Alright, lets say you create a full drive clone and you put it onto a USB HD, then the computer becomes useless, you then use the restore CD to boot from then restore it. Will it format the drive you're restoring?
@MrQarsim In a way I imagine so. As far as I'm aware cloning your HD makes a exact copy, formatting and all. It should always be as simple as boot, restore, done. Now, if you're restoring to a larger drive than the original you'll want to use some partitioning software to make use of all that extra space.
@MrQarsim It should all work out just fine. Once again, make sure that your image matches the size of the hard drives in those 9 computers. If it doesn't I'll point you towards "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And if you ever are wondering about how to find quality freeware just google "gizmo's freeware" and the first link will give you perhaps the best resource out there for quality freeware, and more importantly, reviews.
@MrQarsim I'd also recommend taking a look at Macrium's youtube channel. If you're doing this for a business related thing (as you do mention it's a internet cafe) you might want to consider buying one of Macrium's business licensed versions. If you run into any blue-screens cause by driver issues "Macrium ReDeploy" could come in handy, but that is not in the free version. If they are all the same hardware you could set up one, clone it, and then the others should take that clone just fine.
@MrQarsim I've been looking into this a little bit and I may be wrong. You might have to create a partition to restore your image to. I've only ever had to restore an image once and I guess I must have forgotten that it requires the disk to already be partitioned. I really thought it could just write the image to the drive and everything would be fine but it looks like I'm wrong.
@MrQarsim I really feel like I'm flooding your inbox now. I just watched a video of a guy who used Macrium to restore to a new drive so perhaps I'm wrong about being wrong and you won't need to partition those PC's. In any case the best advice I can offer is to just try and clone-boot-restore and if it doesn't work then try other things like partitioning the drive and what-not.
@MrQarsim And one last consideration, Windows licenses. First off if you're doing this with linux (Ubuntu is a great choice in this situation) then you don't need to worry about it. But if you're setting up 9 PC's to be Windows (or Mac for that matter) you should have licenses for those 9 machines.
Alright, lets say you create a full drive clone and you put it onto a USB HD, then the computer becomes useless, you then use the restore CD to boot from then restore it. Will it format the drive you're restoring?
MrQarsim 6 months ago
@MrQarsim In a way I imagine so. As far as I'm aware cloning your HD makes a exact copy, formatting and all. It should always be as simple as boot, restore, done. Now, if you're restoring to a larger drive than the original you'll want to use some partitioning software to make use of all that extra space.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago
@TheCrypticPie I will be using this to, clone to 9 computers for an Internet cafe business, I feel nervous and excited at the same time. =D
MrQarsim 6 months ago
@MrQarsim It should all work out just fine. Once again, make sure that your image matches the size of the hard drives in those 9 computers. If it doesn't I'll point you towards "MiniTool Partition Wizard". And if you ever are wondering about how to find quality freeware just google "gizmo's freeware" and the first link will give you perhaps the best resource out there for quality freeware, and more importantly, reviews.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago
@MrQarsim I'd also recommend taking a look at Macrium's youtube channel. If you're doing this for a business related thing (as you do mention it's a internet cafe) you might want to consider buying one of Macrium's business licensed versions. If you run into any blue-screens cause by driver issues "Macrium ReDeploy" could come in handy, but that is not in the free version. If they are all the same hardware you could set up one, clone it, and then the others should take that clone just fine.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago
@MrQarsim I've been looking into this a little bit and I may be wrong. You might have to create a partition to restore your image to. I've only ever had to restore an image once and I guess I must have forgotten that it requires the disk to already be partitioned. I really thought it could just write the image to the drive and everything would be fine but it looks like I'm wrong.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago
@MrQarsim I really feel like I'm flooding your inbox now. I just watched a video of a guy who used Macrium to restore to a new drive so perhaps I'm wrong about being wrong and you won't need to partition those PC's. In any case the best advice I can offer is to just try and clone-boot-restore and if it doesn't work then try other things like partitioning the drive and what-not.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago
@MrQarsim And one last consideration, Windows licenses. First off if you're doing this with linux (Ubuntu is a great choice in this situation) then you don't need to worry about it. But if you're setting up 9 PC's to be Windows (or Mac for that matter) you should have licenses for those 9 machines.
TheCrypticPie 6 months ago