fellas, need some help.

need to download some imaging software.

basically im building 3 pcs, o/s is on one and will be connected to net to be updated. then office and some local apps will be installed.

then i want to take an image, replay that image to two more machines and then join all three to the domain.

ill probably not bother with sysprep for three, but if its easier to put it in the image and then drop it onto the pcs then so be it.

there is money to pay for a license with this job, but if its zero cost then all the better.

i have already considered a bartpe disk with ghost on it. if this will back the image up to a usb disk then this could well be the way forwards.

any ideas?

Acronis TrueImage usually comes highly recommended for these situations.

Quote from: Clockd 0NeAcronis TrueImage usually comes highly recommended for these situations.

A good one and is available on Hirens bootCD

Agreed on Acronis.

G4L on Hiren is good for "stubborn" drives.

Acronis

It is a really good bit of software, and once you have cloned, you could install on a different PC and use its other features for backing up a more important PC.. and its not expensive!

Acronis!

On a side note, has any played with wds lately?

If your going to use acronis dont install anything other than windows before you do the image. Acronis misses loads of registry entries and the more software you install the worse it behaves when you add cloned machines to the domain. Wed rolled out about 50 Dells before we figured out why they all kept crashing despite the original image machine being absolutely fine. Although I love it at home the boss has banned it from the office now.

Quote from: RivkidIf your going to use acronis dont install anything other than windows before you do the image. Acronis misses loads of registry entries and the more software you install the worse it behaves when you add cloned machines to the domain. Wed rolled out about 50 Dells before we figured out why they all kept crashing despite the original image machine being absolutely fine. Although I love it at home the boss has banned it from the office now.

that may not be down to the software. maybe just a dodgy image or slightly iffy hardware where the image is stored on?
I used to work at a PC Manufacturing place & back then we was doing 100+ machines a day all imaged. used to get  a lot of problem like that, even with specialist hardware
that would image 1 drive to 8 in only a few minutes. Your image is only as good as the source & the hardware the source is on. We used to get quite a lot of failures, part because of the image
& sometimes the source drives.

how can it miss stuff if youre doing a disk clone?

Quote from: bytejunkiehow can it miss stuff if youre doing a disk clone?

Quote from: bytejunkiehow can it miss stuff if youre doing a disk clone?

bad sector on a drive? a bit of dodgy memory? A lot of it depends on the optional switches as well as using file copy compared to sector copy