I do a lot of computer work. I was thinking of offering a guarantee to my customers where I could offer an aditional service. I would simply create a compressed disk image of their computer and keep it on file. Good thought, however it doesn't exactly fit my funding options. The amount of space needed for each computer is ridiculas. Some OS's with a few installed programs, even compressed, is well over 5GB. Not to mention I would have to RAID it all out and the security measures against attacks.

So I was just reading about rootkits and came across a mention of finger printing an OS to use it to verify it later. I imagine a finger print would be a lot easier than trying to store a bunch of images. The general idea would be:

You pay me an extra $15.00 when I do a reinstall on your computer for the finger print service. I will make a fingerprint of your machine and keep it on record for up to 5 years. No matter what the software problem you incurr, I will give you a 50% discount on all future fixes (provided it doesn't require any hardware fixes), on that machine.

I think we both win because I can take any machine, no matter how badly infected, steal all the user data, make a list of installed programs, and do a verify and replace of all files according to the fingerprint. I would save a bunch of time and you would save a bunch of money. (Note to DIY guys, some people would rather pay to have their machine fixed)

I know there are a few cons, you know like further installed software since last visit, updates and such. Any other thoughts on the matter?

Any one know any good finger print software?

Thanks Guys.

As an alternative have you looked into bluray disks for back up of your clients rather then compressed imaging onto another hard drive or the one they have? With 25 gigs min up to 200 on some and typical 50gig on dual layer. Seems you could make a nice library for your clients.

I was think of something along that line, even flash disks, but comparatively saving data on massive hard drives is far more efficient than trying to use disks and pricewise, per gig it is cheaper. I can set up a simple database with RAID. If a disk gets scratch or broken, that's it.

By fingerprint I mean it makes a list of all the files and an md5 checksum or something, then if anything changes or is has been modified, then it will report. If you get a bad virus it would allow you to delete all files that changed and replaces the necessary ones. This way it would save the time of rebuilding... Just software based.