IT/Computer Geeks - What do you suggest for this?

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Riceburner said:
I've cloned drives(W7 Ultimate) to put into different PCs, but they were usually mostly the same spec hardware. Sometimes it works going into different hardware(clone of IBM into a Dell), but I don't usually do it on purpose.

I've never restored an image backup of the OS back to the C drive, so can't say if it works successfully if the original OS dies and won't recover/start the PC. I just clone the whole drive every month or so and unplug it. If it dies, I swap the primary and "slave" cable, recover the new data and re-clone. I'm not usually adding new apps, but when I do I run a clone anyways. Granted there's down time during cloning, but I do it when I'm not going to be using that particular PC. SARDU option sounds promising though.
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done it lots with
https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

with a dud OS, also easy to go there with say .. hiren's boot disk stuff

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hire...me..69i57.444602j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
 
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Riceburner said:
I've cloned drives(W7 Ultimate) to put into different PCs, but they were usually mostly the same spec hardware. Sometimes it works going into different hardware(clone of IBM into a Dell), but I don't usually do it on purpose.
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Do you mean not knowing you were going to do this beforehand, and thus not being able to generalize the images?
 
TwistedKestrel said:
Do you mean not knowing you were going to do this beforehand, and thus not being able to generalize the images?
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Yeah. Was going to build the Dell with a spare drive that was a clone of an IBM(or the other way around), tossed it in and turned it on and it worked. It did it's hardware discovery and just kept chugging along.
 
lol I already have Hiren's Boot CD...or at least an old one. For my use, it's just easier to clone a drive and swap it. No rebuilding from an image, etc.
 
Riceburner said:
lol I already have Hiren's Boot CD...or at least an old one. For my use, it's just easier to clone a drive and swap it. No rebuilding from an image, etc.
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just one way of getting around a dead/dud OS, if required, to use a runtime image backup, along with a boatload of other goodies
 
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I found I ended up re-installing the OS from scratch anyways, so went the clone route when I ended up having spare drives. My preferred SOP now.
 
Riceburner said:
Yeah. Was going to build the Dell with a spare drive that was a clone of an IBM(or the other way around), tossed it in and turned it on and it worked. It did it's hardware discovery and just kept chugging along.
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I have cloned onto different machines. I used the image from IBM on the Del etc...it just adds the drivers (most of the times).


My next challenge will be to keep my backup laptop setup the same as primary laptop.
I guess I can clone the images onto the backup laptop. Backup laptop is not the same as primary laptop..different everything.
 
-D- said:
I have cloned onto different machines. I used the image from IBM on the Del etc...it just adds the drivers (most of the times).


My next challenge will be to keep my backup laptop setup the same as primary laptop.
I guess I can clone the images onto the backup laptop. Backup laptop is not the same as primary laptop..different everything.
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Going by the strategy you've most recently mentioned, you don't need to - you've already seperated your system stuff and your actual data. Just load the data on the spare laptop if you need to
 
if anyone tries out this free for personal use bootloader software
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/

there is a trick register box that opens up a dload page that has boxes for email & name info

you can just click on the dload leaving name & email blank
 
-D- said:
I have cloned onto different machines. I used the image from IBM on the Del etc...it just adds the drivers (most of the times).


My next challenge will be to keep my backup laptop setup the same as primary laptop.
I guess I can clone the images onto the backup laptop. Backup laptop is not the same as primary laptop..different everything.
Click to expand...


If they are different I'd just use a separate data partition and just have the data occasionally backed up over a network to the backup laptop that would also be set up with a separate data partition.

Everything you mentioned in the first post is easy to do with all kinds of imaging/cloning software to me except I have no idea how to make it happen automatically. I wonder if you could set up some kind of RAID1 solution.
 
-D- said:
What is your point with this software?
Does it allow me to mirror Windows 10 disk 1 to disk 2?
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I think it just lets you specify which OS installation you want to boot from. Handy if you have say several versions of Linux, multiple versions of Windows, etc on your machine. Windows actually has this functionality built in but it is a pain to set up. I just set up two laptops identically to have both Win7 and Win10 on them and getting the bootloader to play nice was a pain in the butt. Actually, now that I think of it the Windows bootloader won't detect Linux and Mac OS installations.

I don't think it does what you want. Using this software it is installed on your boot drive and then the machine will boot off the drive and ask you which OS you want to boot. If that drive fails you likely would not get to the point of being able to select a different OS. Maybe some of the recovery options they mention on their bootable USB stick could help you, though.
 
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