Laptop HDD cloning

[SteBooth]

Hi All,

I have 10 laptops which need to have several large applications plus WinXp installed. I have successfully made an image of one of the laptops using Acronis trueimage. What i am trying to do is clone the hard disk from an installed HDD to one connected through a USB - IDE converter dongle.

Acronis detects the external drive correctly as an additional disk and the Acronis software clones the disk with no errors. But when i try to install the disk and boot from it, it gets to the WinXP loading screen then contiuously reboots.

The only way i've found that works so far is to make an Image partition only on the target drive and then restore the image locally to a newly created primary partition, this process is long winded, i was just wondering if anyone has found an easy solution with regards to cloning laptop drives?

Thanks in advance

Steve

[IcemanND]

it sounds like you are trying to clone the local disk in the machine to the next machine's hard drive which is connected externally? If so reverse your process and use the source disk as the external drive and clone to the hard disk in the machine. Also are the machines all the same? If not do they have compatible HALs and internal hard disk controllers?

[puntoMX]

I would get an internal 3.5" to 2.5" IDE connector (if it´s PATA).

[SteBooth]

Thanks Iceman,

Yes the laptops are identical.

I'll try it with the source drive externally then

Punto,

I'm using an externally powered Usb to Ide 2.5/3.5 and SATA converter.

It works fine on normal desktops but laptops always seem to have "issues".

Thanks again though people,

At least I have another option to try now

Edited June 6, 2007 by SteBooth

[DysfunktinaL]

Why not just use Norton ghost over the network and use a multi-cast server? We have 50 comps here @ my work (Internet cafe), and that is how I handled these. You can even use a trial version for 30 days supporting 10 clients, and all you need to do is make a a ghost boot disk that includes the network drivers for the LAN. When I ghosted these comps, I set up 1 as the Ghost server, and th en ghosted 10 at a time untill they were all done.

[puntoMX]

he already has Acronis TrueImage, it has the same options as Norton Ghost so no need to chance there .

I use Acronis in my cybercafes. Just press F11 and it backups everything in 4 minutes (Windows and his programs). The games are protected with other stuff so the customer can´t copy them or chance any thing on them, not even delete them.

[DysfunktinaL]

he already has Acronis TrueImage, it has the same options as Norton Ghost so no need to chance there .

I use Acronis in my cybercafes. Just press F11 and it backups everything in 4 minutes (Windows and his programs). The games are protected with other stuff so the customer can´t copy them or chance any thing on them, not even delete them.

Do you have securitys enabled though? What is to stop me from bringing in my thumbdrive with programs on it to rip the Microsoft keys from the PC's, along with some blizzard games, EA games, and such? What cafe managment system do you use?

[puntoMX]

Well, yes,

they can rip out the keys from Windows XP and Office, but I´m not worried about that b/c it´s faster for them to google a code .

Even it´s posible to copy the games, but not for the comon nOOb. The "game drive" is blocked to access, only with a password you can access it or the shortcuts on the desktop. In the night we restore the "program drive" in less then 5 minutes so the next day we start with a clean place.

I don´t use any "cybercafé" software, time control is done on with an exel sheet. Just Simple ...

For the server I use Clarkconnect (free to use up to 10 clients), everybody has it´s own up(128kbps)/downstream(384kbps), so they can install all the crap they want on those computers and download where ever they want. Some place have more then 10 computers; I use 2 internet lines, 2 servers and Hamachi there. Total cable speed is 2.5Mbit by the way.

[bledd]

best way to do this..

get the pc running as you want

sysprep it, (this is very important, its on the xp disc) -otherwise the pc's will be 'too identical' -they'll have the same ID's basically

then before the pc restarts, create an image of the drive onto your external drive (boot from the acronis cd)

now remove the cd and let the pc startup it'll ask you to select cdkey/name+password/computername (and all the pc's will have this once you acronis the image from the usbdrive to each pc)

i'll elaborate a bit more if you like