It's been a while and I guess it's time for a geeky post, so ya'll will just have to bear with me. Want to get some notes out there for those in need--

The problem of the day was how to clone Server 2008 R2 at minimal cost. This is a dev workstation and the unfortunate part of using the server OS is that everyone's imaging tools wind up costing an arm and a leg. Take Acronis for example. True Image is maybe $50 for Windows 7, but for 2008 you get to use the server product for $859. We find that a little steep to clone a workstation.

I also have a copy of EZ-GIG which I have used to great effect to clone laptop drives with Win XP thru Win 7 but they too take a pass on 2008.

Well as I repeatedly struck out, I did actually give it a go with DriveImage XML to be sure that it didn't "just work" w Server 2008, and guess what? It didn't go well. What to do... what to do... and I realized I had a couple of 500 GB drives sitting around, and several available SATA connectors inside the trusty Dell T3400. And this is what worked:

1. Put in a spare drive
2. Fire up Windows Server Backup and make a one-time, custom backup. WSB offers a System State option, and a Bare metal recovery option. I chose Bare metal, which as you see in the pic includes System state and the entire C: drive. You could back up and include additional drives at this step, or not, as you wish. This backup operation took about 20 min, for those who are worried about efficiency, but I'm sure time will vary greatly depending on how big your C: drive is, hardware, and the other usual variables.

 

3. This was the fun bit, that originally did not occur to me but became very obvious as I went along: unplug the original C: drive and substitute my second spare drive. Slap in the original Server 2008 boot DVD. Boot to DVD and choose Repair, then select the option to restore from a WSB backup.

Note that at this point I have two drives connected, one empty and one with my WSB backup from step two. Allow the restore operation to complete, which will take about as long as the backup took to begin with.

 

When done, move the restored drive over to its new home. Boot without attaching to the network. This final step is important if you're going to be using both machines on the same network, want to change the computer name and personalize your new clone -

 

4. At the command prompt navigate to C:\windows\system32\sysprep and run the sysprep tool with the Generalize option. This looks like the following:

 

 

 

Reboot a final time and you have a generic cloned image of your Server 2008 machine. I guess the drawback over a true cloning operation is that cloning disk to disk is one operation, whereas this method requires two operations, and therefore twice the time. But here's the advantage - it works and it's free.