Cloning one computer to another
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I’ve got three Intel NUC 8 mini-PCs that all need to have the same software installed on them, starting with the OS on up. Does anyone know of a way to simply clone one to the others, so I could save myself from having to keep track of all the stuff I need to do to set them up individually?
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
I’ve got three Intel NUC 8 mini-PCs that all need to have the same software installed on them, starting with the OS on up. Does anyone know of a way to simply clone one to the others, so I could save myself from having to keep track of all the stuff I need to do to set them up individually?
Is a Linux Live CD ok as a tool? Just plain old
ddshould work fine for a 1:1 disk copy. If the drives differ in size then Clonezilla would work.
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@Cursorkeys From my experience, Clonezilla only works somewhat reliably and works best by booting from a USB drive - for simple clonings I have such a setup: One small USB stick to boot from and another larger USB stick to put the image on, both connected to a passive USB3.0 hub - using two sticks spares you mucking about with partititions and is much easier to setup. And they're not that expensive, after all.
For a more long-term solution, something like FOG Project works much better because you don't have to do so much manually and PXE booting spares you from using the sneakernet - while Clonezilla also does PXE, it's somewhat lacking in the administration department.
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@Cursorkeys said in Cloning one computer to another:
Is a Linux Live CD ok as a tool?
Not really, as they have no CD drive :)
Just plain old
ddshould work fine for a 1:1 disk copy. If the drives differ in size then Clonezilla would work.All three are exactly the same in terms of hardware, AFAIK (I didn’t put them together, someone else did) so what I’m looking for is a way to just copy the entire 128 GB SSD from one onto the other two.
ddmight work (it’s on the source machine, as I put Linux Mint on it), if I can do that over a network connection — but I kind of doubt that, as the target machines have no software on them at all.
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
Not really, as they have no CD drive :)
You can just have the Live "CD" on USB or network boot. It doesn't need to be a CD.
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@Gurth You'd need an alternate boot medium with the clone tool.
Do you have a PC you can plug two of them in to?
Could you boot them over PXE? I never experimented with automatic imaging using PXE but it shouldn't be too difficult.
EDIT: Oh, and you probably shouldn't be doing a block-level copy from the source machine's disk while it's mounted.
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The Microsoft approved method is to install Windows on one machine, enter Audit Mode at the OOBE, install the software, generalize-and-shutdown, capture the image offline (well, essentially, while not booted into the target machines OS, how you accomplish this is an exercise for the user), then shove the new install.wim in the appropriate folder, and use the install medium on the rest.
Easy peasy, yes?
Edit: it will be something like this:
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@Gurth Just use either Clonezilla LiveCD for a one-off cloning or FOG Project for something repeatable and spare yourself the problems setting up the Rube Goldberg machines.
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
what I’m looking for is a way to just copy the entire 128 GB SSD from one onto the other two.
ddmight work (it’s on the source machine, as I put Linux Mint on it), if I can do that over a network connection — but I kind of doubt that, as the target machines have no software on them at all.Boot the machine with ClonezillaLive, create an image of it and save it on an external HD or a SMB share, then boot the other ones with ClonezillaLive and write the image to the SSD.
Pretty much like Rhywden said
When I cloned a bunch of machines, I used the Clonezilla Server on a separate network.
But for just 3 machines, it's not worth the trouble.
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@loopback0 said in Cloning one computer to another:
@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
Not really, as they have no CD drive :)
You can just have the Live "CD" on USB or network boot. It doesn't need to be a CD.
I figured as much :) It’s how I installed the first one, after all.
@PleegWat said in Cloning one computer to another:
@Gurth You'd need an alternate boot medium with the clone tool.
My current thinking is to boot one from the Mint live-USB I made, clone the whole SSD onto an SD card, and then do basically the same to reverse the process on the other two.
Do you have a PC you can plug two of them in to?
I have a couple of Macs I could plug them into, but I don’t know if they would recognise them in anything resembling a Mac’s Target Disk mode. Probably not.
EDIT: Oh, and you probably shouldn't be doing a block-level copy from the source machine's disk while it's mounted.
Good point, but I wasn’t planning to, no :)
@TimeBandit said in Cloning one computer to another:
Boot the machine with ClonezillaLive, create an image of it and save it on an external HD or a SMB share, then boot the other ones with ClonezillaLive and write the image to the SSD.
That sounds like it’ll be easier than messing around with
dd. My main question at this point is: could I do this with an SD card big enough to hold the actual data that’s on the SSD, or would I need an SD card that’s as big as the SSD? Because I have the former already, but not the latter.When I cloned a bunch of machines, I used the Clonezilla Server on a separate network.
But for just 3 machines, it's not worth the trouble.I’m looking for basically a quick and easy solution. If I’d have to do three dozen machines then a server would probably be a good idea, but not for cloning two copies of one machine, no.
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
@loopback0 said in Cloning one computer to another:
@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
Not really, as they have no CD drive :)
You can just have the Live "CD" on USB or network boot. It doesn't need to be a CD.
I figured as much :) It’s how I installed the first one, after all.
@PleegWat said in Cloning one computer to another:
@Gurth You'd need an alternate boot medium with the clone tool.
My current thinking is to boot one from the Mint live-USB I made, clone the whole SSD onto an SD card, and then do basically the same to reverse the process on the other two.
Do you have a PC you can plug two of them in to?
I have a couple of Macs I could plug them into, but I don’t know if they would recognise them in anything resembling a Mac’s Target Disk mode. Probably not.
EDIT: Oh, and you probably shouldn't be doing a block-level copy from the source machine's disk while it's mounted.
Good point, but I wasn’t planning to, no :)
@TimeBandit said in Cloning one computer to another:
Boot the machine with ClonezillaLive, create an image of it and save it on an external HD or a SMB share, then boot the other ones with ClonezillaLive and write the image to the SSD.
That sounds like it’ll be easier than messing around with
dd. My main question at this point is: could I do this with an SD card big enough to hold the actual data that’s on the SSD, or would I need an SD card that’s as big as the SSD? Because I have the former already, but not the latter.When I cloned a bunch of machines, I used the Clonezilla Server on a separate network.
But for just 3 machines, it's not worth the trouble.I’m looking for basically a quick and easy solution. If I’d have to do three dozen machines then a server would probably be a good idea, but not for cloning two copies of one machine, no.
If you use Clonezilla or FOG an image of a newly installed Win10 image with Office and other small stuff installed clocks in about 30GB. If you use
ddyou'd have to pipe in some kind of compressor.Setting up a CLonezilla LIveCD isn't hard - I don't see why you're so hell-bent on doing it manually. Just write the image to a USB stick and boot from there.
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@Rhywden said in Cloning one computer to another:
If you use Clonezilla or FOG an image of a newly installed Win10 image with Office and other small stuff installed clocks in about 30GB. If you use
ddyou'd have to pipe in some kind of compressor.We’re talking about a Linux Mint installation with a web server and some other stuff. I’ve not checked, but I doubt it takes up anywhere near that much.
Setting up a CLonezilla LIveCD isn't hard - I don't see why you're so hell-bent on doing it manually. Just write the image to a USB stick and boot from there.
I’m not hell-bent on doing this manually — I just didn’t know what tools are available, so my only fallback at that point was to consider doing it manually using the tools I did know could do the job. That’s why I opened this thread in the first place.
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@Gurth Then use Clonezilla. You get compression and error checking and don't have to find out all the command line parameters.
As I said, I'm using it with two USB sticks and a passive USB hub - the first (small) USB stick has the CloneZilla LiveCD image on it, the 2nd larger one is formatted with Ext4 and receives the images. This setup is supported right off the bat - you just have to select the 2nd USB stick when it asks you where to save (or restore) the image.
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@Rhywden I will, thanks for the tip (and everyone else too). if it doesn’t work (I need to finish setting up the first computer to my satisfaction first, of course), I’ll be back with more questions …
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
That sounds like it’ll be easier than messing around with
dd. My main question at this point is: could I do this with an SD card big enough to hold the actual data that’s on the SSD, or would I need an SD card that’s as big as the SSD? Because I have the former already, but not the latter.No, CloneZilla usually does the smart and doesn't backup sectors that are supposedly empty. You will definitely need to ensure that the relevant partitions are valid for the target drives though, I'm not sure restoring partitions resizes them if the disk is too small...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Cloning one computer to another:
You will definitely need to ensure that the relevant partitions are valid for the target drives though, I'm not sure restoring partitions resizes them if the disk is too small...
Last time I used it, you couldn't
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Cloning one computer to another:
You will definitely need to ensure that the relevant partitions are valid for the target drives though, I'm not sure restoring partitions resizes them if the disk is too small...
That shouldn’t be an issue — all three machines have the same size of SSD.
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@Gurth said in Cloning one computer to another:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Cloning one computer to another:
You will definitely need to ensure that the relevant partitions are valid for the target drives though, I'm not sure restoring partitions resizes them if the disk is too small...
That shouldn’t be an issue — all three machines have the same size of SSD.
Reportedly, anyways. I've had units that were off by a couple dozen megabytes. Better be safe and have to extend the partition to the end than assume and then deal with partitions that are apparently too big for the drive...
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@Tsaukpaetra Good point, I’ll need to check that first.
