One thing I do for my job team is create master hard drives for a software platform that they develop for. We get these installer disks that are inserted into a machine (laptops in this case), which installs an OS and all the environment stuff they need.
Actually building it up this way takes several hours, most of it automated. A large number of drives is typically required, but we only have so many laptops I can build them on. To remedy this I use a LogicCube OmniClone to build up several drives. There are two basic clone settings I use: Clever and Mirror. Here's where it gets weird.
If I create a Master drive, I can clone it onto child drives quickly with clever copy. Mirror takes far longer. All these child drives work and everything is great; mission accomplished.
However, sometimes I need to create a separate master that goes off site, or I will need to create a large number of drives with two different configurations. To achieve this I want to use an approach where I create a Master drive, then create a child drive from it. That child drive gets the environment changes that they will need several drives of (or will be going off site), and is then cloned.
While the child drive works fine before and after installing apps, etc, any child drives made off of it fail to boot if I use the Clever Copy feature to create Child II off of this edited child drive. Anything cloned from Master with Clever Copy continues to work.
If I use mirror, however, to create Child II from the edited Child drive, everything works fine. The downside is that Mirror takes a long time with our devices - sometimes 3 hours or more.
The drives are identical in every case. What is the mechanism that is thwarting my quick and easy way to make these variant masters? Is it something that can be fixed so that Child II generation drives can boot? Is there any way to have my cake and eat it too?
Thanks,
M.
