Surface Pro 3 Imaging

[Tim.Trageser]

Okay, so a bit of info about Surface Pro 3. Once you boot into Windows the Drive itself is encrypted. The files are still open so if you copy them off you can access them, but you cannot access anything in the drive or manipulate the Partitions from outside the OS.

The only way to dycrypt the drive that I have found so far and am about to test is to turn BitLocker on fully sending the keys to a flash drive, then turn off Bitlocker.

I will let you know if that works. According the Internet if you do not boot into the OS then the drive should not be encrypted.

[Wayne Workman]

A better question is…

If you take a RAW image, and deploy that to multiple Surface Pros, does it work?

Because a little longer deploy time and a little bigger image TO ME is far better than the hassle with encrypting/decrypting and USB flash drive keys and all that jazz.

[ch3i]

@Tim.Trageser Format and install a fresh Windows

[Tim.Trageser]

This system that I am starting with was deployed before I got here and set up FOG. The person has now left the company and before I start messing with creating a Generic Image for all the new Surfaces I want to back this one up as is. I would not care about the size of the image except I am waiting on more storage space to become available and don’t have the room at the moment to have a 250 GB image sitting out there.

[ch3i]

@Tim.Trageser Can you test to disable bitlocker and upload your image on FOG ? (http://wind8apps.com/disable-bitlocker-windows-8/)

[Tim.Trageser]

ALready in the process of decrypting after turning it off. Will post once I try imaging it.

[Tom Elliott]

This may sound crazy now, but does anybody remember that we zip the image files? This means that while a raw copy takes a lot longer, the actual size on disk is much smaller than the size of the image when on disk. This same principle is in affect for all imaging types. Free space compresses quite nicely. This means that your 250 gb disk may need this same size or larger disk to image onto, actual size on disk may be around 70 gb on server.

[need2]

Make sure you have fully updated your Surface Pro 3 prior to imaging. There have been significant changes to its UEFI BIOS of the past couple of months, even specifically impacting network boot.

[ch3i]

@Tom-Elliott said:

This may sound crazy now, but does anybody remember that we zip the image files? This means that while a raw copy takes a lot longer, the actual size on disk is much smaller than the size of the image when on disk. This same principle is in affect for all imaging types. Free space compresses quite nicely. This means that your 250 gb disk may need this same size or larger disk to image onto, actual size on disk may be around 70 gb on server.

Hi,

Not sure about that, in my previous job I had all of laptops crypted with Truecrypt (whole disk), all dump with compression are simple DD… I was in 0.32.

Regards,
Ch3i.

[Tom Elliott]

Yep, but using partclone I only have to call one method for everything.
@ch3i said:

@Tom-Elliott said:

This may sound crazy now, but does anybody remember that we zip the image files? This means that while a raw copy takes a lot longer, the actual size on disk is much smaller than the size of the image when on disk. This same principle is in affect for all imaging types. Free space compresses quite nicely. This means that your 250 gb disk may need this same size or larger disk to image onto, actual size on disk may be around 70 gb on server.

Hi,

Not sure about that, in my previous job I had all of laptops crypted with Truecrypt (whole disk), all dump with compression are simple DD… I was in 0.32.

Regards,
Ch3i.

[Wayne Workman]

@Tim-Trageser

We are requesting that all community members who have Surface Pros to please do a packet capture, to capture the DHCP conversation the client sends out at boot time via the ethernet dock, and upload the capture here. The intent is to gather more information about the Surface Pro, so fog can better support network booting it.

Thanks,
Wayne