CLONING to Western Digital external hard drive = {{NOVICE}}

itnovice said:

Hi all, as the user name sugests I.T is all a bit tech for me {at the moment} by you got to start somewhere right, So i've been asked to set up 6 brand new Dell laptops bought for my software engineers in the industy - i have been given a 7th Dell laptop same as the other 6 which has had all the required software needed by our engineers for the machinery programing process installed on it - i've also been given a 1TB western Digital {USB connected} external hard drive for cloning the software and transfering it on to the other laptops, so this afternoon i cloned the 7th laptop with all the software on it using system back up - creating a system image file on the external hard drive, but when it came to transfering this image on to the other laptops, i thought i'd beable to restore {set up the C: drive} the new laptop from the file path E: {the external hard drive path} but it doesn't have the option {E: drive or USB input or external drive} only system restore/back up disk or network path, i can't use the network path as the company has access/permission,firewall blockers that basically stop our engineers laptops from working on customers sites when online, which kind of stops any work from happening, and is why the company I.T deparment wont help me out in this situation, any help or guidance greatly appreciated as i really have thrown myself in at the deep end

It isn't always E... it can differ form machine to machine. Are you sure you're using a usb2.0 port and NOT usb3.0 to restore? Are you sure the harddisk is the same size (or more GB) as the machine where you made the backup? Are you sure it's exact same hardware?

Boot from win7 system repair disk or win7 install disk and enter "repair your computer". Select "command prompt". Now do:

Code:

diskpart
list disk
list vol

Do it when usb disk is attached and once when not. Is it recognized?

itnovice said:

all the laptops are the same Dell ...... i dont know the numbers {as i'm home now} they have 290gd hard drive and 8gb ram all supplied with the same windows and operation software as supplied with any new Dell, and i'm using a WD 1Terra bite external hard drive to transfer the software/data across

it doesn't help that windows 7 is very new to me as i'm used to XP-Vista-etc

as before any help greatly appreciated

You don't transfer the "software/data across"! You just clone whole disk. Correct?
So you also clone the license. Do laptops have a corporate license for win7? Also for all software?

Do the diskpart trick to see if it can see the external drive