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Delta WIM File

qpx94
2013-02-05
2013-09-01
  • qpx94

    qpx94 - 2013-02-05

    Hallo,

    first of all, I want to say thanks for this great tool !!

    Is it possible to create a delta or differential wim image?
    For example in a virtualized environment you also have parent and child harddisks, so that you can just apply the delta that is missing on a new (virtual) child-harddisk instead of applying the whole image?

    thank and best regards
    qpx94

     
  • synchronicity

    synchronicity - 2013-02-05

    Hi,

    Delta WIM images are not supported, since the format itself provides no way to do this. The closest you can get is that if the child only has files added to it, you could make 2 successive WIM images, each containing a subset of the files.

    If you are dealing with virtualized environments you might want to consider disk-based deltas, such as VMWare or QEMU snapshots.

    Eric

     
  • synchronicity

    synchronicity - 2013-09-01

    Hi, just to follow up on this: wimlib v1.5.0 does indeed have support for "delta WIMs", although they aren't highly sophisticated. Basically, it is now possible to capture a new WIM that contains the full image metadata, but only contains the data streams not already present in another WIM. The other WIM then needs to be referenced (e.g. on the command line with wimlib-imagex) to apply the delta WIM. This feature is intended to save space when storing incremental backups with one backup per WIM file. Unfortunately it is not yet possible to "just apply the delta", as the delta WIM logically contains a full image and the delta is taken at the level of unique data streams, not the directory structure.

     

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