[K12OSN] Kinda OT - Imaging Macs

[k12osn at collinsoft.com]

On Tue, 7 Sep 2004, Santiago, Nicholas wrote:
> This is kinda off topic, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
>  
> Does anyone know of a successful way to clone Mac OS X boxes? I tried using
> Carbon Copy Cloner with a Firewire/1394 cable connecting two Macs, and
> nothing. Does anyone have any ideas or know of links to a good walkthough?

1. Invest $200 into a external firewire drive. Be sure to get one that 
doesn't require external power. This will make it easy to move from 
machine to machine.
2. Install OS X onto the firewire drive. 
3. Use NetRestore from http://www.bombich.com/ to create a disk image onto 
the firewire drive.
4. Plug the firewire drive into the Mac to be restored. Start up the 
machine holding down the Option key. It will show all the devices you can 
boot from. Select the firewire drive.
5. Use NetRestore to restore the image from the firewire drive onto the 
mac. Our 3.4GB image (compressed) takes about 15-20 minutes.

Mike Bombich has tons of info on this on his website:
http://www.bombich.com/

Even better is setting up NetBoot and a NetRestore image. To restore a 
machine in that scenerio you can either:
-Start up the mac holding down the N key. The machine will boot over the 
network and start NetRestore.
-Set up an automatic NetRestore image, and use Apple Remote Desktop to 
select the machines to restore. Set their startup disk to the NetRestore 
image and restart the machines.

NetRestore can automatically name the machines, set the IP address, 
restart when finished, etc.

-- 
Ryan Collins