Backup image for all computers

Question

I look after 40 exactly same PC's in the classroom. Students often do bad things to them: sometimes lethal for the windows.

I'm wondering if I can install Windows, office and other applications on one PC and just clone the hdd to my backup hdd (using Acronis, Ghost etc). And when some PC fails to boot, I just recover a partition from the backup.

The problem is that Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, that are used, go deactivated after recovered.

So, how to have two images (win7, win8.1) for every computer, that don't deactivate?

PS: license - Enterprise

Answer 1

Acronis will do it and so will many others but the problem you are going to run in to is, like you pointed out, licensing. On the Windows side the only Windows you are allowed to clone is Volume License. As long as you are licensed individually with Windows on each computer you can by 1 volume license (say for Windows 7, 8 or 10) and can clone it to other computers. This does have an advantage in that it will activate the clone copy when you boot it and you are legit with Microsoft.

Other programs have to be taken on an individual basis. I don't think there is a way to stay legal with Office unless you actually change the product key after cloning. There are two sides to programs. What the vendor allows and what you can get away with. They are often not the same.

As far as the actual cloning Acronis, Ghost and several other will work. Cloning is nice in the right instances but it sounds more like you need something like Deep Freeze so no matter how bad they mess it up you simply reboot and it is restored to "mint" condition.

Answer 2

I'd toy with a different approach.

Students often do bad things to them: sometimes lethal for the windows.

This is the real issue. Perhaps the trick here is to realise they will break things and design the system to handle that.

So, the real solution is to stop students from doing bad things to them. Don't give them admin accounts unless needed - and generally reduce their ability for mischief. While its so tempting to use one account for everything, giving students their own account is a good way to ensure they don't misbehave.

But my students actually need root access.

At this point, the best solution is to treat your installations as being disposable. There's a few approaches to this. With windows 7, there's a neat tool that lets you backup activation tokens so you can have one golden image and restore the old activation. This is a pain.

I have a fairly substancial post on installing windows 8 to VHD (and it works on 7 too).

So build, setup, zip up the VHDs and leave them on the same system. Deny your students the main system, and let them run off the VHDs. If things happen, just delete, unzip and at worst, point your bcd at a new vhd.

I'd even considering not activating the systems and just running them in evaluation mode, scripting up rearming them, and nuking them once a semester.