cloning a PC

OK, the idea is that we'll boot Linux+Clonezilla off a USB stick, then image copy the main PC drives to a USB hard drive. Then copy that onto the hd's of the two identical slave machines. I can keep the USB drive and the memory stick in a baggie for future reference, the system baseline.

I'll let you know if that works.

On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 19:13:15 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

All you need is an Ubuntu Live CD or DVD.

And a single command from a CLI command prompt.

BTW, that is what clonezilla does (uses "dd").

It has simply been made stupid user proof/easy.

Sorry for assuming you had enough brains to enter a command string.

On Thu, 27 Aug 2015 19:13:15 -0700, John Larkin Gave us:

Just like you stated. You COPY ONLY the original HD, and THAT is the machine you boot Linux on.

ALL of the HDs you copy get done on the USB HD interface device from there.

Then, you have the re-activation procedures to follow for each machine you placed an imaged, copied drive onto. During that procedure, you choose to enter a different key, which keeps the legitimacy thing in place.

True. You're sorry.

I'm not going to enter anything; I'll let someone do that for me, while I keep designing electronics.

He did say "old version." Ghost 2003 was the last one that booted from the CD. After that they needed to be installed on the hard disk.

I use clonezilla, which is Linux and boots from a CD or flash drive. Acronis probably boots from a removable disk also but I don't remember. Acronis may support RAID, but maybe not your RAID.

The RAID controllers built into motherboards are crap. My mobo has one, and I used to use it. One day I used smartmontools to check the SMART status of a USB drive, and accidentally typed the letter of the RAID drive instead of the USB drive. When smartmontools tried to talk to the RAID drive, the RAID driver got confused and trashed the array. The thing is that the "RAID controller" on motherboards is no controller at all. It's all done with the driver, so you are at the mercy of its bugs.

It makes time stamps on each drive. The drive with the latest time stamp is deemed the master.

Good. That makes sense.

As long as you make sure that the master does indeed have the latest time stamp.

Just don't switch to UTC just before a disc failure. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:13:06 -0400, Phil Hobbs Gave us:

Unless you happen to be within one hour west of the meridian.