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Vista Deployment, the Ximage and WIM image format
Windows Vista deployment is based on disk imaging, and the operating system will come with a built-in disk-imaging tool: XImageXImage itself is a rather straightforward program. It's a simple, command-line drive utility that you run from the command prompt or from Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE). In other words, you interact with XImage the same way you interact with Xcopy.(continue at source)
XImage uses the Microsoft Windows Imaging Format (WIM) image format.
Instead of the sector-based image formats, which are rather common these days, the WIM image format is file-based. Using a file-based image format, WIM provides several benefits over other formats:
• This WIM image format is hardware-agnostic, meaning that you need only one image to address many different hardware configurations.
• The WIM image format also lets you store multiple images within one actual file. For example, Microsoft can ship multiple SKUs in one WIM image file. You store images with and without core applications in a single image file. Also, you can mark one of the images as bootable, allowing you to start a computer from a disk image contained in a WIM file.
• The WIM image format enables compression and single instancing, thus reducing the size of image files significantly. Single instancing is a technique that allows you to store two or more copies of a file for the space cost of one copy. For example, if images 1, 2, and 3 all contain file A, single-instancing stores a single copy of the file A and points images 1, 2, and 3 to that copy.
• The WIM image format allows you to service an image offline. You can add or delete certain operating system components, patches, and drivers without creating a new image. Rather than spending a few hours updating an image, which you do now with Microsoft Windows XP, for example, you can update an image in minutes. For example, to add a patch to a Windows XP image, you must boot the master image, add the patch, and then prepare the image again. With Windows Vista, you can simply service the image offline.
• The WIM image format lets you install a disk image on partitions of any size, unlike sector-based image formats that require you to deploy a disk image to a partition that's the same size or larger than the source disk.
• Windows Vista provides an API for the WIM image format called WIMGAPI that developers can use to work with WIM image files.
• The WIM image format allows for non-destructive deployment. This means that you can leave data on the volume to which you apply the image because the application of the image does not erase the disk's existing contents.