Microsoft Surface 3 - Manual (Page 14)

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entered manually. Another example is the pairing wizard for the Surface Pen for Surface Pro 3, which is covered in more
detail in the
Pen Pairing section of Chapter 8 .
In other cases, many of the answers to question prompts are known in advance and are therefore predetermined. In
these cases Windows Setup can be configured to supply these predetermined answers to avoid prompting the user.
Answers to the setup questions are stored in an Answer File. In addition to supplying answers for the prompts which are
presented by the OOBE experience, a wide variety of additional settings are available which instruct Windows Setup to
perform additional tasks or to alter its behavior. A complete reference of the available settings for an answer file and
Windows Setup is linked in the
References section of the Appendix .
Image Servicing
Some 3 rd -party imaging tools capture images by reading each sector of the storage media and creating an exact
duplicate of the storage media. This type of image is referred to as a sector-based image. Sector-based images have two
disadvantages: lack of granularity and poor serviceability.
When a sector-based image is applied to a system, it overwrites the configuration of the storage media that includes
partitioning, file systems, etc. As such, it is impossible to apply only part of the image or to apply the image in a way that
is non-destructive to the files that reside on the storage media.
As sector-based images lack the ability to distinguish between individual files within the image, they are also difficult to
modify, or service, after creation. To explore the files within a sector-based image, a mounting solution is required that
emulates a hardware device and presents the data to the operating system sector-by-sector. Due to this level of
complexity required for sector-based images to access the files within an image, making modifications or alterations to
the files within an image is often less efficient than deploying that image to a system, modifying it, then recapturing.
On the other hand, file-based images, such as those created in the Windows Imaging format (WIM), are not subject to
the limitations of sector-based images. File-based images are captured at the file system level and thus are aware of the
individual files within them. They can be thought of as a large ZIP or archive file in which all of the files for the
environment are stored. They can be deployed to an existing file system without destruction of the data in that file
system, which is beneficial for migration scenarios where preservation of user data is required.
File-based images can also be edited directly using tools for servicing the image. For example, an existing file-based
image that is configured for a specific make and model of computer can have the drivers and files required for another
computer injected or inserted into the image so that it can be deployed to a platform for which it was not originally
intended. Another example is where Windows Updates can be applied to a Windows image to ensure that the deployed
computer is fully up-to-date.
Table 2.1 outlines the benefits of the different types of image technologies.
Sector-Based Images File-Based Images

Not Serviceable

By drive

Destructive

Not Flexible

Serviceable

By partition

Non-Destructive

Flexible
Table 2.1: Benefits of Imaging Technologies.