File Preservation

Products

• Deployment Solution

Issue/Introduction

 How to use file preservation in Deployment Solutions 8.x

Environment

DS 8x 

Resolution

DESCRIPTION:

File Preservation is a function of Ghost that can be used to preserve files and/or folders on a drive when deploying an image. Options for File Preservation are found in 'Deploy Image' tasks under 'Advanced'.

CRITICAL INFORMATION:

• Files and folders that have 'hard links' cannot be preserved. This includes the Windows 'User' folders. PCT or Xcopy can alternatively be used to save hard linked data.
• Folders cannot be combined. The original contents will be overwritten.
• Spaces in the folder names, file names, or file paths will result in a failed image deployment task.
• Image deployment can be aborted if file preservation file/folder cannot be found.
• File Preservation is available for Windows-images created/deployed via Ghost.
• When in automation, the C:\ drive is reserved for System Recovery, while the original contents of the C:\ drive are temporarily moved to the D:\ partition until reboot. Depending on the number of partitions on a drive, the original contents could be moved to another drive letter other than D:\. Be sure to have the correct drive letter assigned before using File Preservation or your data will be lost. Partition drive letters can be verified in automation.

 HOW TO USE FILE PRESERVATION:

Files and folders can be preserved at the same time to their original or new locations. They can also be renamed and moved to different disk partitions but not to different physical drives.

 

 'Folder' will be preserved to its original location. A destination path is not required.

'File.txt' will be moved to the Windows directory.

 'Folder' is moved and renamed.

A new location will be created and 'Folder' will be renamed on the 'Data' volume. As selected, if the file cannot be found the image deployment will be aborted.

 Files are preserved in sequential order. In the example above the following will happen:

1. 'Folder' will be preserved in its original location.
2. 'File.txt' will be moved to the Windows directory.
3. 'Folder' will be moved to the Windows directory and renamed.
4. If 'AnotherFolder' cannot be found, the job will fail and the image will not be deployed.