Best way to duplicate a system?

[Arzy]

So I had to get my mom a new pc and she brought her old one to my house. I've set up the new PC with all the software and hardware she needs, my question is this however:

Seeing as she is normally about 400km away from me and I don't want to spend hours on the phone correcting minor things, what would be the easiest way to duplicate her current system setup apart from sitting in from of both pc's and entering everything manually? At her house she connects to the internet via a wireless network with the other pc's in the house for example.

 

[FrancTheTank]

remote desktop?

 

[Arzy]

Tried it before, doesn't really work that well unless you have a mountain of patience, they stay on a farm and use satelite connectivity

 

[Messugga]

Acronis true image can make exact copies of your drive and restore them. Good way to swap to a new hard drive. Not sure if this is what you're asking though?

 

[stevovo]

Acronis true image can make exact copies of your drive and restore them. Good way to swap to a new hard drive. Not sure if this is what you're asking though?

lol I was just about to mention that as well

Best hard drive duplicating software I've ever used.

 

[Arzy]

Will use that to transfer her data then, how about the actual settings for networks, mail etc though?

 

[Arthur]

Acronis True Image is a disk/partition imaging tool, so the entire disk is imaged and then restored ... everything, opsys, apps, settings, the whole bang-shoot. There is a mode to backup files and folders, but if you use that you will still have to manually configure settings.

I'd set up her entire PC, then create an image in an Acronis SecureZone on the HDD (and also keeo a copy myself), so everything can be reset to zero if she hits a serious problem (after backing up data, of course). The SecureZone is like a laptop's recovery partition, so it's hidden and not accessible to malware. On bootup you hit F11 when prompted, and start restoring the last saved image.

I absolutely could not live without Acronis True Image Echo Workstation (better than the Home version), nor without the server version at work. Both can convert a tib image into a vmdk or vhd for instant virtualisation.

 

[Messugga]

I'd also suggest getting some VM software like Virtual Box which you can use to create a virtual machine to restore her system's files to. That way you have an exact copy of her computer(save for a few hardware bits, of course, which there's no way of duplicating other than having the exact same computer as her, that I can think of) which you can tinker around in.

 

[Arzy]

Ok, that sounds exactly like what I need, will also help a lot with not haveing to update her Pastel from the stoneage again.

What would this process entail? For example, on her new box I've already loaded windows, pastel, office etc. I'm assuming I'd install Arconis on her old rig and create an image of the entire system. Would restoring the image on the new system not then create conflicts in terms of the hardware changes?

 

[LazyLion]

So I had to get my mom a new pc and she brought her old one to my house. I've set up the new PC with all the software and hardware she needs, my question is this however:

Seeing as she is normally about 400km away from me and I don't want to spend hours on the phone correcting minor things, what would be the easiest way to duplicate her current system setup apart from sitting in from of both pc's and entering everything manually? At her house she connects to the internet via a wireless network with the other pc's in the house for example.

Ja, I would create a Logmein free account and install it on her computer as well, that way you can access it when needed. It does not need a huge amount of bandwidth. Broadband yes, but anything above 256k should work.

 

[Conradl]

Acronis True Image is a disk/partition imaging tool, so the entire disk is imaged and then restored ... everything, opsys, apps, settings, the whole bang-shoot. There is a mode to backup files and folders, but if you use that you will still have to manually configure settings.

I'd set up her entire PC, then create an image in an Acronis SecureZone on the HDD (and also keeo a copy myself), so everything can be reset to zero if she hits a serious problem (after backing up data, of course). The SecureZone is like a laptop's recovery partition, so it's hidden and not accessible to malware. On bootup you hit F11 when prompted, and start restoring the last saved image.

I absolutely could not live without Acronis True Image Echo Workstation (better than the Home version), nor without the server version at work. Both can convert a tib image into a vmdk or vhd for instant virtualisation.

How does this differ from vmware converter. Wanted to download the trial but no time....

 

[Arzy]

Ok, read up on the Arconis forum and this seems to be the perfect solution! Busy downloading Arconis now to try it tonight, seems like the only problem could be with graphics so I must just remember to set the old PC to standard VGA before I create the image Oh and to create an image of the new system in case something does go wrong...

 

[elmorya]

Used some thing called HDClone, freebie of the internet - makes a wonderful duplicate of your HDD, O/S & all - differing disk sizes do not matter at all!

 

[Arthur]

.. seems like the only problem could be with graphics so I must just remember to set the old PC to standard VGA before I create the image ...

Never heard of that before. I've been using it since 2003 on countless systems and have never heard of a graphics issue.

As to restoring to different hardware: For the Workstation version (not Home) you can get an add-in option called Acronis Universal Restore, which allows you to restore the image to different hardware. it slipstreams in the new HAL level drivers (esp for storage controller) so the migrated Windows can at least boot - the PnP drivers should be handled by Windows or in post-migration updates.

I have virtual machines of all my old systems from the past 10 years or so, including laptops and notebooks. This requires a lot of disk space, but that's where the 1TB and 2TB drives comes in handy.