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To preface my inquiry, I posed a question to the community 3 weeks ago regarding choosing replacement computers for my office of 60 users and had an amazing response. I ended up purchasing 60 HP Business class workstations that I'm really happy with thus far. I'm hoping to get some insight into the processes that others use to clone indentical computers.

The specifics are as follows:

I have 60 identical Windows 7 machines that will be replacing the current machines within my office.

I want to create 60 identical computers with the same Windows 7 configuration, software and settings. These new machines have unique keys (Office 2010, Windows 7) as I don't have a site license with 7.

I've looked into some open source and licensed cloning tools (Acronis, Symantec Ghost, Clonezilla, etc.) but I would like to hear some feedback from the community regarding recommendations.

Is there a tool in which I can setup one drive as master and clone the other 59? Is it possible to change the keys after the cloning? - and if so, what would be the most efficient method?

Any other input and/or direction would be sincerely appreciated.

Tog
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jayree
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2 Answers2

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I actually responded to your original question and since your in the same place I was 2 years ago I'll share my experiences again. We used clonezilla based on the fact they offer multicasting... I did it in 10 computer batches just to make sure everything was going OK. We had a handful (3 or 4 I forget) of machines that asked for licenses and just called Microsoft to activate them. The other ones just accepted the dell licensing since the original machine had the a Dell OEM image and dell stores the keys in BIOS... I just noticed you chose HP so I am not sure if they handle licensing the same way. Keep in mind I used XP Pro downgrade, don't ask me I prefer windows 7 but my IT manager was reluctant to move. However I assume windows 7 should handle this the same way, try testing it on one first just to make sure you don't need to use sysprep. If you need to enter the keys make sure you run sysprep before cloning the drive!

Supercereal
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You might not have a problem with drivers, but you will have a problem with the windows license. It will note that major hardware has changed. As far as the drivers, that's not such a hurdle in most cases (thought it can be if the computers are very different).

soandos
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