based on advice from parallels forum users, i downloaded and used winclone to create a backup of my bootcamp partition. until now i've been using terminal or ghost to create backups. apparently a typo screwed up my last terminal created bootcamp partition. i hung things up for a while because we're in the middle of a large enterprize rollout. now that i'm back i decided to get a fresh start, so i wiped/rebuilt my bootcamp partition. after installing windows xp sp2 (and running every update available), and installing/upgrading microsoft office 2003, norton, my windows applications/utilties, etc., i was ready to create my clone. i remembered someone mentioned winclone (apologies for not giving due credit to original posters, a search should show who praised winclone some weeks ago). i booted into mac osx, installed parallels 3150rc2, and made sure everything was in order, then i quit parallels and downloaded winclone. their tech notes are very informative: http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/details.html i launched it and was greeted with not only an idiot-proof interface, but to my delight, a log window opened INCLUDING full display of input/output (terminal command, progress, errors, etc.). creating a clone took about 20 minutes. after a few day of tinkering, i decided to put winclone to the test. i purposely hosed my windows partition by removing a few key files and exiting windows. after the expected "hey, you can't launch windows because some files are corrupt" error, i launched winclone and reimaged my bootcamp partition. reimaging took less than 15 minutes. everything launched fine. no issues, no problems, just smooth sailing. i can't praise winclone enough. sure, i can continue using the terminal, but with a gui that's designed right from the ground up, why bother? of course i'll continue to hone my terminal skills and will have the commands standing by incase i need to use the terminal again, but i wanted to post this so anyone using paralells can rest assured there's decent (and free) backup solution for their bootcamp partition. note to parallels team - you guys should look at this, maybe create a tool of your own that uses the same terminal commands? don
I've used Acronis TrueImage (www.acronis.com) for a long time to create bootable, incremental images on my Windows PCs and it works well. Have tried it on OS X and unfortunately, when booting from their rescue CD, my MBP keyboard/mouse don't work. Haven't contacted about this yet, but if they can address this, then it is a relatively inexpensive, but powerful tool. But until then, I'll use the link you posted as an image you can restore from is invaluable. Cheers Russell
DriveImage XML also works for cloning a BootCamp partition very well too. DIXML is also completely free for a nice GUI interface. Combine that with an Ultimate Boot CD, and you're set! http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm -j-
Your testing Thanks Don for sharing that. Much appreciated. Just one question, did you use the "Prepare for restoring on a different partition" option? What about the "Remove pagefile.sys before imaging" option? I had some issue with trying to build a bootable Windows CD using BARTPC and DriveImage XML with no luck, could get BARTPC to generate and ISO file without generating a fatal error in its log. So this will be is my next alternative. Thanks again. chris
i used that option in the beginning but i figured i'm only going to restore to my bootcamp partition so i no longer use it. i use the defaults and so far i've been able to restore without any issues. it's a fascinating tool...not only does it save you a ton of keystrokes, but it offers a great log display. don
Thanks again Don. I have now downloaded and run Winclone with just the "Remove pagefile.sys before imaging" option ticked. The log file is half full with the message "100 percent completed" - not exactly sure how lines but a lot. It seemed to generate them regularly for quite some time while it was completing the "Saving NTFS to image ..." process which finally returned a return value of 0. Is this normal and how does one tell if the operation (ie backup image) has been successful, besides doing a restore. It did proceed after that operation to mount the bootcamp disk again. I am not familiar enough with Unix command line mode to completely decipher what went on. Thanks for your help. chris
can you post your log? it's long so maybe post the file itself: ~/Library/Logs/Winclone.log if you zip it first, it'll make it easier to upload. thanks, don
Don, here is a copy of my log. I cut & pasted mine in TextEdit and hence the RTF extension on the end. Looks from your log lthat yours did an expand before it finished. I am not sure why there were the others differences between our log files . I basically had only the "Remove pagefile.sys file before imaging" option turn on and my partition in on the same disk as OSX. I have a MBP C2D 2.33Ghz 2MB 160GB HD. thanks, chris PS: as I am very new to the Mac environment, I zipped my file in Windows using PKZIP as didn't know if it ran in the Mac environment.
I love Acronis True Image but I was unable to get True Image v.9 to backup my BootCamp partition. True Image does not see the partition. My BootCamp partition is formatted as FAT32. Any ideas? thanks, Tom
Sorry, no. I had true image 8 and upgraded to true image 10 to try and fix the CD image booting issue, but neither worked, but both versions could backup the partition from both Parallels or booted natively. Time for an e-mail to their support I think. Cheers Russell
It works from a Parallels VM! I was able to backup my BootCamp partition (FAT32) running Acronis True Image v.9. Now I can take snapshots of my BootCamp partition before I install new apps or reinstall BootCamp with True Image and then restore my working apps and OS updates. Thanks, Tom
But have you managed to restore an entire image? That is what I couldn't get working for a BootCamp partition. I could for a VM using an HD image, but I want to run BootCamp. Cheers Russell
