Hard Drive Imaging

[MC_HAccord]

Hello everyone. I've got a big question. Here's what happened. There is a computer in the computer lab at the school I work for. It crashed, something about a registry failure. I need some sort of software package that will allow me to copy a good computer's hard drive and then put the hard drive in the broken computer so that I now have 2 working computers. All the computers are the same brand and model (they were custom made by a company Nobilis?) so I'm sure this will work. I think it's called imaging, but I'm trying to find a software package that will do this, because with WD you have to have a WD hard drive and Maxtor is the same way. (Seagate drives). Thanks.

 

[pctechmike1]

You could use Norton Ghost by Symantec. It is the only program from Norton I actually like. I'm working on a deployment now, installing over a 1000 computers accross the state, and we use Norton Ghost to image the PCs, because all are the same configuration. Simply use Norton to create an image off of a working computer, and image the other with it's image. You may run into license issues, if it's not a multi-license version of Windows- keep that in mind.

 

[MC_HAccord]

Hey thanks, I'll check into that. All the licenses are valid so it shouldn't be a problem. Does Norton Ghost run at boot as well? Sort of like Go-Back? Because I don't want that. Thanks for your help!

 

[pctechmike1]

It does run in startup, but you can take it out of that- if that's what your concern is. You can work with it some, and build a configuration for an image. If you don't want to use that, use system builder, I believe you can purchase it from Microsoft. I would use Ghost, to build an image with everything you need for a certain type of computer, and leave it at that. Just mo

 

[MC_HAccord]

Thanks!

 

[root]

there is also drive image by power quest.

also have you considered using remote installation servers to actually install windows by booting from the network card, then rolling out all the programs that are needed by MSIs?

 

[MC_HAccord]

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean. This would work I'm sure, but the server is very old, and we use different computers all over the school. The Lab has these Nobilis ones then each classroom has an older Dell with XP on it (not Dell XP, just a straight up clean XP).