Making a drive image to restore on multiple hard drives

Hey guys, I want to make a drive image of a fresh install of Windows with all the drivers already loaded. I also want to preload a few pieces of software and have those included in the image.

I know there's software out there for this easy part. But I wat to make sure it can load the image on different sized hard drives. I didn't want to waste the time to make an image only to find out it only works on that same hard drive.

Any suggestions on software or ideas would be greatly appeciated

 

so you want to do it so you can wack the windows image and programs on diff computers ? , wont be too clever coz different computers have differrent hardware,and the computers hardware drivers etc that the image was made on,will be on the image !

 

i think he means if he swapped the hard drive out for one with different capacity. I think you'll be Ok as long as the image has drivers for the hardware on the computer you're installing on.

 

It would also be illegal for both programs mentioned. One licence...one computer.

 

yep

you can back it up, but only to re-install

not for multiple installations

 

Okay, If I really need to post what I'm doing here to get all the pirate trolls off my back I will. I'm using this for the same laptops I'm buying and reselling. All have a COA for Windows XP Pro, so its all licened. All the computers have the same hardware since they are the same, so no problem there. And I'm only asking about the software because I wanted to put AVG anti-virus and a few other free programs on the installation.

I'm basically asking this because I can't seem to get slipstream to work on my Dell Windows XP installation cd. So I can't put SP2, or any other drivers in the installation and it takes FOREVER to update computer from a first generation Dell disc (has NO updates already installed).

So now that I've explained far more than should be necessary, does anybody have a software suggestion, or are they just going to tell me how its not going to work (as you can see above, I did think it through a little before I started asking around).

 

Yes....Acronis free 15 Day trial at www.download.com

You make a system backup and the disks are bootable, can be used any number of times, and have no time restriction.

Apologies....your title could have been a bit misleading though.

 

Thanks

Now that I reread the title it is a little misleading, but I figured my biggest problem would be getting softwae tat would allow me to restore an image onto onto a hard drive of a different size.

 

OOOOOwait........I may have been a bit wrong. You can restore this way but it will leave the remainder of the drive unformatted. Understand?

You will have to format and create a partition out of the empty space.

so if its a 240Gb drive and you restore from a 160Gb backup... you will have to create and format a partition of 80Gb

 

check your private messages.....

 

I second Acronis True Image. It's the best IMO.

 

You will have to do the install WITHOUT putting in a DVD/Product key and then make your image. Then use the image to build the machines, boot them and install individual DVD/product keys. Otherwise they will all have the same key and only the first one will be able to register.

I know that Ghost will let you create a PARTITION image and then restore it to another hard drive. You need to partition the new drive and then Ghost will restore the image EVEN if the new partition is larger. It makes the extra space available as part of the partition as you would hope. Using Ghost to create a drive image won't work in the same fashion though.

Gary