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Cloning a PC

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by den_santiago

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Is there any software available that will allow me to copy 1 system unit set-up with another which has the same specification. And can this software store that setting to a folder in another computer so that we could just copy it to another unit andchange some settings in the computer name and I.P Address..

7 replies

by scviking

An excellent cloning tool I use extensively is PowerQuest's DriveImage. The great thing is that software will create the drive image on a second hard drive, a CD burner, a set of ZIP disks, or another partition on your hard drive.

Any good driveimaging program can store the drive image on a separate folder in a computer as long as that folder resides on a DIFFERENT partition or logical drive than the one being imaged. The imaging software locks the entire drive it is copying, so you can't store the image on the same partition you're imaging at the time. For example, if you are imaging Drive C:, you need to store the image on Drive D: (or any other hard drive or CD-RW drive in your computer).

I hope your drive is partitioned into more than one logical drive, or that you have a CD burner on the machine. Otherwise, you'll need to use a partitioning tool like PartitionMagic (again from PowerQuest) to repartition your drive into two or more logical drives without wiping the drive out completely (which is what the FDISK does in DOS, incidentally. Don't use it.)

DriveImage will also handle multiple drive partitions. For example, if your hard drive is broken up into Drive C:, D:, E: and F:, DriveImage will let you copy any or all them.

It even compresses images for more efficient storage, and will back up large images onto multiple CDs or ZIP disks. The CDs work great on multiple installs- I've reimaged a 30 computer lab in 3 hours using 3 copies of the same CD set. All I had to change were the computer name and the static IP address on each machine.

One big point: with ANY drive imaging software, the hardware configuration must be IDENTICAL to the host system in ALL respects. This means that you even need to have the same BIOS version in most cases, and definitely the same hardware configuration (hard drive, motherboard, video card, and so on).

Hope this helps.....

by shmaltz

Both answer 1 and 2 are right.
However, I have worked with both and I find Power Quest Drive Image Pro 4.0 to be much more powerfull for advanced use, and much more user friendly if you are not an advanced user. It is very easy to learn on your own.
Also keep in mind that you need spacial software to be able to clone a NT/Windows 2000 machine so you don't duplicate the SID(the software is included in both Power Quest Drive Image Pro 4.0, and Norton Ghost).
Also if you will be doing a lot of cloning, I was at the PC Expo show and there was a company that had a device that will let you clone from IDE to IDE which means is that you either use any software you want (PQDIP or NG) and prepare a partition you want to copy and the device will take care of that. Or you can use their software to clone the partition. With their device you can store multiple partitions on the same IDE harddrive and on the machines you want to install it you just select which partition you want. It's suppose totake only about 1 and a half min. to clone a partition that way. They also have more advanced devices that will let you clone up to multiple harddrives at one time.
The only problem is I don't remember the name of the company. You can try to searchYahoo or Altavista to get their name.

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