Applying Updates across multiple versions clarification

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jsmith51034

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I just have a really simple question, that I apologize in advance that I wasn't able to find another post regarding this, when I tried to search. Perhaps I missed a post that was already there.

My question is, When applying downloaded updates to an image, If one version is loaded when those updates are applied, do you have to check "apply across versions"
for the updates to be present in all versions, or is one enough?

And if you do have to apply across all versions, can you just reload the image, an select that option, or do you have to start with a fresh instance, and make sure you tick that option when you process it fresh?

Thank you for your assistance.
 
Normally, you will load one image at a time and apply changes to it, which may include Updates. To save time and process multiple images you can choose to apply the same Updates, Features changes, and Settings to other images in the same processing run. This saves you the step of loading one image at a time, and repeating your steps multiple times.

When you select "Apply across other versions", you can choose as many or as little changes as you want. Maybe you want the same Updates, but not the same Settings. So you don't check those boxes. Maybe you want Updates applied to the 5 other editions at the same time, or maybe you really don't care about some of them. It's up to you.

But beware if you decide to keep multiple editions, and Apply the same Updates to all (or some) of them – processing takes a long time. If you can remove unneeded editions at the same time (also found in the "Apply across other versions"), it will dramatically speed up processing.
 
Thank you, that clears things up a bit for me, with updates for example, assuming I was working with two versions with the same cpu architecture, that originally came inside the same source ISO, if I was to apply an update loaded in one version, into the other, would it take up double space, or would there just be hard link for both versions pointing to the same file? Assuming the update was compatible with both versions, eg pro, home etc. Thank you.
 
As you correctly guessed, the largest time factor in processing multiple Windows editions is the de-duplication of identical files.

For the most part, each Home, Pro, EDU and Enteprise editions share a large percentage of core files. Some of the bundled components or apps, and default policy settings may be different, but underneath there's a huge number of shared files.

When NTLite extracts an image, great care is taken at the filesystem level to preserve hard links when processing updates (which is why Windows image servicing cannot be done on a Mac or Linux). The final step for creating a WIM is another pass at checking for shared hard links across the different images and de-duping as much as possible, before performing any compression.

Like a number of intensive computer operations, the cost to create an image which is optimized for storage is high but it results in a relatively low overhead when extracted during the first Setup pass.

It's entirely possible to add two or more Windows images that don't share anything in common, like a W7 image next to W10. wimlib will try its best to see if it can optimize the combined WIM, but it won't result in the same compression like saving 5 W11 images at the same time.

That's how MS can release 6-7 Windows editions in a 5 GB ISO.
 
I appreciate you taking the time to break this down for me. This answered the questions I had, it seems the prudent step would be to start from scratch, and integrate what Ive learned here and do it first from the start. Thanks.
 
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