Rapid Desktop Replacement
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@BRRABill said:
What about bookmarks, things like that?
Again, I've taken this down to just the most basic of users. Your grandmother. The crazy guy who lives in the next apartments who knows you work with computers.
The more you take it to basic home users, the farther you get from imaging as a process. Imaging requires technical know how, always on connections, target devices on the network, etc.
Bookmarks are handled by any normal backup tool AND by all major browsers. No need for any special process there.
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@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
Crashplan, Backblaze... lots of good options. Very cheap. Good for those low end cases where users do not own a full infrastructure.
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@BRRABill said:
@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
That's actually what I use all the time. $5. Awesome.
But I've also had to restore the large amounts of data. Not awesome.
Especially with apps and settings involved.How much does the average user have though? We are talking home users who place stuff on their drive and hope for the best. Something is better then nothing in this case.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
You can legally image your own machine for restoring to your own (same) computer with an OEM license.
Yes but you can't legally spin it up to test that it's actually working. I mean, you can access files, but not the image itself.
All you can do is pray, and drink beer, and be happy.
Although accessing the files is all that you would need or generally want.
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@BRRABill said:
@coliver said:
Recommend something like Crashplan... not instantaneous like you are expecting but the easiest way to do it.
That's actually what I use all the time. $5. Awesome.
But I've also had to restore the large amounts of data. Not awesome.
Especially with apps and settings involved.If you have a large amount of data, how long will it take to get an image to restore?
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@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
Is it really just a matter of ... hey if it is important to them they should know better?
Pretty much
.
.Or ... hey if it is really that important, it's more than just a personal machine and should be considered as such?
If it's a business machine, then the owner should care about these things. Needless to say, many don't think about it. They are spending most if not all of their time worrying about their core business, but they are failing their businesses because they are not also worrying about how their business will survive if that one machine that holds everything that matters to them suddenly dies.
One could argue that backups are about as core as business can get.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
You can legally image your own machine for restoring to your own (same) computer with an OEM license.
Yes but you can't legally spin it up to test that it's actually working. I mean, you can access files, but not the image itself.
All you can do is pray, and drink beer, and be happy.
Is that a real concern? Not one that I share. Though I'll disagree with you.. sure you can test it.
But a second drive for your computer. Then restore the image to that drive and run it in your computer for a while.. There you go, confirmed the image is good.. and you're always legal.
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@Dashrender said:
But a second drive for your computer. Then restore the image to that drive and run it in your computer for a while.. There you go, confirmed the image is good.. and you're always legal.
But that is hard. (LOL. Kidding.)
That's another lesson I have learned from this. A lot of this stuff works, and is for the convenience of IT. At a cost of licensing, of course.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
Is it really just a matter of ... hey if it is important to them they should know better?
Pretty much
.
.Or ... hey if it is really that important, it's more than just a personal machine and should be considered as such?
If it's a business machine, then the owner should care about these things. Needless to say, many don't think about it. They are spending most if not all of their time worrying about their core business, but they are failing their businesses because they are not also worrying about how their business will survive if that one machine that holds everything that matters to them suddenly dies.
One could argue that backups are about as core as business can get.
While I tend to agree with you, the countless thread at SW and in numerous other sites around the web show that business owners often overlook this.
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@scottalanmiller said:
You don't do imaging for restores, or you don't have a standard deployment image?
I don't have a standard deployment image. And I don't do fresh installs, I'm happy with the HP image and uninstalling any bloatware (which isn't much, just a few HP utilities, there isn't generally any 3rd party crap anymore)
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
But a second drive for your computer. Then restore the image to that drive and run it in your computer for a while.. There you go, confirmed the image is good.. and you're always legal.
But that is hard. (LOL. Kidding.)
That's another lesson I have learned from this. A lot of this stuff works, and is for the convenience of IT. At a cost of licensing, of course.
While that is totally true (in some cases like MS Windows) I'm not seeing this as a convenience. I think that MS has licensing restrictions around this because this is not a good use case and they are licensing for other reasons.
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@BRRABill said:
@Dashrender said:
But a second drive for your computer. Then restore the image to that drive and run it in your computer for a while.. There you go, confirmed the image is good.. and you're always legal.
But that is hard. (LOL. Kidding.)
That's another lesson I have learned from this. A lot of this stuff works, and is for the convenience of IT. At a cost of licensing, of course.
You had a problem, and I provided a simple solution. one that's pretty cheap to. Heck, using something like Clonezilla (which is 100% free) you could the drive into the computer, boot from the Clonezilla media, image from one drive to the other, then disconnect the first drive and boot.. test it, shut it down, disconnect the second drive, connect the first drive and go to work... every time you want to take an image.. just connect the second drive and do the above process again.
Is this for the normal home user - of course not!
The normal home user should be shoved into a Chromebook. Then 100% of their stuff is in the cloud and they just buy a new device and keep working.. problem solved.
But if you have special applications, settings, etc as you've mentioned - then you are no longer normal, and you need to act as such.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't do imaging for restores, or you don't have a standard deployment image?
I don't have a standard deployment image. And I don't do fresh installs, I'm happy with the HP image and uninstalling any bloatware (which isn't much, just a few HP utilities, there isn't generally any 3rd party crap anymore)
Even at five minutes, seems like at that size it would justify a standard image. We use HP and to avoid the bloatware on ten machines we found the VL to be well worth it. Makes for a more stable system too, slightly.
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@Dashrender is correct. Typical home users need Chromebooks.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't do imaging for restores, or you don't have a standard deployment image?
I don't have a standard deployment image. And I don't do fresh installs, I'm happy with the HP image and uninstalling any bloatware (which isn't much, just a few HP utilities, there isn't generally any 3rd party crap anymore)
You never know for sure what could be hidden in a factory install.
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@Jason said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You don't do imaging for restores, or you don't have a standard deployment image?
I don't have a standard deployment image. And I don't do fresh installs, I'm happy with the HP image and uninstalling any bloatware (which isn't much, just a few HP utilities, there isn't generally any 3rd party crap anymore)
You never know for sure what could be hidden in a factory install.
- cough * Lenovo * cough *
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If I was doing 10 at a time I'd probably image, but I tend to do less than that to spread the workload a bit.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
If I was doing 10 at a time I'd probably image, but I tend to do less than that to spread the workload a bit.
that's not really the point - unless your point is to waste your company's resources, namely your time.
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How rude! I believe imaging would take me longer - obviously.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The answer here should be to move those critical data-storing apps elsewhere. To a server, to a hosted site... whatever. A high quality VPS starts at $5/mo. If the system isn't worth $5, it's not critical in the least.
Recommendation, for future storage ... in my brain?
I think this may have been missed in all the back and forth.
