“How is it done to format multiple PCs (same model) at the same time? Does a disk cloner work? Does it handle everything — drivers? BIOS?”

Your question touches on two separate things.

First, yes: Cloning can perfectly replicate everything that’s on a PC’s disk. If the PCs are truly identical (as in a managed corporate setting), and the OS is licensed for it, then you only need one Master disk image, which can then be deployed/installed more or less simultaneously on all identical machines via network, flash drive, DVD, or whatever.

In other words, you only have to spend time perfecting one PC’s setup. After that PC is fully updated and customized, you can clone its entire drive, and drop the clone image onto the drives of other, identical PCs. The new image will totally replace the old drive’s contents (partitions, formats, files, drivers, apps, the OS, settings — everything), making every PC essentially identical to the fully-updated original, in one giant step.

However, the second point is that drive cloning can only copy what’s on the drive. PC’s have at least a small amount of “firmware” (the BIOS in older PCs, and the hardware part of the UEFI system in newer ones) whose code does not reside on the hard drive, and thus cannot be copied by drive cloning.

But BIOS/UEFI updates are usually infrequent; for everything else — for anything that lives on the hard drive — drive image cloning is for sure the fastest way to distribute complete software setups to identical PCs.

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