[ale] Partially OT: moving apps from old to new PC's (non-Linux)

[griffisb at bellsouth.net]

Sorry to pollute the list with non-Linux stuff, but, ...

The info you guys gave me on backups and restoring has been very helpful. I was able to do a full backup from my laptop to a Samba Server, and set my son up as well. Restores - well, that's a different story. Need to scam a usb-drive to create emergency diskettes for my Win2K laptop and my son's WinXP laptop. Although Mondo and Mindi looked like a VERY cool thing, and does backups and bare-iron restores on dual-boot PC's. Think that's the next on my list. You can burn an emerency boot CD and restore from there. (yeah, think it's time to play Mondo and Mindi - unless there are other suggestions).

Anyway - the church I go to got new PC's for the office, and asked for help moving apps and data off the current PC's and on to the new ones. I thought of a few ideas, based on things we discussed on list and personal disasters ;-)

1. Do a hardware and software inventory on current PCs
2. Do a hardware inventory on each new PC
3. Set up a Samba server
   3A. Do full backups from each PC
          or
   3B. Do partial backups of My Documents folder on each PC

4. Install apps from on-site CD's (yeah, right! Couldn't locate the original CD's and licenses last time!)

5. Restore My Documents folders from Samaba server

Since I seriously doubt if we'll be able to locate original CD's and licenses, the other thought is to backup from the current PCs and restore to the new ones (if that's possible), then change drivers to match new hardware. That's probably a bad idea (out-dated anti-vir, unlicensed software, lots of junk from several years of surfing).

If you were migrating a small office, would the first list of actions be the best bet? Can Ghost backup a running PC and transfer to a different PC and give you a working system?