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how to clone/image system, deployment?

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phenix29152

n00b
Joined
Mar 14, 2006
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Scenario:

I have two of the same computers, and have set on up to be the way i want it. Took me about 3 - 4 hours to do. I would like the other to be the same, however different product key (windows xp sp3), computer name, user name and all of the *ID.

I just basically want to clone it and put it on the 2nd computer.
Both are the same computers.

What is the easiest way to do this?
 
Take one PC, run ghost on it, make an image of it, put the image onto the other PC, run sysprep or newsid or a keychanger and change the CDkey
 
Yea my initial approach was to ghost/image it and then keychanger and ... new *ID's ... but then i also read about sysprep ....

but not many tutorials out there.... is it hard to use? .... do you use it before or after Image? ... from the suggestion you gave it seems like you run it after.

thanks btw.
 
phenix29152 said:
but not many tutorials out there.... is it hard to use? .... do you use it before or after Image? ... from the suggestion you gave it seems like you run it after.
Click to expand...

It's not hard to use, ghost, run sysprep on new machine, you can pretty much acecpt defaults and click OK, its that easy.

Think about what your saying here, you can't run sysprep without windows being booted first, so if you run it before you ghost, you would have to do it on the source machine, then you would have to go through the setup process on both machines, do you really want to do that?
 
Alright ...

so from reading around i thought ... this
1.) run sysprep on a machine that you want to clone ... so it catches all the settings ... then an img is made?

2.) load it onto the identical (2nd) computer and just enter in new passwords, computer names and key.

http://www.vernalex.com/guides/sysprep/index.shtml

You guys know of any tutorials?

something else to think about. I am doing this for only one computer but lets say if you wanted to use the img all the time for the same type of computer, ex ... at a company, isnt it the same steps?
 
What about for those of us who don't want to pay Symantec for more of their potentially shoddy software? Any other good alternatives for imaging?
 
I've heard clonezilla is good.

And I'd steer clear of sysprep; I've had too many issues with it. I just use ghstwlker, but I'm sure any other SID changer would do the job.
 
this is what i got from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc783215.aspx

"You run Sysprep on the master computer before you create an image of the master computer’s hard disk. Sysprep configures various operating system settings on the master computer to ensure that every copy of the master computer’s disk image is unique when you distribute it to a destination computer."

any insight?
 
You can sysprep (or whatever) before making the image, or after.

Which one you choose to do, just think about which way will save you the most time and work.

If you're going to clone just once or so, it doesn't make sense to sysprep the source, then set it back up..and also setup the newly cloned machine. So just clone the source, put it back, and sysprep the new clone as you boot her up the first time.

If you're cloning to a whole fleet of workstations..it makes sense to sysprep the source drive first...(and probably put it away on the shelf for future cloning), as your new clones are already sysprepped...you can begin setting them up right on the first bootup. Sysprep once..instead of dozens or hundreds of times.
 
Yea.

That makes sense but

1.) what if one wanted to keep it as backup?, so if anything does mess up then just reimage the drive.

2.) what options in sysprep do you execute after the image has been uploaded to a new PC/drive to reset the *ID's, product key ... etc?
 
This is why volume licensing is nice. Just load the image up and change the computer name and your done.
 
If you don't have Ghost & the two machines are identical (particularly the HDD) you could use a Linux boot disk/LiveCD and do something like:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdd

(or whatever your drive letters end up being). It'd be slower than Ghost, since it's a byte-for-byte clone of the drive rather than Ghost's cloning just the files on the drive (IE - you're actively copying all the empty space on the drive too). There's probably some sort of purpose-built distro that just does it for you, if you want to look around.
 
ameoba said:
If you don't have Ghost & the two machines are identical (particularly the HDD) you could use a Linux boot disk/LiveCD and do something like:

dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdd

(or whatever your drive letters end up being). It'd be slower than Ghost, since it's a byte-for-byte clone of the drive rather than Ghost's cloning just the files on the drive (IE - you're actively copying all the empty space on the drive too). There's probably some sort of purpose-built distro that just does it for you, if you want to look around.
Click to expand...
:) Ya, download the clonezilla live cd. Understands NTFS and everything.

Keep in mind I'm still testing it out, so I can't endorse it or anything. But it seems to do just that ( although in my testing, NTFS performance is dog-like )
 
Samury said:
What about for those of us who don't want to pay Symantec for more of their potentially shoddy software? Any other good alternatives for imaging?
Click to expand...

imagex

If you really want to get into deployment, I suggest you take a look at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.
 
Google systemrescuecd and use partimage. You need to be familar enough with linux (Gentoo) to mount the remote share, but it's free and absolutely works (assuming your hardware is supported). As a matter of fact I'll walk you through the hard part since I just did it today.

First, make a directory to mount to - "mkdir /mnt/mynewdirectory"
To mount the drive, the command is "mount -t cifs -o username=<yourusername>,password=<yourpassword> //<IPADDRESS>/<SHARENAME> /mnt/mynewdirectory"

Then either "startx" for X windows or just "partimage" for partimage. Source is either /dev/hda (for Primary Master IDE drive) or hdb (for Primary Slave IDE drive) or sda (for either first scsi device or first SATA device. It'll show you the partition sizes. Partitions are labeled /dev/sda1 for first primary partition, 2, etc...

Save the file to /mnt/mynewdirectory/myimagefilename.anyextensionyouwantifyoulike. Boom! Done, for free.

dd works also, but as I think was mentioned is bit for bit and the destination drive must be equal or larger. It will also take longer to copy since it copies empty space too. Systemrescuecd has dd as well (as most all distributions do by default).
 
Alright so here were the steps i did so far.

1.) Sysprep ... then i restarted and i knew it worked because it was asking for all the information i set it to ask.

the problem is i want to clone the drive to another drive ... but both drives are in an "ALL IN ONE" computer.

so i planned to clone it to a partition on my 500GB hard drive (40GB partition) then move the data over to the other AIO.

I really wish i could take out the drives ... but it will be a *itch ... and on top of that the drives are 2.5" SATA ... i only have 3.5" SATA enclosure.

What do you guys recommend. I tried to do that clonezilla thing but damn that looks confusing.
 
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