How do I backup clones of all PCs on network?

[bupkus]

I have an MS Action Pack Subscription w/ ten MS WinXP Pro licenses. I've used all ten on-site at the location I applied for this subscription so all is legit. However, I just experienced a hardware failure that required a reinstall of the OS on one of the machines so to avoid trying to get new activation rights I'd prefer to just clone each and every machine on the network. How can I do this?

All machines use almost identical hardware as follows:
ASUS A7N266VM w/ USB 1.1 and Realtek 8201L 10/100Mbps LAN and on-board video.
Floppy: none
Optical drive: none

So you can see they are pretty bare.

I have Norton Ghost from a Norton SystemWorks 2002.

I'm thinking of getting either:
1 USB 2.0 add-on card or
1 IEEE 1394 add-on card
to connnect an external hdd or cdrw drive for the cloning process.

However, Norton Ghost from the 2002 package clearly states it cannot clone through USB. I don't know if that is true about the latest Ghost or other software available.

Additonal info:
There is no server. They are (or will be) connected by way of hub or switch and assigned static addresses for peer-to-peer for playing games or downloading large files from the external drive to share with each pc.

Before I start spending money I'd like to know where I'm going.
Thanks in advance for your help.
-Bupkus

 

[jjyiz28]

i know for sure 2002 ghost needs fat32 partition to hold the image file, while 2003 could hold the image file on ntfs.

why not just use an extra harddrive to hold the image file, then use the image for all ur machines?
i dont think you need to worry about duplicate SID's since its only a workgroup, but imnot too sure about this.

 

[sharq]

You could use one of the software out there to create an image of the PC's. Some of these software will let you upload this image to a central machine. Since you mentioned there is no server, I'm thinking that since all the hardware is the same, just install everything you want to on one machine, when you have it the way you like it, just create an image and burn it onto cds/dvd and keep that as your ultimate backup.
If you want to make regular backups of each pc, I would say get a second hd, small one, and use that strictly for backing up the images of the computers every nite.
A software I have used to create an image of a windows machine is: Acronis True Image.
If you do a search on google for "backup image" you will get lots of results.

 

[bupkus]

Originally posted by: sharq
You could use one of the software out there to create an image of the PC's. Some of these software will let you upload this image to a central machine. Since you mentioned there is no server, I'm thinking that since all the hardware is the same, just install everything you want to on one machine, when you have it the way you like it, just create an image and burn it onto cds/dvd and keep that as your ultimate backup.
If you want to make regular backups of each pc, I would say get a second hd, small one, and use that strictly for backing up the images of the computers every nite.
A software I have used to create an image of a windows machine is: Acronis True Image.
If you do a search on google for "backup image" you will get lots of results.

I'd like to create just one master backup as all the machines have the same hardware, OS and software, but I have had problems with XP re-activations. Yes, in the past I would use a CD drive to install and then remove the drive. Perhaps there's a better way to avoid re-activations other than backing up each and every PC.

 

[sharq]

Then I would think something along the lines of Acronis True Image would work (be sure to check its site to see if it meets your criteria).
Setup one computer as you would be happy with it, with all the software and windows settings you like or are used to. Then just create an image and you're done. All the PC's may be using the same cd key, but since you have legal copies and licenses for each computer, I don't think there should be a problem with putting the same image on each. BUT I am not a lawyer.
PS: I have only used Acronis, I am not aware of what else is out there and I only used it on one machine, not for the purpose you are mentioning.