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DavekWelcome to the Radified forums!
Quote:He proposed a project where i would find a good cloning software program and we would offer it to his clients as something they could benefit from.
That's a good project!
Quote:It needs to be pretty inexpensive or free and it needs to have the capability to schedule on a regular basis to keep up to date.
A starting point--but, there are more questions to be answered in order to make your search relevant....
Disclaimer--I've not used any other cloning programs except the DOS based Symantec Ghost program--I've been reading most of the posts on the site here in reference to other programs--and have some working knowledge as to how different programs work... or not.....
Quote:I have a good friend who has a computer business. He installs networks into small offices
So, in using any software for solving your needs--you need to write down a list of functional requirements that you need to include:
Are you going to do the imaging only on local machines, each machine separately--or are you needing to use a network imaging solution where one machine will be the *server* (or single storage location) to hold all the images of the various other machines on the network--i.e. *clients*--and the *client* images need to be sent over the network to that single location?
If using a network--is it a simple network where various machines can share data--or is there an actual main server (running server software, i.e. Win Server 2009, or whatever)? Not all imaging softwares are capable of running under *server software*.
And, you need to determine if your needs will be to create backup images using *hot* imaging (imaging while the OS is running--and the imaging software is running from the OS), or *cold* imaging (imaging after closing down the OS and running the imaging from a DOS OS, Linux OS, or some flavor of WinPE OS--where the actual system OS is not running).
Once you know what functions you need to include, then you will be able to quickly start eliminating various software as an option--because not all software will have the needed functionality. And, it's much more likely that *free* software will tend to have fewer *advanced* capabilities--such as over network functions, etc..
And Brian mentioned this:
Quote:From your list I've only used Drive Image XML. It is very slow, taking about three times longer to restore an image than other software I've tried.
Certainly another consideration--but, if the image *creation* speed is fast, it's much less likely that image *restore* will be a frequent operation--maybe a slow restore is acceptable if the software otherwise meets your needs!!!
Let us know how things progress....