Here's how we do our images... 1. Create a master image on the computer you wish to clone. At this stage, I never create user accounts, only the Admin account. Our users don't get admin privs, so this helps us to make sure the systems remain somewhat secure.
2. Once the image is complete, I reboot the computer in Target Disk Mode. I plug in a firewire cable and connect to my "image server" computer, which in my case is my desktop system. The hard drive of the master image is now on the desktop of my image server. I can choose to either hook up a firewire drive to store the image, or I can save the image to an existing volume on my desktop system, whichever I prefer. If you do use a firewire drive, I recommend partitioning it, making one partition a bootable partition and the other your image partition. This will give you the ability to set up systems while away from your desk. 3. Start CCC. I choose my master image as my source and the volume where I will store my image as my destination. In the preferences, I select "repair permissions before cloning," "create disk image on target," "prepare for Apple Software Restore" and "read only compressed." I'll explain the Apple Software Restore in a bit. Click Save. 4. Click the lock and enter your admin password. Click the Clone button. Go get a cup of coffee - this will take a little while. CCC is going to create a new disk image, clone your master image to the new disk image, and then convert the image to make it work with Apple System Restore. Bombich (www.bombich.com) has another application called NetRestore which uses the ASR file and does a very fast dump on a target drive, often in less than 10 minutes. 5. Once the clone is completed, unmount the master image drive and your firewire drive if you have one. Shut down your master image computer and move to the next computer. Depending on whether you have a bootable firewire drive or not, you'll either boot to the firewire drive or boot your new computer in Target Disk Mode and mount it to your image server again. 6. This time we'll run NetRestore. I set my preferences to erase target drive, verify file copy and make drive bootable. Click Save. 7. Click the lock, enter admin password, and click Restore. In about 10 minutes, the restore should be complete. This varies based on the speed of the computer you are restoring and the amount of data being restored. 8. Once complete, unmount all firewire drives, reboot the newly cloned computer and set up user accounts as normal. Using this approach, I have found that the initial setup of the computer takes about 2-4 hours after loading all software and making sure everything is exactly the way I want. I allow 30-60 minutes to clone the drive and create the ASR image. After that, it's 10 minutes or so per workstation to dump the image and maybe 30-60 minutes to personalize the computer for the user. I know the instructions above may seem a bit convoluted in places. If I failed to explain anything adequately, please let me know. Hope this helps! -- Bryan C. Forrest Macintosh Specialist & Asst. Network Administrator LifeNet http://www.lifenet.org On Jul 7, 2004, at 1:10 PM, Beth Ernst wrote: > We recently purchased 22 new G5s. We basically have 3 groups of users, > so > I've set up three machines with the software and settings each group > would > need. I'm wanting to use CCC to clone these 3 computers for the rest > of the > users in each group. I've been successful in cloning one drive so far > using > CCC but I have a couple questions and hope that someone out there has > worked > with CCC and can advise me. > > The way I cloned the first machine was to connect the machines using > firewire since I don't have access to an external firewire drive. I > formatted the target drive and cloned the drive I wanted to the newly > formatted machine. This seemed to work fine with a little clean up on > the > user account and permission settings. > > I'd also like to make a backup of each machine prior to distributing > them to > the users. I know I can make a disk image but the resulting image will > be > too large to burn onto a DVD. Is there a way to compress the image? > What's > the best way to go about this? I'm getting lazy in my old age and would > prefer to have a backup of each machine with all the applications, > etc. the > way they need to be. > > Thanks, > Beth > > > Fastline Publications Inc. DISCLAIMER: > > This communication is confidential and may be legally privileged. > > If you are not the intended recipient, (i) please do not read or > disclose to others, (ii) please notify the sender by reply mail, and > (iii) please delete this communication from your system. Failure to > follow this process may be unlawful. Thank you for your cooperation. > > > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be July 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> > | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup> > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
