Disk cloning software

[NecroFlex]

I'm looking for a disk cloning software, that'll let me clone 1 disk or an image of that disk to multiple disks at once. I work at a company where we sell a lot of new PCs and laptops, a wholesale. We get a lot of requests for fx. 250 laptops that we need to upgrade to bigger SSDs, which also means reinstalling windows.

 

For now we've been doing it by hand using a USB with Ventoy to boot into macrium reflect to select the image we prepared from one already fully updated PC and then cloning that to the laptop. It's an ok process, but i feel like we could speed it up by putting in already cloned disks.

 

I tried to google around, but i couldn't find any software or any mention that a software can do multiple clones at once. I know there are special HW arrays that you put an NVMe disk in and it clones it to multiple disks, but those range from hundreds to thousands of dollars for something that feels like a proper software with addon PCIe M.2 adapters should handle for 1/10th the price.

 

Any ideas? I know Macrium doesn't have that option and i think EaseUS doesn't either.

[manikyath]

12 minutes ago, NecroFlex said:

For now we've been doing it by hand using a USB with Ventoy to boot into macrium reflect to select the image we prepared from one already fully updated PC and then cloning that to the laptop.

assuming you do QC at all, doing these manual actions at the computer is essentially most of your QC process, which you would otherwise have to do separately anyways.

 

as for cloning - cant you just run multiple instances of the software?

[OhYou_]

DD would do this. 

The workflow would involve you pulling drives and plugging as many as you can into one system with the master disk and then running it. 

[NecroFlex]

23 minutes ago, manikyath said:

assuming you do QC at all, doing these manual actions at the computer is essentially most of your QC process, which you would otherwise have to do separately anyways.

 

as for cloning - cant you just run multiple instances of the software?

We do boot into sysprep since we have to activate windows, we do basic checks if everything is working fine/no oddities, but we don't do any long run tests for each PC/laptop.

 

I tried but it says there's another instance already open.

[NecroFlex]

5 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

DD would do this. 

The workflow would involve you pulling drives and plugging as many as you can into one system with the master disk and then running it. 

When it comes to software and most things outside of Windows and MacOS, i'm not that skillful. I presume DD is a Unix command from what i googled?

 

That would mean installing any Unix distro then? Which would be recommended/friendly for someone who hasn't done much in Unix at all? 

 

Also, would this work with PCIe risers too? Since not many motherboards have a lot of X4 slots or bigger for the PCIe M.2 adapters, which are usually x4 or bigger.

[OhYou_]

2 minutes ago, NecroFlex said:

When it comes to software and most things outside of Windows and MacOS, i'm not that skillful. I presume DD is a Unix command from what i googled?

 

That would mean installing any Unix distro then? Which would be recommended/friendly for someone who hasn't done much in Unix at all? 

 

Also, would this work with PCIe risers too? Since not many motherboards have a lot of X4 slots or bigger for the PCIe M.2 adapters, which are usually x4 or bigger.

well, yeah. it would take a fairly high amount of learning and testing effort immediately, but I think it would surely save more time with 250 laptops. Especially since you can create the base image and clone it to all the drives pre-emptively and then simply slide them into the new laptops. 
I would try usb to m.2 nvme adapters. I have one which I believe I've cloned to with reflect and it worked.

[manikyath]

10 minutes ago, NecroFlex said:

When it comes to software and most things outside of Windows and MacOS, i'm not that skillful. I presume DD is a Unix command from what i googled?

DD is essentially a linux tool that'll read from anywhere and write to anywhere. point it to the source and destination disk and it'll clone the disk accurately to every last bit.

 

downside is that it'll also copy empty space, so time gained by doing multiple at once is lost by the extra time each copy takes.

12 minutes ago, NecroFlex said:

 

Also, would this work with PCIe risers too? Since not many motherboards have a lot of X4 slots or bigger for the PCIe M.2 adapters, which are usually x4 or bigger.

get a few of those multi-controller USB3 cards, and those USB M.2 enclosures. saves you from having to shut down the cloning system between cloning rounds.