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mr.b
Asked: 2010-05-27 06:17:18 +0800 CST

Cloning single disk drive to multiple drives simultaneously

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I am looking for a way to clone single disk drive to more than one disk drive at the same time.

I have prepared system images on 1TB disks, and it takes almost 2 hours to clone one disk to another, and then it goes up exponentially, in order to have say 30 disks cloned.

If it was possible to clone one disk to more than single target, it would simplify whole procedure a lot.

Update: It seems like that the only viable solution is to use network cloning via multicast, as each software referenced in answers works in similar fashion.

Update 2: Can I ask answerers to tell me more about pros'n'cons of given approach? Can multicast work on any kind of network equipment? How about Unicast? How about reliability?

Thanks!

P.S. This question is cross-post from superuser, I hope that nobody minds.

disk-image

5 Answers

  1. Ghost can do multicasting of an image.

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  2. Have you checked in to a hardware solution? I've heard good things about Logicube OmniClone. Might be worth checking out...

    Jes

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  3. Best Answer

    I would use ghost in this situation. There are alternatives that you may consider such as Clonezilla or Mass Clone at trinityhome.org.

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  4. I think G4L and/or Clonezilla can do this.

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  5. If your rolling out Windows OS' then you really need to look at Windows Deployment Services (WDS) which will let you take an image & then clone it to multiple machines via a multicast. You will unfortunately need a network of computers. The idea being that the image target is what will be running the OS long term.

    Also remember that you'll need to run sysprep if you intend to clone windows OS's & have them all running together on the same domain in harmony.

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