Help with "Clone/Copy" ?

[Barbarossa]

Well I'm a bit over my head here.

You guys seem to have the experience and expertise though.

I'm going to be doing this separate of the network, on a work bench.

I was going to set up one PC, and then pull the HD's out of the other 8.

Then attach to the cabling on the master computer, and copy.
(this is where I'm stuck)

Install the HD's back into the systems and go from there with renaming.

Then finally replacing existing workstations 1 by 1, and joining them onto the domain.

I'm looking at HP machines with Windows 7 on them, but I know they will come with bloatware on them. So I was wanting to start fresh.

[Tripper]

Take 1 machine
Remove the bloatware
Then image
Otherwise youd be installing win7 from scratch to include making sure you have the correct drivers for each piece of hardware.

Test it first
Remove hard drive from 1 machine
Go to best buy or choice of hardware store
Buy a like drive
Image the 1 drive to the other
Test new drive in original machine
If it don't work you can fall back on your original drive still

[cid`]

Take 1 machine
Remove the bloatware
Then image
Otherwise youd be installing win7 from scratch to include making sure you have the correct drivers for each piece of hardware.

Test it first
Remove hard drive from 1 machine
Go to best buy or choice of hardware store
Buy a like drive
Image the 1 drive to the other
Test new drive in original machine
If it don't work you can fall back on your original drive still

Not a fresh install? 1. multi partition for restoration crap, unneeded, 2. registry is inflated to crap, which is causing the machine to be slow already out of the box. 3. oem crap that cant be removed or isnt used, like display systray, audio systray, update software etc.

Whatever sh1t software and we know its really crap, has already jacked the machine up just by being installed, mem leaks etc are possible right away with that..

just my 2 cents..

[Tripper]

Create recovery disks from the original first too

Come to think of it
I would buy at least 1 new hard drive of same type and size to replace one system drive with and keep an original untouched, remove from system without ever turning it on

Buy a 2nd drive to test the cloning process

[stilly]

you can laugh all you want. its faster but not as solid, look at all the factory machines out there, run like crap, slow and bloated due to the same generic image. Unattends do take longer, but you can load a usb stick and load up whatever you want. I have different customers with different requirements, so i always use unattend with conditional post installation batch/autoit scripts to modify hives, install specific software and join to domain. imaging is quicker but you still have to ghostwalk it, and no 2 boards/computers are identical, there comes in the whole instability issues.

RIS is cool but there is too much overhead if you're doing it once.

i get paid $150 an hour to do this, so im fine with it being slow. do it slow, do it right, do it fast, do it twice..

Well ****. I am a believer. Where do you work and do they have any openings? I am about to give up looking for IT govt work. If it pays better to work in the private sector point me in the direction and let me rip...

[stilly]

Well I'm a bit over my head here.

You guys seem to have the experience and expertise though.

I'm going to be doing this separate of the network, on a work bench.

I was going to set up one PC, and then pull the HD's out of the other 8.

Then attach to the cabling on the master computer, and copy.
(this is where I'm stuck)

Install the HD's back into the systems and go from there with renaming.

Then finally replacing existing workstations 1 by 1, and joining them onto the domain.

I'm looking at HP machines with Windows 7 on them, but I know they will come with bloatware on them. So I was wanting to start fresh.

Look. You might need to walk on the piracy line for a few minutes here but it is for the better and in the end you should smell like a rose, or maybe like someone took a dump in the distance of a rose, but that smell will pass.

The cable that you want to attach is some sort of SATA or EIDE to USB type cable, maybe made by kingwin or vantec that allows you to put an internal hdd on the end, plug it into an outlet and then plug it into your computer VIA usb cable and then use that new HD as an external drive.

OR

You can yank out the drive of the other computer that you want to copy your info to and plug it in to your main computer that is running windows 7, reboot and with acronis MIGRATE easy you can copy/clone the main drive to the new one. Then, when you take out the drive and put it back in the new computer, use something like the windows toolkit or KMS windows activator and change the serial (or maybe with windows 7 you do not need that) to the proper serial or key that came with that computer and then you should be good to go. Then get the next computer and do it that way. In order to do this you NEED TO BUY or otherwise obtain Acronis Migrate Easy. I just used that to upgrade a comp at a client's shop and I added an SSD to a computer and then moved their previous contents of their hd to the SSD adn then changed the old hd to be storage. Worked great.

Was this the answer that you were looking for? AND by cabling you meant putting the extra hard drives into the computer ONE AT A TIME like they are a part of that computer? Yeah you can do that but it is a bit slower then just imaging over to an external device because you have to add or remove them only when the computer is turned off. I have had issues while attempting to do that with a "hot" cable and power plug. Not a good thing unless that mobo was meant for it. Shutting them all down and turning back on can get tedious after a while. But it is all part of the mule work.

AND while we are at it, yeah, you can also do a NEOLITE and make a custom unattended install win7 disk but that would take a bit more time. IF you have that time and you want to do that then go for it, as for me, I would rather get the mule work done and then boot up and put the finishing touches on the systems.

Out of curiosity, have you given Linux a look at? Man, it is FREE and does not take as much time to install then winblows does and they got some really cool packages. I am still stoked at my laptop running it. It just seems, hmmm, elite and efficient. I feel like I took the red pill and can do anything with that system.

[ibanezfoo]

FOG server + PXE boot