Hard Disk Copying

[kampfer]

Hi,

I have 4 computers and want all of them to be exactly the same, same software, OS ect… I am wondering if this is possible. This is my plan; I want to load all the software I need into one machine then make copies of that setup. Then copy it to the other 3 pc’s. This will save me from having to load all the same software into all the other computers.

All the pc’s have just about the same exact setup. Now I am guessing I can setup a primary hard drive which will be the one I will mirror to all the other pc’s, then put a second hard drive in as a slave and copy the primary hard drive to the secondary hard drive. Then take the secondary drive and use it to copy it to all the other pc’s. Will this work?

If it can, can you tell me what steps I need to take? I read somewhere that this can be done with Norton Ghost. Btw, I am running windows XP

Thanks! I really appreciate it!
John

[GX1_Man]

Each machine has to be activated with a unique registration code, if you are talking XP. How are you going to do this? Are you planning to run the same Windows license on all machines? Bill Gates says "No,no" to this. Also unless the hardware is identical this probably won't work well, if at all, either.

[kampfer]

I am doing this for an office a work and they have all the registration codes. I was going to wait to activate them until all computers were loaded, then active each one with the proper key.

I was afraid this was the answer, is there any other way? They don't want to run the software on a server because its really old and wouldn't be able to handle the workload.

thanks for your help!

[LegoLas]

hi there !
onec  i did that, i mean coped my HD to another PC and everything was ok.
How i did that : U see i used software that could backup and restore full disk.
but unlike other softs, mine contains in itself drivers amd while restoring it selects the proper one.
that is main problem  while OS copiyng + Windows licensence allert, but as much as i understood
u have already solved it. So my solution is Worskstation 9.1 by Acronis(it was quite cheap 1month ago).

[panboy]

Microsoft was nice enuph to forsee that you may want to do this ,

Ther is a command in windows to prepair a system to be copyed its called "sysprep.exe"

Look it up on the MSDN and youll get all the info youll need

bu if the machines are a little differnt run

"sysprep /dif" i think

[panboy]

also you can use a program call bootitng to copy the HDDs

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

its very easy to use

or Nortan ghost , but thats licnesed