Dell Factory Partitions
We are currently deploying Dell E6410's with Windows 7 to users. When I recieved one of the new laptops I went into Audit Mode and configured the laptop exactly the way I wanted it and then resealed the machine. I captured the image to the Kace 2100 appliance and then redeployed them to all new E6410s that we receive.
Today I had a user who had a HDD die this weekend. When I put in the replacement hard drive and I ran the deploy of the image I ran into errors because the partitions were not setup.
I know there are scripts for creating a primary partition but I need to create one that recreates all of the dell partitions (OEM, Primary, OnReader, Recovery, etc). Is there a way to get the Kace 2100 to capture this or do I need to write a script for this? I've never had to write one before and it puts me in a bind because we have some drives with 160GB and some with 500GB depending on the user and what they do.
When I had Altiris I would Ghost thehard drive so I never had this issue.
Today I had a user who had a HDD die this weekend. When I put in the replacement hard drive and I ran the deploy of the image I ran into errors because the partitions were not setup.
I know there are scripts for creating a primary partition but I need to create one that recreates all of the dell partitions (OEM, Primary, OnReader, Recovery, etc). Is there a way to get the Kace 2100 to capture this or do I need to write a script for this? I've never had to write one before and it puts me in a bind because we have some drives with 160GB and some with 500GB depending on the user and what they do.
When I had Altiris I would Ghost thehard drive so I never had this issue.
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Posted by:
dyehardfan
13 years ago
It definitely would not be hard to create the partitions you need in your unattend.xml file. Repopulating them would probably be as simple as a robocopy post installation task. I am sure others on here have actually done it though, so there might be a better method.
ORIGINAL: Capt.Morgan
We are currently deploying Dell E6410's with Windows 7 to users. When I recieved one of the new laptops I went into Audit Mode and configured the laptop exactly the way I wanted it and then resealed the machine. I captured the image to the Kace 2100 appliance and then redeployed them to all new E6410s that we receive.
Today I had a user who had a HDD die this weekend. When I put in the replacement hard drive and I ran the deploy of the image I ran into errors because the partitions were not setup.
I know there are scripts for creating a primary partition but I need to create one that recreates all of the dell partitions (OEM, Primary, OnReader, Recovery, etc). Is there a way to get the Kace 2100 to capture this or do I need to write a script for this? I've never had to write one before and it puts me in a bind because we have some drives with 160GB and some with 500GB depending on the user and what they do.
When I had Altiris I would Ghost thehard drive so I never had this issue.
Posted by:
cblake
13 years ago
The difference is the other products you named are sector based. The K2000 is file-based. That is a huge benefit when you need flexibility, but if you're looking to recreate the disk then A preinstall task can easily handle this. There's a preinstall task for keeping the dell partition posted to the support site http://www.kace.com/support/kb/index.php?action=artikel&cat=54&id=1021&artlang=en
You'd obviously want to modify that script to create said partition, but esentially about the same.
You'd obviously want to modify that script to create said partition, but esentially about the same.
Posted by:
Capt.Morgan
13 years ago
Chris,
Thanks for the link. It did help a bit but in the end I spent about 30 minutes and wrote a custom diskpart script. Obviously Partition 3 would need to be changed to fit the drive size.
Here is what I had to do.
I emulated the default drive setup on the Dell. After pushing the image it would not boot and I had to boot into Windows setup and run start up repair twice. After I did this is modified the drive setup. I copied the drive setup and modified my diskpart code as listed below and I am now able to deploy my Win7 image on a new hard drive.
Thanks for the link. It did help a bit but in the end I spent about 30 minutes and wrote a custom diskpart script. Obviously Partition 3 would need to be changed to fit the drive size.
Here is what I had to do.
I emulated the default drive setup on the Dell. After pushing the image it would not boot and I had to boot into Windows setup and run start up repair twice. After I did this is modified the drive setup. I copied the drive setup and modified my diskpart code as listed below and I am now able to deploy my Win7 image on a new hard drive.
select disk 0
clean
create partition primary id=DE size=78
select partition 1
format fs=fat quick
create partition Primary size=750
select partition 2
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=E
create partition Primary size=473088
select partition 3
format fs=ntfs quick
active
assign letter=C
create partition extended size=2051
select partition 0
create partition logical size=2050
select partition 4
format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=D
exit
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