One of the simplest and best tools on the market for duplicating operating systems is Binary Research International's Universal Imaging Utility (UIU). The utility is famous for generating hardware-independent images that can be deployed to any PC.
Version 3.5 of the imaging tool supports Vista, Tablet PC and other Windows client OSes. UIU supports thousands of device drivers for many different PC components.
Creating a master image with UIU only takes four simple steps. The first step is probably the most important. Users have to decide what applications to include in a master. Binary Research does not recommend creating images from laptops because they tend to have hardware-specific power management applications. However, if system builders are careful, laptops can be ghosted with generic configuration.
UIU arrives with automatic HAL detection with compatible ACPI, uni- and multiprocessor systems, so images from systems that are three years old still can be generated. Enterprisewide master images should be as generic as possible, so even motherboards with SCSI support shouldn't halt large deployments. UIU comes with some steps for SCSI drivers.
UIU 3.5 comes with a new driver update methodology that now updates drivers on an individual basis, as long as drivers are available. UIU can create images even when drivers are missing. However, Binary Research strongly recommends removing wrong drivers installed from a master machine before creating an image. Likewise, drivers that are not going to be used should be removed as well.
UIU's images work with disk imaging tools such as Ghost, Altiris, ZENworks, Acronis, DeployCenter and True Image. The images also are useful for cloning on environments in which authentication and other network policies are required from source PCs before cloning is performed.
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