cheap/free ghosting program?

[kermalou]

i just got in 5 new computers (all the same dell dimension 4600C) in my little home/office and want to be able to have them all have the same programs. what would be the cheapest way to do this?

i have:
1. external dvd burner and all comps have dvd drives if that makes a difference.

 

[DannyBoy]

You could just install everything you want on the first machine, format all the others, write the data from machine one to dvd, and copy it over to the other machines...

SImple way that doesnt need to use ghost

 

[Sid59]

just make an image, burn it to a data dvd .. make the disc bootable and include the GHO and ghost.exe

 

[kermalou]

how do i make an image?

 

[Sid59]

you using the windows GUI or standalone? there are some good guides on the net.

basically you just boot into dos, if you have the most recent version of ghost.exe (that reads and writes NTFS) then the boot disk can be 98se.

start ghost
make an image .. parition to image
use highest compression - you can't dump ghost image onto the parition you are reading from. so if you are ghosting your windows partition, you can't dump ghost there.

boot into windows and make a dvd boot disk. 98se, ghost.exe and the ___.gho file.

load the disc into the other machines and boot up .. ghost.exe and parition from image.

easy.

 

[Nothinman]

just make an image, burn it to a data dvd .. make the disc bootable and include the GHO and ghost.exe

You still have to buy a license for each machine that you image with ghost.

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

just make an image, burn it to a data dvd .. make the disc bootable and include the GHO and ghost.exe

You still have to buy a license for each machine that you image with ghost.

Norton Ghost 2003 is designed for a single user who wishes to maintain a Ghost Image for system recovery purposes on a single PC. Corporate functionality such as the Ghost client/server architecture and GhostCast Server which are designed for the rapid deployment to multiple PCs are not available in the Norton Ghost 2003 release.

that would depend on what version he has.

 

[Nothinman]

Norton Ghost 2003 is designed for a single user who wishes to maintain a Ghost Image for system recovery purposes on a single PC

And since it's a home office he might not be legally allowed to use that version since it's for business use.

 

[Rubicone]

The cheapest way is the hardest way. Manually install everything.

 

[Nothinman]

The cheapest way is the hardest way. Manually install everything.

Not so, there are free programs like partimage or even just plain old dd that could be run from something like a Knoppix CD. But partimage's NTFS support is still experimental so a block by block copy would be necessary, dd will also only do a block by block copy so any image will be the size of the full drive not just the data, unless it's run through gzip or bzip2.