I am setting up a small computer lab at a school in a small town up in the hills of Panama, where we will be starting with 10 similarly-configured student PCs. My desire is to create a locked-down system image on the first PC, then clone it to all the others--easy enough with tools like Ghost or Acronis, etc.
However (stay with me here), since their options for "tech support" in the town are little-to-none, I need these systems to be fairly self-sustaining. Specifically, I would like to leave them with a custom, bootable DVD that will re-image any of the PCs to the original "clean" image similar to the hardware "System Restore Disc". And it must meet the following requirements:
- easy for the non-technical users--no questions or options, just boot to the DVD and click YES to restore the disk
- the bootable DVD should be self-contained, with the image file automatically applied
- it should not just restore the image, but also run SysPrep or NewSID or such to ensure that the new PC name and SID doesn't conflict on the network
It's been a few years since I've used Ghost or PowerQuest or the like for anything but a single backup and restore, and the feature-sets that these products boast have exploded... so I don't know which one to pick.
Anyone have experience and recommendations from using one of these programs to make such a system restore disc? Your comments are much appreciated!
I'm heading to Panama on Sunday to do this installation, so I need to have my tools ready before then. So any comments, tips or suggestions from people who have used one of these tools (Symantec Ghost, Acronis Backup & Recovery, Clonezilla, FarStone DriveClone Pro, Paragon Deployment Manager, etc.), it would be much appreciated. Thanks!