Have you checked if your dual-boot drive is working properly?
Have you checked if your dual-boot drive is working properly?
I'm handling 50+ Dell Optiplex 380 units with Core 2 Duo E7500 CPUs, 4GB RAM, and HDDs. I'm planning to install Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04.1 on each one. My previous experience suggests installing them sequentially is manageable, so I aimed to optimize the Windows setup. I explored imaging tools and found Clonezilla useful. I attempted to clone a drive containing both Windows 10 20H2 and Ubuntu 20.04.01, but faced issues with NTFS partitions. Problems included not shutting down properly, disabling hibernation, and using fdisk or similar commands. I tried disabling fast boot and hibernation but had no success. I considered restoring Windows first via Macrium Reflect, then booting into Clonezilla to recover Ubuntu. I managed to create an image of the Ubuntu partitions with Clonezilla, but it didn't detect the unallocated space I intended to clone. Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated. It's quite complex with so many drives and computers involved. In short, can I image and restore a drive with multiple partitions of different file systems?
While drafting this, the thought of using Macrium Reflect to capture a drive with Ubuntu and Windows came to mind. Success! Earlier I believed it wasn’t possible since Macrium Reflect doesn’t support Linux file systems, but after some research it seems it can’t be installed on a Linux machine.
I worked on a Cisco Lab during school years. Used 20 Optiplex devices—each with one Windows and two Linux installations. On a separate VM, I ran DRBL. All computers had PXE enabled. Start the VM, connect one fully installed machine, clone the entire drive with Clonezilla. Configure DRBL to wait for 19 clients. Launch all remaining machines and observe simultaneous full imaging. This streamlined OS updates—just update one and DRBL handles the rest. Or when antivirus removed files, we simply reimaged from the VM’s latest image.