Dell OptiPlex reimage issues

[Amy Pedigo]

We're having some trouble with our newest image, and I'm hoping someone may have some advice.  We have a mix of Dell products, Latitude and OptiPlex models.  Our newest image has outgrown FAT32 formatting, as our thumb drives seem to be coming in with SSD installed and the 4gb taken up by the drive controller is not removable and is eating into our available space, only allowing for 28gb of 32 gb to be used. 

We’re currently creating Offline deployment media, as we have multiple locations and don’t have the infrastructure to host online imaging.

We converted to NTFS, and our image was successful on our laptops, but our desktops are consistently coming back with no bootable device found.  We’ve tried toggling every bios setting we can think of and running the drives with and without platform packs.  I’ve tried creating bootable media without platform packs installed, but it’s still too large for FAT32.  Due to our company’s requirements, I have nothing I can remove from the image to try to shrink it. 

OptiPlex 5060 and 5070 are what I’ve been testing with most recently.

[Jeff Harris]

If you're using NTFS booted media, SmartDeploy is going to boot into Legacy BIOS mode and configure the image as such, even if the system is actually set to UEFI Mode. This would explain why the deployment completes, restarts, and then can't find the disk to boot. 

You should be using the SmartDeploy Console to create your boot media in FAT32 mode, and deploy to your system set to UEFI, with Secure Boot enabled. The Media Wizard will split your image for you. 

If you're still having issues then you'll need to submit a support request. 

[Amy Pedigo]

16 hours ago, Jeff Harris said:

If you're using NTFS booted media, SmartDeploy is going to boot into Legacy BIOS mode and configure the image as such, even if the system is actually set to UEFI Mode. This would explain why the deployment completes, restarts, and then can't find the disk to boot. 

You should be using the SmartDeploy Console to create your boot media in FAT32 mode, and deploy to your system set to UEFI, with Secure Boot enabled. The Media Wizard will split your image for you. 

If you're still having issues then you'll need to submit a support request. 

Hi Jeff, 

What options do we have if our image is too large to fit on a 32gb (28gb available) flash drive, with or without the platform packs?  We're unable to remove required security software from our image.  We've been working with FAT32 until now, but with the Windows 2004 upgrade and a new required software from our corporate team, it's been pushed over what will fit on the drives.

[Jeff Harris]

It will fit, being automatically split by SmartDeploy unless you have an individual file in your image that's over 4GB.

[DudeSweet]

This may not be of much help, but I would also question why your image is so large. If you are baking in a bunch of software, I would suggest, in the longer term, looking into software deployment and management platforms that let you manage and install software post-imaging, ideally without requiring VPN. Of course this is only applicable if the imaged PCs are on-net and will stay that way.