can i clone a hard drive and put in identical pc ?

[petemurphy]

so have some tills that are windows 10 machines. in theory they are all the same hardware.

they have ssd's but i need a clean installation on each one.

can i set up one till afresh and then take out its ssd then use something like this

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Docking-Station-Alxum-Fun...

to clone the disk onto an identical disk and then put that disk in another till?

will it boot and act like its in the original till? or will there be a million errors etc?

thanks!

[colin79666]

It will boot but Windows activation will likely fail and if they are domain joined then it will cause a world of pain. If you want to properly clone a Windows machine you need to sysprep it.

[petemurphy]

colin79666 said:

It will boot but Windows activation will likely fail and if they are domain joined then it will cause a world of pain. If you want to properly clone a Windows machine you need to sysprep it.

if i take it off the domain first would that work? do u need something like macrium? thks

[camel_landy]

To add to that...

Sysprep is a Microsoft tool for cloning Windows builds and once you understand what it needs to do, it's not too difficult to use. However, you might find MDT (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit), which utilises Sysprep, might be a better option as that also has a number of options for deployment, including USB Boot.

HTH

M

[TonyRPH]

petemurphy said:

if i take it off the domain first would that work? do u need something like macrium? thks

No.

You would need to take it off the domain anyway.

As others have said, sysprep is the tool for this, and you need to enable the 'OOB' (out of box experience) or similar.

Sysprep will also change the unique system ID (SID) - which if not changed, will expose you to a world of problems, especially if you are adding the machines to a domain.

Ideally you would create an image, which will then be distributed to each new build, and during boot a new sid is created (along with a raft of other stuff).

[petemurphy]

Thanks will take a look at sysprep! And the toolkit thanks guys

[TonyToniTone]

You don't need to use sysprep if you aren't bothered about the OOB stuff, just add the device to a workgroup, and take an image using DISM.

Have a read of Mark Russinovich's “the machine SID duplication myth“

[TonyRPH]

TonyToniTone said:

You don't need to use sysprep if you aren't bothered about the OOB stuff, just add the device to a workgroup, and take an image using DISM.

Have a read of Mark Russinovich's “the machine SID duplication myth“

When I ran a domain with multiple PCs and I cloned them without changing the SID I ran into all manner of issues.

The biggest issue however was an A/V system that used the SID as a machine identifier, and pushing out updates resulted in some interesting side effects as all machines had the same 'unique' ID haha!

There were other management issues too - and since then I have always sysprep'd any machine that's to join a domain.

[TonyToniTone]

Had similar issue's in the past with software that creates unique id's that need clearing down pre-sysprep, and we sysprep all our pre-prod and production devices as it's mandated and it makes sense for mass deployments, however we do have a domain where no devices are syspreped.

I am not saying don't do it, just think the OP will probably be OK as I doubt the tills will be running legacy code that looks up local device SID's, most apps generate their own GUIDS or use the devices BIOS GUID.

[camel_landy]

TonyToniTone said:

I am not saying don't do it, just think the OP will probably be OK as I doubt the tills will be running legacy code...

In my experience, it's devices like these which ARE more likely to be running legacy code.

M