I have a few different machines at work that I need to do development type work on from time to time but I don't want to monkey with the existing software for various reasons. I'd like to be able to make clones of each computer onto a single HDD (through partitions I guess) and then boot from that specific machines partition when I want to work on it.

This is doable, right?

6/8/2010 6:22:15 PM

What you are describing is possible.

[Edited on June 8, 2010 at 6:32 PM. Reason : typing FTL]

6/8/2010 6:32:34 PM

Look into VMware. It does what you're looking to do and is a much simpler solution.

6/8/2010 8:02:24 PM

yeah, this is a perfect candidate for virtualization

plus you can have snapshots

6/8/2010 10:58:24 PM

VMware is more or less out of the question as the machines are already taxed to the limit as is (it's a project in the future of ours to figure out how to make the system perform better). Ultimately I ended up using the shitty Paragon software we have to do the image/restore and then used Partition Magic to shrink the partition down properly to fit all the images onto a single disk.

6/10/2010 5:23:35 PM

i think VMware Server + VMware Converter should get it done right?

6/10/2010 5:35:19 PM

^ Yes. VMWARE on another server. Use the converter to make a copy. But you have to use that copy on a VM server. Also if the original drive is software RAID you'll have to break it first.

6/10/2010 5:50:15 PM