Win7 Boot Camp disk clone?

[danwolski]

Hi all,

I have a 2011 Mac pro with a 256GB SSD. It is running OSX Mountain Lion and Win7, with the HD split 50-50 between both. I use the mac side mainly, so want to increase the size of the mac partition. But i need to back up the drive in case something goes wrong.

I have a bootable copy of the Mac partition, and I'm trying to make a boot able copy of the windows partition. I have used xxclone and have tried twice to make a copy, but it won't boot. I have noticed, using disk utility, that the SSD has two small partitions (up to 300MB in size) which may have something to do with the bootcamp installation of Win7. these partitions don't show up on xxclone.

Does anyone know how to make a bootable copy of a windows install on a mac?

Thanks

Dan

 

[DeltaMac]

Use Winclone as a better choice for backing up your Boot Camp partition. Winclone is designed to be used with Boot Camp, and understands what is needed.
http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/

Of course, you can't ordinarily boot Windows from an external drive. The cloning software won't help with that.
Your clone is just insurance to get your Windows installation restored from that clone, if needed, which is all you really need.
And, after restoring your Boot Camp partition properly, you will still be bootable. Winclone is a good method to be sure that will happen.

Here's a quote about booting to Windows on an external drive from the FAQ for the XXClone software.

XXCLONE makes the external (USB) disk self-bootable.
However, the disk must be directly attached to your computer in order to become the Windows system disk. That is, you need to take the bare disk drive inside the external enclosure, and attach it directly to your computer as an internal disk in order to have the disk succeed in booting your computer.

Apparently, Microsoft does not like to see a Windows booted from an external disk. We suppose this is a deliberate design to prevent software piracy. Under normal circumstances, you cannot configure Windows to designate an external disk to be the system disk.

And, that means that the clone IS bootable, but only if you install the drive with the clone internally.
(This is a Windows limitation, and has nothing to do with using Windows on a Mac.)
I'm guessing that you DON'T actually have a Mac Pro? That has 4 hard drive slots, which makes your situation easy, as you can just use one of those drive slots for the clone drive. Your Mac WILL boot to that clone, because the clone is installed internally.
Does all that make sense to you?

 

[danwolski]

I'm guessing that you DON'T actually have a Mac Pro? That has 4 hard drive slots, which makes your situation easy, as you can just use one of those drive slots for the clone drive. Your Mac WILL boot to that clone, because the clone is installed internally.
Does all that make sense to you?

Haha yeah I have a macbook pro. yeah it all makes sense. I read that paragraph in xxclone, but didn't pay attention to that important piece of information.

Thanks for your help!