Why is that folder called "images?"

People are often puzzled by the use of the term “images” when we’re talking about ASI.  To understand why ASI labeled the directory that clients download "images" from “images” you need a little background information.  This is the first of four installments that will give you that background information and ultimately answer the question, why did they call that directory “images?”

Installments One: Ximage

Ximage is an imaging tool developed by the Windows team.  It is a command line tool with a feature set similar to Ghost.  You can point Ximage at any supported disk and it will take a snap-shot of that disk.  You can then restore that image to any disk, of appropriate size, as many times as you like.  Products such as Ghost were developed to provide a deployment solution for large organizations and/or to provide a back-up solution to consumers.  They also have become very popular with testing organizations.  The ability to setup a system, take a snap-shot of the exact configuration, run tests and then restore the system to a known state, in minutes, prior to beginning the next test pass, is extremely valuable for testers.

Ximage is different from Ghost in that it creates a file base image vs. a sector based image.  In my next installment I’ll discuss the Windows Image File format and some things that make that unique.