1 backup for multiple macs

[davidtheanimato]

Hi everyone,

I work for a media company, we hire out our stock of macs to clients and they often come back full of unwanted files and applications, we want to create a single backup on our network that we can automatically sync our macs to when they come back from a job, so it gets rid of all the extra files and resets back to just being the software we want. Then when software updates come out we can just update the 1 backup and it will sync to all the macs. Is this possible?!

Cheers in advance!

 

[spinnerlys]

You could use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to clone the state you want to save, then when the machine comes back, clone back (after you erased the HDD on the machine that came back) and update both, clone and HDD, if necessary.

 

[davidtheanimato]

wow thank you for the quick reply! Will either of those two do the backup intelligently ie only change the files it needs too or will they want to clear the whole drive and restore it all back on there? Would it be simplish to automate this task do you think so it tries to do it at startup if its back on our network?

Thank you so much!

 

[spinnerlys]

CCC and SD can do incremental clones, so they don't overwrite what hasn't been changed since the last clone.

But I don't know of any automatic behaviour, maybe have a look at their websites.