Cloning / Ghosting Desktops for Lab

Does anyone have any experience with ghosting or cloning hard drives as an alternative to restoring 30 computers and reinstalling 15 or so applications on each one?? My lab is running Windows XP and we have a Linux server. Any advice is appreciated!

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Permalink Reply by John Puskar on May 28, 2008 at 8:39am

Erin, I'm the district technology coordinator and we do this all the time. You'll never keep up by reinstalling all 30 computers....something always gets missed. You set up one perfect computer and then using either Symantec Ghost or Novell Zenworks (I use Zenworks) you can "multicast" the "image" of your perfect computer to all the other "clients". You essentially start up each computer with the "imaging" software and you usually have the choice to make the perfect computer your "multicast" host and the others clients in the session. Depending on your computers and your network, you can usually do all 30 computers in about 40-50 minutes top.

Permalink Reply by Erin on May 29, 2008 at 11:18am

Thanks so much for your reply!! That sounds wonderful. What's the cost involved in your way?

Permalink Reply by John Puskar on May 29, 2008 at 12:02pm

Novell has academic pricing for K12 of about $2 per student enrolled. Or, there is also a per computer price. That gets you the server OS plus the Zenworks for Desktops management application. Additionally, besides imaging computers, Zenworks also allows remote desktop viewing and controlling (like PCAnywhere). Great (indispensible) way to work on computers and solve help-desk problems from your own desk. This is assuming you wish to deal with the learning curve to use Novell. They do have Suse Linux versions and they provide their own rolled version of Suse. But still, if you've never used Novell before, I'd suggest considering Symantec Ghost. Look at finding Academic pricing. But if you are interested in a much cheaper alternative....drop me an email.

Permalink Reply by Rob Gasser on June 9, 2008 at 8:42am

I also have been using Symantec Ghost for years. It's easy to use and works great. I support all the PCs in my school and it's well worth it. They also have great support.

Permalink Reply by Steve Lee on June 19, 2008 at 6:34pm

As a computer lab tech and computer teacher I had to learn how to do this to keep my sanity. I eventually put it all in writing and setup a wordpress blog for the tutorials. I even created youtube videos for the procedures. I use free software for the tutorials, but the methods apply to cloning and disk imaging using other commercial products as well. There is info on how to image drives with a USB external, cloning across the network and drive to drive. Here's a link to my K-5 computer lab wordpress blog:
http://oakdome.com/lab/

Permalink Reply by Nocturnal on September 1, 2008 at 10:44pm