Using mklink to store images in an alternative location

Products

• Ghost Solution Suite

Issue/Introduction

When trying to save some space in the hosting hard drive where GSS (Ghost Solution Suite) is installed, either because there are large images or because other applications are consuming the remaining disk space. It is decided to move your Ghost images to a new drive.

Is there a way to map the new drive?

Environment

GSS 3.3 RUx

Resolution

*Disclaimer - Please be advised, the instructions below are provided as-is.  As such Symantec tech support is unable to provide further information.

The mklink command can be used to create a shortcut between your default images share and any other physically connected hard drive on the Ghost server. This is useful if you would like to use a different physical hard drive than the default images share, but you do not want to create a network share for this location.

If the second location is a network drive please see KB article Store images at different network location by mapping an additional drive in Ghost solution suite 3.x

You should consider storing images at different network location by mapping an additional drive in Ghost solution suite 3.x

An official Microsoft document for mklink is found here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-R2-and-2012/cc753194(v=ws.11)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Here is an example of how to use mklink. In this example there is a folder called "GhostImages" located on the F drive. You are replacing the default "Images" folder with the shortcut (mklink) that were created so that the default jobs and configurations will all still work, and will point to the alternative location.

1. Start a Command prompt As Administrator
2. Navigate to the installation location, usually \program files (x86)\Altiris\express\deployment
3. Type:

ren images oldimages
mklink /j /d Images f:\GhostImages

Now that the link is defined, your jobs must be configured to use that link, rather than pointing directly to the drive. When you browse for the path to your images you must select the link that you created:

Your job should appear as though it is configured to use the default images share:

You can see that ".\Images..." indicates the default images share, wherever that happens to be. In this case, it looks like it is saving the image to the default images share on the C drive, but since the link is created, the image will actually be on the F drive on the server in the GhostImages folder.

Additional Information

Store images at different network location by mapping an additional drive in Ghost solution suite 3.x