[clonezilla] Imaging a suite of Dell Prtiplex 380

[soveryapt]

Afternoon All

 

So, new school and the suite is in a bit of an array (some machines have SP1, some don't and they're at various stages with other updates and installs). Anywho, I've spend the past couple of hours setting one of the machines up as a master so that I can use CloneZilla to make an image then go round the machines and install the image on them. Having to do it all via USB HDD as there's not really a server on site (old box running SME Server 6.5 ... hmmm).

 

CloneZilla seems to be doing it's thing ok for everything but the OS Partition on the machine when it just run's a load of errors and aborts itself, seems to write the other 2 partitions (recovery and the system partition) fine to the USB HDD, but the OS just isn't happening.

 

I remember in the past I've had issues when imaging Dell machines, but I just wondered what the best way forward is. Should I bite the bullet and do a totally fresh install of W7 on the drive so I know that it's all fine then set it all up and image it, or is there a method I'm missing that I should be using for imaging Dell machines with Clonezilla?

 

By the way, currently running a ChkDsk at boot to make sure there's not an issue with the hard drive or anything itself.

 

Thanks all

Andy

[soveryapt]

Darn my fat fingers .. the thread should say Dell Optiplex 380 .. lol ..

[mikeyd101]

We have been using clonezilla here for XP -> 7 migration. I found quickest way is to open the machines up and rip the hdd and clone from a master machine. We only have about 40Gb on the drive windows, office and a few other apps. So by the time finished messing around with the fresh cloned drive (windows/office activation, rename and re-join domain) the next one is ready. I just done a suite of 20 machines which took me well over a day (I could have probably gone faster with multiple machines cloning, but I was working around classes).

 

Its probably quicker to clone disk to disk than usb to disk.

[cpjitservices]

Could you not build a Cloezilla server ? All you need is a spare pc ?

 

Clonezilla - Sever Edition

 

Image over your network... might be faster.

[cpjitservices]

[soveryapt]

Could you not build a Cloezilla server ? All you need is a spare pc ?

 

Clonezilla - Sever Edition

 

Image over your network... might be faster.

 

Similar response as to my thread about the netbooks really, money .. they don't have spare PCs at the school sadly, but it's not the method that's the issue here, it's the fact that when creating the image I'm getting errors off the System Drive, so I was wondering if this is a common issue with Dell's or not.

 

Having said that, I'm fast considering buying myself a laptop to set up a portable server for just such instances.

[soveryapt]

Right, back to this, running it with the -rescue option, and it seems to be doing alright. The proof will be in the pudding as they say when I try restoring from said image to one of the other machines! Whoop de whoop ..

[cpjitservices]

Hows it going ?

[soveryapt]

Hows it going ?

 

Going ok, taking about 20 mins per PC to restore the disk from the image, but with the resources the school currently have (and the fact the suite tends to be in use when I'm there so I can't do it en mass) it's going well.

 

The -rescue option just read the few bad sectors as bad sectors and moved on and the other machines are functioning fine so all is good.

 

Thanks

Andy