will be interested to use them instead of the built-in dispart.exe from M$.

[pauledavey]

The scripts are pretty boring and are lifted straight out of the menu. SO for instance, we have an image on one partition for restore purposes and then a restore script which is along the lines of

select partition 2
delete
select freespace first
restore

All of the scripts are lifted from examples that come in the manual with Deploycentre Toolkit.

P

[ChrisBaksa]

pauledavey, on Dec 11 2004, 10:54 AM, said:

The strange thing is that it seems to take longer to image the 1st hd to the 2nd hd or from the hd to a network drive, than it did using the old version of pQIDeploy which ran in DOS!!! I thought the winpe version would be quicker as it has teh 32bit drivers loaded for disk access..

Has anyone else got any idea's on how to speed this up a bit, or has anyone else seen this at all?

Many thanks in advance,
Paul

Network speed.
Make sure your network speed is set properly. Auto settings can sometimes increase the imaging tims.

Chris

[pauledavey]

but can't effect disk to disk speed though!

[ChrisBaksa]

pauledavey, on Dec 14 2004, 08:01 AM, said:

but can't effect disk to disk speed though! 

Coul be the re-size option.
If the partitoin you are restoring to is not exactly the same size.. It will re-size. That increases the time.

Here are 2 of my scripts...


// NON Destructive Mode - Unattend Build
// RE-INSTALLS OS WITHOUT TOUCHING DATA ON OTHER DRIVES

select drive 1
select Partition %ActivePartition% + 1
delete
select freespace first
create /fS=FAT32 /LABEL="SYSTEM"
select partition "SYSTEM"
Set Active

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

// NON Destructive Mode - IMAGE Build
// RE-INSTALLS OS WITHOUT TOUCHING DATA ON OTHER DRIVES

select drive 1
select Partition %ActivePartition% + 1
delete
select freespace first

// Restore Options
SET IMAGE FILENAME %Image%
SELECT IMAGE ALL
RESIZE IMAGE MAX
RESTORE


Chris

[pauledavey]

OK - 2 seperate hard disks
no resizing going on - thats is done with sysprep POST image restore
its a straight restore, image created with HIGH compression

The same image is quicker to restore in dos rather than winpe

[ChrisBaksa]

pauledavey, on Dec 14 2004, 03:52 PM, said:

The same image is quicker to restore in dos rather than winpe

Don't have an answer for ya there.
Thats not typically what people see.
WinPE is a 32 bit OS. Are you using the 32 bit version of PQIDEPLOY (win version)?

You don't want to be using the 16 bit ver in PE.

The latest Ghost suite can restore PQI files.

Chris

[pauledavey]

Yes - I am using the latest version for Winpe of the deploy tool.

It's a real shame this is happening - perhaps I will have to upgrade to Ghost?!?!

[Radimus]

you may end up doing so, since Symantec is killing it off

[Jotnar]

From my experience so far:

1. Ghost32 and PQIDeploy in WinPE image faster than in DOS over the network, but slower disk to disk.

2. Ghost 9 (rebranded Drive Image 7 that can work with .gho files) doesn't seem to go any faster than PQIDeploy and it requires 256mb of RAM to boot up so you can restore.

3. Symantec is basically replacing their consumer version of Ghost 2003 with Ghost 9 (rebranded Drive Image 7 that can work with .gho files). But I think they still include Ghost 2003 in the package?

I'd stick with PQIDeploy (DOS version) for disk to disk and PQIDeploy (Win32 version) for network to disk. Hell, I think they even have a Linux version on the DeployCenter Library disc don't they?

Cheers

[Fredo]

Did you try the -PRI or the -OVI parameters ?

They might change a lot the use of PQIDeploy especially on a disk-to-disk imaging or restore process.

Regarding Ghost Solution Suite, it is a suite (sounds logic) of Ghost 8.2 Corporate Edition and Symantec Client Migration 3.0 PLUS DeployCenter 5.6 and Deploy Toolkit 2.6. So you, former PowerQuest users, can still use your PQI files.

On the retail side, Ghost 9.0 does include Ghost 2003 for Win9x/NT users.

NB: You can even use the Ghost Console to deploy your PQI images.

[pauledavey]

Quote

Did you try the -PRI or the -OVI parameters

What difference should these two paramters make?


Thanks

Paul

[Fredo]

Here are the parameter's effect:

/OVI=<number> Overlapped I/O. Controls the multi-threading used by this version. This switch is only used when restoring an image.

0 - no multi-threading.
1 - Overlap PQI reading and decompression with Disk writes (2 threads)
2 - Overlap PQI reading with decompression (2 threads)
3 - Overlap PQI Reading with decompression and with Disk writes (3 threads)
4 - Same as 0
5 - Same as 1
6 - Same as 2 but with PQI read-ahead
7 - Same as 3 but with PQI read-ahead

The default value is 3. Setting this value optimally can significantly improve performance. When the PQI is on the same disk as the partition that is being restored, the optimal value will probably be either 2 or 6.

In most other cases, the optimal value will be 3 or 7, unless the partition data is highly fragmented.

/PRI=<number> Set process priority. Accepts values 1-6.

1 - Idle priority
2 - Below normal priority (New to XP - not yet supported)
3 - Normal priority
4 - Above normal priority (New to XP - not yet supported)
5 - High priority
6 - Real-time priority

The default value is 3. If no other processes are running on the machine at the same time as PQIDeploy, this switch has very little effect. However, when other processes are running, such as system diagnostics, you can use it to control whether PQIDeploy runs at a higher or lower priority than those other
processes.

[risolutore]

Powerquest deploy...what a program I have never seeen a BartPe plugin for it. then as you know it switched to symantech and to .NEt framework...a long history

[Azerthoth]

Could someone send me the ImageCenter32 front end for PQADeploy? I can't find it anywhere now that Symantec has taken over...

[ChrisBaksa]

Azerthoth, on Jan 13 2005, 02:48 PM, said:

Could someone send me the ImageCenter32 front end for PQADeploy?  I can't find it anywhere now that Symantec has taken over...

Ahhh.. The coveted Imagecenter32.
I have it. Symantec ripped it off the web page once they took the reigns.
It's not supported in anay way. It never went past version 1.0.

Give me an address to send it to.
You can't use it without PQI deploy and it's not a product that was "sold" so I see no harm in sending it.

Chris