Is there an easy way to clone machines on different devices?

Discussion in 'PC' started by Bunford, Apr 20, 2023.

  1. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    I plan to use my desktop at my home studio and my laptop when away from home. Is there any way, bár reinstalling everything identically on both machines, to clone one to the other so that they both have the same software, plugins, and so on?

    I plan to use Dropbox to store my projects and sync to the cloud, menaing whatever I do on one device will then be available to the other.

    However, before I go down the path, just thought I'd check if there's an easy way to clone everything without having to reinstall.

    The desktop is a custom built Ryzen 9 5950X, 64GB, X570 mobo based machine and the laptop is an Asus ROG Core i7 8750H, 32GB machine, so will obviously have varying drivers and devices on/in the system.
     
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  3. fiction

    fiction Audiosexual

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    Because drivers are different on different systems, using portable software versions looks like the easiest way to go.
    Another option is to use virtual machines but audio performance *may* be worse.
     
  4. acatnamedharmony

    acatnamedharmony Ultrasonic

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    Something I did recently to make my life easier is create a Windows To Go disk on a SSD using Rufus that way I have the same environment regardless of whatever device I'm using. I'm still playing around with it but I got it to boot on a number of different devices.

    That being said I'd try Hasleo Win to USB there's a feature that allows you to migrate your current disk to a portable one. I have yet to mess around with it though so idk how well it works.
     
  5. tzzsmk

    tzzsmk Audiosexual

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    different hardware means different IDs and so different licensing of most software (incl. OS itself),
    you can brute force cloned drive to boot on completely different hardware, but you'll inevitably spend same of more time making things work,
    the fact you are not considering clean install because of having "too much" means the problem is elsewhere....
    tldr: not worth it, not recommended
     
  6. Bunford

    Bunford Audiosexual

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    I am actually clean installing on both machines. I was just hoping I could clean install one machine, and then clone to the other one to save the whole mundane reinstallation of everything!
     
  7. tzzsmk

    tzzsmk Audiosexual

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    in enterprise environment, such thing can be relatively easily achieved by applications deployment, it's a complex topic beyond scope of this forum, but feel free to take a brief look on the principles of Microsoft's Software Center:
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/mem/configmgr/core/understand/software-center
     
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