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cloning laptop hard drives?

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meatneck

Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
ok heres the situation i put myself in..my job gave me a laptop to use in the field...and when we were given the laptop we were told not to change anything on it..heres where i was stupid---i didnt care for the windows 2000 so i formatted it and loaded xp on it..now the problem is they are doing an audit on all the laptops and i cant get it back to the exact way it was(which i need to do or it can result in a repremand at work)all the laptops that were issued were identical dells...no floppy drive no cd burner..im wondering if it can be ghosted through a network and how that is done? a co-worker has lent me his laptop to do this and i dont have much time since i need to give them my laptop tommorow...thanks in advance for any help!
 
is there anyway to do this through a network? i live in an area where i have no idea where they would even sell the adaptors...thanks for the quick response
 
it's harder through a network, you'd need the version of GHOST that can do TCP/IP connections. GHOSTCast server is the easiest way to do this.
 
Know Nuttin said:
it's harder through a network, you'd need the version of GHOST that can do TCP/IP connections. GHOSTCast server is the easiest way to do this.

what about an extenal harddrive? if i can creat a ghost image onto an external drive then clone the external drive to my laptop
 
Here is a really messed up, jimmy rigged way that you can do it, drive space permitting.

On the loaner PC, you will need to create a new partition large enough to create an image of the OS partition and format the partition as FAT, then do a file>disk>to image ghost file creation from the OS partition to the new partition.

You will then need to create a new partition on your PC, the same size as the other partition you just created and also fat formatted.

You can then connect both laptops to the network, and transfer the GHO files from one laptop to the other.

Once the files are in place, you can boot into ghost and do a file>disk>from image to pull the image from the temp partition over to the OS partition.

Now that I just wrote that however, I'm not so sure that ghost will let you do this. It may require that you actually have two physically seperate disks, in which case the drive adapters would be necessary. I'm not sure if it will copy like this from one partition to the other, and I actually doubt it.
 
I.M.O.G. said:
Here is a really messed up, jimmy rigged way that you can do it, drive space permitting.

On the loaner PC, you will need to create a new partition large enough to create an image of the OS partition and format the partition as FAT, then do a file>disk>to image ghost file creation from the OS partition to the new partition.

You will then need to create a new partition on your PC, the same size as the other partition you just created and also fat formatted.

You can then connect both laptops to the network, and transfer the GHO files from one laptop to the other.

Once the files are in place, you can boot into ghost and do a file>disk>from image to pull the image from the temp partition over to the OS partition.

Now that I just wrote that however, I'm not so sure that ghost will let you do this. It may require that you actually have two physically seperate disks, in which case the drive adapters would be necessary. I'm not sure if it will copy like this from one partition to the other, and I actually doubt it.

thanks for the advice but i really dont want to risk my co-workers data while trying to make mine right...id rather be the one in trouble
 
Just ghost an image of the borrowed laptop to the external harddrive then restore from that image onto your laptop.

But

Here is where you could run into problems, the XP serial numbers will be the same as your buddies laptop and will not match up during your audit. Your best bet is to talk to one of your network guys and ask them to reimage your laptop.
 
The way dell ties everything to the hardware, I'd say simply in a nutshell you are screwed, best bet would be to just format it, either way you are caught. I would sincerely say that you should just fess up and have the IT dept re-image it, yeah it's a pain yeah you face risks, but you knew formatting the laptop and installing your own OS was against company policy in the first place. Hope it all goes well for you I really do.

J :cool:
 
assuming GHOST can see the external drive, you could do what IMOG said. I haven't played much with external USB drives and GHOST just yet.
 
My recommendation does not risk your friends data in any way, except I guess if there would be an error when performing the partition operations on his laptop - I've never had a problem with that however when using a dos partitionmagic utility.

Kendan said:
Just ghost an image of the borrowed laptop to the external harddrive then restore from that image onto your laptop.

But

Here is where you could run into problems, the XP serial numbers will be the same as your buddies laptop and will not match up during your audit. Your best bet is to talk to one of your network guys and ask them to reimage your laptop.

Depending on the size of his company, its fairly possible that the numbers matched to begin with... :eh?:

Those are my recommendations...

*IMOG switches hats*

As an IT dept person, I would like for you to just hand the system over as is... I would hate the thought of one of the users trying to muck with things any further, and then coming to me when they've made it worse. Most people I work with would tell you that you shouldn't have been mucking with it in the first place, but the reason the policy is there is so that when you have problems, we can support you. If you are running something non-standard, then our options are limited in the time we can invest in offering help. We could always do a databackup and restore the system to a fresh image though, and that wouldn't be too much trouble.

Depending on who's doing the auditing, the situation could look different. As PC support, we're very busy and we just want to complete our jobs - getting the user up and running to be productive in their job function as fast as possible. As security or accounting, running non-licensed non-standard equipment could seem as a bigger problem.
 
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You could try playing stupid (Note: I am not recommending this route as staff here, I think honestly you should own up) format it tonight, do a military wipe on the data *writing 0's and 1's to the drive, and take it in tomorrow and say it won't boot, now... any smart IT guy, is going to wonder why on the day of the Audit all of a sudden your laptop won't boot. Either way you are probably going to get caught in the long run, you may save face but just owning up to it.

J :cool:
 
I.M.O.G. said:
My recommendation does not risk your friends data in any way, except I guess if there would be an error when performing the partition operations on his laptop - I've never had a problem with that however when using a dos partitionmagic utility.



Depending on the size of his company, its fairly possible that the numbers matched to begin with... :eh?:

But, the chances of being busted are still huge there are all kinds of ways for them to tell. His best bet is to find a friendly person in his IT Dept and ask them to reimage it.
 
Kendan said:
But, the chances of being busted are still huge there are all kinds of ways for them to tell. His best bet is to find a friendly person in his IT Dept and ask them to reimage it.

Excellent advice. That really is the best approach in this situation... There are alternatives, but I wouldn't call any of these good alternatives. :shrug:
 
Kendan said:
But, the chances of being busted are still huge there are all kinds of ways for them to tell. His best bet is to find a friendly person in his IT Dept and ask them to reimage it.


well the problem with the it department is they dont work in my office,i dont know him on a personal level anyway..and it is a multi pc license(i kinda think it might even be bootleg windows 2000 on it to begin with)i had a supervisor ask me a year ago if i had a copy of windows 2000 that he could give to the guy in the it department and i gave it to him....this is pretty bad being a corporation that is probably in the top ten of the biggest companies in the world...i wont mention any names...so i think im gonna try the external drive thing and see what happens...thanks for all the help...i knew i could rely on you guys thats why this is my favorite forum
 
meatneck said:
well the problem with the it department is they dont work in my office,i dont know him on a personal level anyway..and it is a multi pc license(i kinda think it might even be bootleg windows 2000 on it to begin with)i had a supervisor ask me a year ago if i had a copy of windows 2000 that he could give to the guy in the it department and i gave it to him....this is pretty bad being a corporation that is probably in the top ten of the biggest companies in the world...i wont mention any names...so i think im gonna try the external drive thing and see what happens...thanks for all the help...i knew i could rely on you guys thats why this is my favorite forum

In that case I would just wipe it and play dumb. What version of ghost are you using?
 
Kendan said:
In that case I would just wipe it and play dumb. What version of ghost are you using?


i have norton ghost 9
im just waiting for my co-worker to get here with his laptop so i can give it a try...im hoping for this to work because i have 3 other guys at the job that are in the same situation as me..if it works i can save everyone the headache this may cause us..ill definitly keep all of you posted on the results(fingers crossed)i dont need any more problems at work this company hates the fact that we are union-- and they are union busters! they will do whatever it takes to bury each one of us if they get the chance....
 
9 Will have no problems seeing the external USB drive. Then just boot to the ghost9 CD and resotore on your laptop. Do you have admin access to the Win2k lappies the company provides?
 
SpeeDj said:
The way dell ties everything to the hardware, I'd say simply in a nutshell you are screwed, best bet would be to just format it, either way you are caught. I would sincerely say that you should just fess up and have the IT dept re-image it, yeah it's a pain yeah you face risks, but you knew formatting the laptop and installing your own OS was against company policy in the first place. Hope it all goes well for you I really do.

J :cool:

That's not true. Imaging the laptop to a USB harddrive and restoring the image to his machine will work fine, even on a Dell.

However, if this machine is part of a domain, good luck getting it back on the domain without somebody finding out what you did :bang head

The whole fessing up part is what you're gonna have to do. You should have just used what they gave you in the first place (of course, I am saying that as an IT admin).
 
Slackfumasta said:
That's not true. Imaging the laptop to a USB harddrive and restoring the image to his machine will work fine, even on a Dell.

Yes, it will work but there are many ways that he can be busted, which is exactly what SpeeDj meant. He never said ghosting it wouldn't work.
 
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