Windows 7 Cloning/ghosting software

Hello

WOuld like to clone/ghost an Dell Optiplex 780 windows 7 pro 64-bit image. Can anyone recommend any free software please?

Cheers

 

Cloning and imaging are not the same thing. With cloning you write an exact copy of a drive or partition to another drive or partition, free space and all. With imaging you create a compressed file which you store on an intermediate drive and which can later be restored to either the original drive or to a different drive. You need to decide which it is you want to do.

There is both free and paid software available for this, including Acronis True Image, Macrium Reflect and Easeus Todo Backup. If you have a WD, Seagate or Maxtor drive in your computer there is also a free cut-down version of Acronis available on the Seagate website.

 

Right sorry wrote that in a rush.

I have 4 x Dell GX 780 SFF PC's. One is currently built updated and would like to image that drive and drop onto the other 3 so I do not have to build each one from scratch.

Windows 7 Profesional 64-bit installed

 

You could certainly do that by creating an image on an external drive and restoring that image to each of the other machines and you could do that with any of the programs already mentioned. You would only need to install the imaging software on the first machine and from there create both the image file and the bootable rescue disk required to boot the other machines and restore the image.

So in practical terms it's straightforward, but expect to hit an activation issue with the other machines which may or may not resolve by supplying the key attached to each machine.

EDIT - if there is other licensed software on the donor machine you may get further licensing issues too.