BETA: Diagnostics & Recovery Toolset v8 now available

Posted by: kurtsh | April 4, 2012

BETA: Diagnostics & Recovery Toolset v8 now available

Ah. The nirvana of repairing PCs instead of reimaging them. It’s finally upon us.

As Microsoft continues to help businesses get the most out of their IT environment with new tools and solutions, today we’re making available the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset 8 (DaRT) beta release. The DaRT 8 beta is part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) and provides businesses using Windows 8 with a way to be more proactive with their desktop repair procedures. Using DaRT 8, businesses can develop recovery and support plans that best fit their IT staffing and infrastructure requirements to save time and reduce challenges associated with troubleshooting and repairing system failures.

DaRT 8 beta is designed to help IT professionals easily recover PCs that have become unusable, rapidly diagnose probable causes of issues, and quickly repair unbootable or locked-out systems, all faster than the average time it takes to reimage the machine. DaRT, in partnership with a desktop recovery plan, can help businesses minimize downtime of their systems, keeping employees productive. New features specific to the DaRT 8 beta that can help IT include the ability to:

Repair PCs instead of reimaging. The DaRT 8 beta enables IT professionals to easily recover PCs that have become unusable, rapidly diagnose probable causes of issues, and quickly repair unbootable or locked-out systems, all faster than the average time it takes to reimage the machine.
Use scripts to enable image creation. The DaRT 8 beta has an image creation wizard that is now built on top of PowerShell cmdlets, allowing IT departments to mount, create, apply, ad dismount and burn via scripting – ultimately letting the image creation process be saved and repurposed for later use. This kind of automation should save IT departments some time.

Provide native support for USB media deployments. In previous versions of DaRT, additional tools were required to place DaRT images on USB drives. With DaRT 8 beta, this functionality is natively supported in the image creation wizard, minimizing the number of tools required for USB deployment.

Create multiple images from one device. The DaRT 8 beta is able to create both 32-bit and 64-bit images on a single machine and transfer them between.

Choose the output format. Now as part of the image creation process, WIM and ISO output formats are supported in the DaRT 8 beta so that IT departments are sure the right format is an option for a broader deployment plan.