Creating images with NetRestore

bvd

Registered
Several points about creating images with NetRestore I would like to pass on to others.

1) Using a Mac out of the box to create your image is not a good idea. The image is far larger than it would need to be (haven't figured out why yet).

I have created an OS X 10.3.9 image from scratch, using a MacOS X 10.3 installer, going through all the updates, and installing the exact same software that comes on the Macs, and my image from scratch is almost 3 times smaller than when creating the image with what comes on a brand new Mac. My OS X 10.3.9 image is only 1.22Gb in size (AppleWork 6, FileMaker 6, FileMaker 7, FirstClass Client, Firefox, Safari, Explorer, iLife '05, plus others).

My OS X 10.4.2 image is only 3.4Gb in size.

This makes for very quick restores (less than 10 minutes from a FW HD).

2) I use a OS X 10.3.9 FW hard drive for restoring. I think there is a problem with using NetRestore 3.0.3 (and earlier) and OS X 10.4.x as a boot up drive to restore. After the restore, a lot of 'invisible' files are showing looking like shortcuts (eg. etc, tmp, etc). When using the exact same image but restored from a OS X 10.3.9 FW HD using NetRestore 2.02, the files remain 'invisible'. Restoring 10.4 from a FW 10.3.9 works just fine, and I can use old 6Gb HDs to perform the restores! We purchased a lot of WiebeTech SuperDrive Docks just for this purpose and it works great.
 
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