Acronis TrueImage would work fine for this, actually.

That is IF you don't mind paying money.

Otherwise, use something free like CDriveBack
http://cdriveback.lccdigital.com/

"CDriveBack is a backup system.

CDriveBack's design goal is to make a backup system so easy to use that
the end users with no backup, eighty percent of XP Home users and thirty
percent of home XP Professional users, take backups and can easily
restore their system.

For example, backing up the C: drive to an area on the C: drive takes
two steps:

1. Boot the CDriveBack CD, when the first screen shows,
2. Hit enter to backup the C: drive.



CDriveBack is:

* A Live CD, one that you can boot, requiring no installs, using,


* Linux 2.6.x, a recent version of the Linux operationg system, to
run


* Dialog screens that manage backup files on your drives and


* Use DAR <http://dar.sourceforge.net/> to backup the partition
or drive to files, in turn using, when needed,


* Backing up older Windows drives as well as Linux formatted
drives is built-in

* NTFS-3G, the NTFS Drive handling package. is used for
NTFS drives."




________________________________

From: ttcs@yahoogroups.com [mailto:ttcs@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
Richard Bailey
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 11:28 AM
To: ttcs@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ttcs] Re: h/drive clonning solution



Are all the machines homogeneous? Depending on your client hardware
landscape you'll only need to store hd images for unique hardware
configs.

There's an opensource tool called Mondo Archive that might work, I
don't know about it's network capabilities but it may be something too
look at.

Another alternative is to split the hard drive into 2 storing the
image of the OS half on the other half. This wont save you when a hd
dies, but it will reduce network traffic, be useful for users that are
not in office but still need a reload (laptop users) and reduce
storage requirements on your server. I believe mondo can be configured
to work like this and each machine can just have a mondo rescue CD to
initiate the restore of the image.

Regardless of what you choose be aware that you'll now have an image
management task to do, i.e. if there's new standard software that
users have to get you'll have to refresh all your images.

Let us know what you go with.

- RB

--- In ttcs@yahoogroups.com <mailto:ttcs%40yahoogroups.com> , carroll
cole <carroll.cole@...> wrote:
>
> Can I get input on whether the suggested solution is feasible. Is
there
> an easier way to solve the problem. What components are needed etc.
>
> This is my problem:-
>
> I have 20 -25 pcs running win xp and office 2003. Every day there is
> alway some software problem to deal. It is taken up too much of my
time.
>
> My Solution:-
>
> Clone each h/drive to a large external drive and whenever there is a
> problem, restore the clonned h/drive.
>
> All user files are stored on a unix file server, only about 6 people
> store e-mail on the h/drive.
>
>
> Thanks
>






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