Rolling out SSD Drive upgrade?

[Bev]

Next week, I am converting an ICT Suite to SSD drives, and upgrading to Win 10. I am planning on creating a base machine with a clean Win 10 install on it (1709), and installing all the required software.

 

Would you then take an image and push it out to all machines after the drives are installed with WDS, or copy the SSD Drives using either a cloner, or cloning software and then install them?

Either way, I'm going to have to open every case and remove the old drive and install the new one, but I'm trying to decide which will be the most pain-free. There's just me, and 34 machines to do.

 

Advice welcome

[Simcfc73]

What I do, and is probably wrong, is use WDS to just install the base image and I only have to input the PC name at the prompt. By the time I've reinstalled the SSD its logged into a local admin account and is ready for deploying everything else.

 

PDQ deploy is my fave tool, I push out the latest CU, then deploy all the software and AV and then leave them overnight doing the Window updates.

 

I'm sure theres quicker ways but this is pretty automated.

[LeMarchand]

Not sure if you meant a physical base machine or a virtual one - I'd certainly go for the latter. Back up the drivers from an existing machine and bung them into the store. Then install the SSD in one machine and image it. Start putting the SSDs into the other machines, but wait until the first is ready and check for any missing drivers - once found and added to the store start imaging the rest and carry on installing the drives/starting pulling the image as you go along.

[Bev]

I meant a physical base machine, I haven't dabbled in Virtual Machines so far.

[FishCustard]

What I do, and is probably wrong, is use WDS to just install the base image and I only have to input the PC name at the prompt. By the time I've reinstalled the SSD its logged into a local admin account and is ready for deploying everything else.

Nothing wrong with that at all. I use MDT to deploy an image like you do, then GPO/PowerShell scripts/SCCM deploys everything else. Could look into that to further automate things.

[mavhc]

Should work OK, using wds, but plan to move to deploying things via GPO etc in the future, so you can just take the latest ISO, extract the WIM, put that on WDS and all your new images will be with the latest version