Reusable Boot Disk (How can I make?)

M

mindbend

Registered
Maybe that wasn't the best choice of words, but here's what I want to do:

I've got a few Macs at the office that I periodically like to restore completely from scratch (wipe the hard drive, reinstall everything.) This is obviously a huge PITA.

Is there any way I can make something like an external Firewire drive into a "Master" disk that is used to duplicate itself onto other empty drives?

I'd like a hard drive that I update every time an OS update occurs, or application updates occur, but I never use it to run anything, just as a starting point for replicating on other HDs.

Any thoughts?
 
Yes. You can clone your custom install onto your external firewire drive, or make an Apple Software Restore compatible disc image using a tool called CarbonCopyCloner.

Choose a single machine (I assume al your machines are the same basic hardware configuration, otherwise it can get tricky in terms of video card drivers etc). And don't forget to own enough licenses for Mac OSX – the family (5 users for less than the price of 2 individual boxed copies) and educational packs are very well priced.

Do your complete installation of OSX, and all other additional software (be aware that any serialized software packages that are network-aware may complain about finding cloned copies of themselves on the network. Also be aware that any user accounts will be cloned when you replicate this machine.)

Get yourself a copy of CarbonCopyCloner. READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!
Install it as admin (of course) on the machine you are going to clone, then either clone the entire boot disc onto your Firewire drive, or clone the entire boot disc into a ASR (Apple Software Restore) disc image on your Firewire drive.
Personally I think the complete clone is a better alternative to the ASR (cos I don't know how to make it work exactly), because you can boot off that Cloned OS on the firewire drive (you can't boot from the ASR image, although I am sure there is some way of installing off these things), and use it's copy of CarbonCopyCloner to clone the custom install onto all your other machines.

Then smile :D
 
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