how to image a server

if ido use that utility, cann i boot from a revoery cd or something, and then clone a drive?

or must i have the os installed?

Yes you can clone the drive to another system and you can mount the wim file and modify it .

WIM is a method that M$ came up with to make it easier to roll out hundreds of systems using an image file not unlike Ghost or Acronis.

ok,

so ask and you learn.. i am learning...

i have a usb  protable hooked to the server... with the use of this already installed MS product, i can make a clone.

then subsequently  use that image to restore my system?    do i have that right...

if yes.. then just wow...

Yes you can use external USB. But - the supported device list seems to be rather small so your particular device may or may not work.

Beware of 4k sector drives (>2tb)it will not work with the built in backup.

i have no idea what you mean?
i do have a 2 tb drive.    

i was actually considering this...

my hard drive os large... was going to partition part of it, and then make an image there...
isn't that how dell does it?

The gotcha is that the older drives <2tb use a 512 byte sector size,most of the newer >2 tb use an advanced sector size of 4 k bytes.
This is better for a number of reasons when dealing with newer larger drives.

However m$ wrote the backup app to use only the 512byte format (and hard coded the sector size to 512 bytes).

So using 4k sector drives as a USB backup fails.

Sucks,don't it?

M$ has said they have no plans to fix it.

But there are plenty of 3rd party backup apps that don't have that issue.

tha is a wow..... and yes it does suckk,,,

btw.. never heard them referred to as M$     i love that    :)