What is the difference between installing vs imaging?

Question

_{Sunday, April 16, 2017 10:53 AM}

Hi all,

A question for anyone to answer, what is the difference between installing vs imaging? Say if someone brings in a laptop or PC which is not on a domain and you want their laptop or PC to be imaged with a custom image using WDS but do not want to overwrite the OS on their laptop or PC, can this be done? If so, does a separate partition need to be created on the laptop or PC?

Kind regards,

RocknRollTim

All replies (3)

_{Sunday, April 16, 2017 11:25 AM ✅Answered}

Hi,

Installing will give you a clean desktop and you will have to install any extra software, updates, drivers or anything else you need to have on it. 

An image can be as simple as the OS or complex with many pieces of software installed and configured. With an image you can also stage drivers for many different models so when the machine finishes up sysprep all the drivers are installed. So with an image you configure template which you will deploy on many machines and to avoid updating, installing the system over and over again.

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(nedimmehic.org)

_{Sunday, April 16, 2017 1:45 PM}

Hi Nedim,

Thank for responding to my thread as well as explaining the terms installing and imaging with regards to WDS. With regards to my question on whether a PC can be re-imaged when an OS is present, will the OS need to be erased as part of the re-imaging process or can it be retained using a separate partition on the PC?

Kind regards,

RocknRollTim

_{Sunday, April 16, 2017 3:37 PM}

Hi Nedim,

Thank you for getting back to me, thought you would have to do it that way in order to achieve a dual or multi boot. Once again thank you for all your help.

Regards,

RocknRollTim