[kaido]

Edit: Solution found using DriveImage XML and Bart WinPE (both free). I will post a tutorial later...

I'm a stickler for making regular backups of my machines. I haven't been able to figure out how to make a clone of the XP partition in Boot Camp on my Intel Mini. I usually use Norton Ghost, but it says "Unable to read MBR in Virtual Partition DLL" when I try to reboot to clone the drive to an image file on a seperate hard drive. I've tried booting from the Ghost CD, but it freezes up after I choose the Boot from CD option in the Ghost boot menu. I'm open to other options; I just want a restorable image of my XP partition for backup.

[ghporter]

The Ghost disc probably won't boot your Mac-it's designed to boot in a PC which uses a different boot scheme. That's what Boot Camp does-it sets up a method for you to boot using an Int13-based bootloader on an Intel Mac.

I'd suggest using a different image program if I knew of one that would work for a Mac and make an image of a Windows partition.

[kaido]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The Ghost disc probably won't boot your Mac-it's designed to boot in a PC which uses a different boot scheme. That's what Boot Camp does-it sets up a method for you to boot using an Int13-based bootloader on an Intel Mac.

I'd suggest using a different image program if I knew of one that would work for a Mac and make an image of a Windows partition.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I've read of one or two users trying DriveImage XML with luck but I didn't get a lot of details from it. If it works I'll do a writeup.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by kaido

Thanks, I'll give that a shot. I've read of one or two users trying DriveImage XML with luck but I didn't get a lot of details from it. If it works I'll do a writeup.

A write up would be great! I have DI 2002, and it's great for PCs, but I don't know if it will even try to work with a Mac under Boot Camp. For example, I think its "rescue disk" option ONLY makes floppies, which is absolutely useless on an Intel Mac.

[rickey939]

http://www.bombich.com/software/netrestore.html

[ghporter]

Thanks, rickey939! That looks like a great way to go, and FREE is a good thing no matter what!

[kaido]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Thanks, rickey939! That looks like a great way to go, and FREE is a good thing no matter what!

I'm a little confused as to how to actually use NetRestore; anyone have a good tutorial? I read the one on that site but I'm still a little lost.

At any rate, I was successful in making a full clone using DriveImage XML off a Bart WinPE boot CD. I'm trying out some other methods to see if anything else works and I'll do a writeup on the WinPE/DriveImage combo if nothing else pans out. Essentially it boils down to (1) creating a WinPE CD with the DriveImage XML plugin and (2) using that disc to backup your Windows partition to an external hard drive. It's not overly difficult but it's not quite as nice as using Norton Ghost. Again, I'll post a tutorial later if it's the best option for backing up the Windows side of things.

[besson3c]

Why would the backup utility have to be Windows based? Anything that can read the partition block per block within OS X should do too, right? For one, I know that a Unix tool like "dd" will work. There are probably several GUI front-ends to this tool. I'd honestly think about using command line dd, since this could be easily scripted to run overnight as often as you'd like.

It is likely that NetRestore is a GUI front-end to dd.

[besson3c]

Actually, how does Boot Camp work again? Does it create some sort of virtual partition or something?

dd (and probably most other tools like it) will clone real partitions/disks. Can the Boot Camp partitions be mounted within OS X?

[kaido]

Boot Camp simply partitions the hard drive (and provides drivers for Windows). You can format the XP partition (C:\) to either FAT32 or NTFS via the Windows XP installation CD. You can see the Boot Camp partition within OS X, but OS X cannot write to it. I'm not familiar enough with Unix or OS X to know how to create disk images within them. I'd definately be interested in a solution that would allow you to create restorable disk images within OS X, so if you know of a better way please share the knowledge :)

I have spent some more time playing with DriveImage XML and have had excellent success with it. You can create a backup of the drive either within Windows XP or from the Boot CD, but you can only restore the image from the Boot CD. I tested it on my external hard drive via both Firewire and USB 2.0. It even has a compression option that reduces the image size by about 75%. Additionally, you can resize the partition in Boot Camp and restore the image to it. I'll writeup a tutorial this weekend when I have a chance to really put this app through the wringer.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by kaido

Boot Camp simply partitions the hard drive (and provides drivers for Windows). You can format the XP partition (C) to either FAT32 or NTFS via the Windows XP installation CD. You can see the Boot Camp partition within OS X, but OS X cannot write to it. I'm not familiar enough with Unix or OS X to know how to create disk images within them. I'd definately be interested in a solution that would allow you to create restorable disk images within OS X, so if you know of a better way please share the knowledge

I have spent some more time playing with DriveImage XML and have had excellent success with it. You can create a backup of the drive either within Windows XP or from the Boot CD, but you can only restore the image from the Boot CD. I tested it on my external hard drive via both Firewire and USB 2.0. It even has a compression option that reduces the image size by about 75%. Additionally, you can resize the partition in Boot Camp and restore the image to it. I'll writeup a tutorial this weekend when I have a chance to really put this app through the wringer.

If the partition is visible within OS X, couldn't you just use Apple's Disk Utility to create an image of the partition? Alternatively, I would imagine that Carbon Copy Cloner and NetRestore would work, as I believe they are just GUI front ends to these underlying CLI tools (as is Disk Utility).

[kaido]

Originally Posted by besson3c

If the partition is visible within OS X, couldn't you just use Apple's Disk Utility to create an image of the partition? Alternatively, I would imagine that Carbon Copy Cloner and NetRestore would work, as I believe they are just GUI front ends to these underlying CLI tools (as is Disk Utility).

I don't know if they can or not, but I'll give it a shot. OS X tools are new to me, so I'm not familiar with all the available tools for the OS yet.

To expand on what I said earlier about resizing the partition in Boot Camp and restoring the image to it, it only works if the partition you create is EQUAL TO or LARGER than the original XP partition. I tried it both ways, larger and smaller. It will not restore the image to a smaller partition, unfortunately. However, if you are planning on creating a master image with your apps and system setup intially, you can simply set the partition to 5 gigs or so, install your apps and configure the system, clone the drive, and then make it larger. This gives you the ability to pretty much make the XP partition whatever realistic size you want in the future (since you probably won't be making it less than 5 gigs or 3 gigs or whatever your usual basic install consumes).

ALSO, if you wipe the Boot Camp partition and create another one, you will need to format the new partition to NTFS (if that's what you used on your original XP install) using the original Windows XP installation disc. When it starts copying files, turn off the computer, restart and eject the XP disc (hold down the right mouse button or CTRL + left mouse button), insert the Bart WinPE disc, restart again, select the Bart WinPE disc as the boot disc by holding down the Option key at boot time, and load your image. I tried creating the Boot Camp partition in OS X and then simply restoring the XP image I created, but it didn't work. You have to format the drive first. An easier way to do this might be to simply use an NTFS boot CD to format the partition, if such a thing exists. I poked around at bootdisk.com but didn't see much, so the best option that I know of for now is to use the Windows XP disc to format the partition.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by kaido

I don't know if they can or not, but I'll give it a shot. OS X tools are new to me, so I'm not familiar with all the available tools for the OS yet.

To expand on what I said earlier about resizing the partition in Boto Camp and restoring the image to it, it only works if the partition you create is EQUAL TO or LARGER than the original XP partition. I tried it both ways, larger and smaller. It will not restore the image to a smaller partition, unfortunately. However, if you are planning on creating a master image with your apps and system setup intially, you can simply set the partition to 5 gigs or so, install your apps and configure the system, clone the drive, and then make it larger. This gives you the ability to pretty much make the XP partition whatever realistic size you want in the future (since you probably won't be making it less than 5 gigs or 3 gigs or whatever your usual basic install consumes).

ALSO, if you wipe the Boot Camp partition and create another one, you will need to format the new partition to NTFS (if that's what you used on your original XP install) using the original Windows XP installation disc. When it starts copying files, turn off the computer, restart and eject the XP disc (hold down the right mouse button or CTRL + left mouse button), insert the Bart WinPE disc, restart again, select the Bart WinPE disc as the boot disc by holding down the Option key at boot time, and load your image. I tried creating the Boot Camp partition in OS X and then simply restoring the XP image I created, but it didn't work. You have to format the drive first. An easier way to do this might be to simply use an NTFS boot CD to format the partition, if such a thing exists. I poked around at bootdisk.com but didn't see much, so the best option that I know of for now is to use the Windows XP disc to format the partition.

Cool... restoring to an identically sized (or larger) partition is a requirement for dd also, I strongly suspect that this is a GUI front end to dd, as these same limitations exist, and the partition creation handled by something like LVM for Linux (similar to Partition Magic for Windows, AFAIK). If I'm correct, restoring to a larger partition will also be wasteful, as that additional space would be unclaimed by the cloned partition. If I'm incorrect, perhaps the restoration is not a true block per block clone, but something more like the dump command, where the contents of the partition are simply copied.

[kaido]

Originally Posted by besson3c

Cool... restoring to an identically sized (or larger) partition is a requirement for dd also, I strongly suspect that this is a GUI front end to dd, as these same limitations exist, and the partition creation handled by something like LVM for Linux (similar to Partition Magic for Windows, AFAIK). If I'm correct, restoring to a larger partition will also be wasteful, as that additional space would be unclaimed by the cloned partition. If I'm incorrect, perhaps the restoration is not a true block per block clone, but something more like the dump command, where the contents of the partition are simply copied.

I gave it a shot and it didn't work. I just remembered that I had already tried the Disk Utility method a few days ago (been testing a lot of apps lol). I posted this over on the Mac Forums on June 29th:

The second option I tried is Apple's own Disk Utility. I made a .dmg of the XP partition, which was successful. However, I wasn't able to restore it from within OS X. I did some research and discovered that you supposedly can't restore an image to a partition that is on the same disk that your boot partition is. So I hooked up my Intel Mini to my wife's Intel iMac in Target Disk Mode via Firewire to see if I could copy the image back that way. Nope, the restore option is still grayed out. I gave it a last shot by booting the Mini's OS X disk and using Disk Utility from there. Still a no-go.

So Disk Utility is out and Norton Ghost is out. I gave SuperDuper a quick shot, but the Boot Camp partition is grayed out (possibly if I do Target Disk Mode using SuperDuper on another computer, but I doubt it based on my above research of the .dmg method using Disk Utility). NetRestore looks a little complicated but usable. CopyCatX is another option, but it goes for $60 or so and I'm not sure if it'd do what I want it to do. Here's a link:

http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftwa...;products_id=7

I think I'm going to stick with the Bart WinPE solution. It works, it works well, and it's free.

[kaido]

I just got word from SubRosaSoft.com Inc, the company that makes CopyCatX, that the next version will have individual partition support. Currently they only support device cloning, which copies the entire drive. This would be useful if you want a 1:1 hot-swap drive for your laptop. I'll probably put my stock drive to use this way when I upgrade to a larger, faster drive.

[trappedatuf]

So did you ever get a chance to do that write up?

I can't sleep at night knowing I don't have a simple way to restore if I have a problem with my MacBook 13" running Win XP SP2!

[xoox]

Hi

This works for me (on MacBook), thanks to all the previous discussions in this forum. Once you're set up, the speed of backing up/restoring is almost the same as with Norton Ghost.

1. Use BootCamp to create XP and Mac OSX partitions.

2. Create the PEBart CD (you'll need your XP CD, PE Builder, and DriveImageXML plug in for PE Builder).

3. Use Mac's Disk Utility to partition an external drive (use the option 3 (with DOS) and change the format of the partition(s) where you plan to store XP backup images or any data to DOS).

4. Restart your Mac with the PEBart CD in it, while holding the ALT button pressed. This should bring up 3 options to boot from: Mac OSX, Win XP, and PEBart CD. Boot from PEBart CD (be patient).

5. Run DriveImageXML and select the 'Backup' option. Set C drive as the source drive and the DOS partition as the target drive for the image. Use the compression.

That's it.

To restore the image:

1. Boot your Mac from the PEBart CD, run DriveImageXML, and select 'Restore'.

2. Select the image you've created as the source and the C drive as the target.

Hope this helps.
Cheers

[ghporter]

Bart and his system (plugins and all) is great. I've used Bart's Boot Disk in a number of versions to ensure that I could connect to a machine for imaging, to do that imaging, and even to fix big problems (caused by users, of course) with Windows. (You need the install disc and patience to fix stuff caused by Windows itself. ) Anyway, I'm looking forward to that tutorial, and I think it will be "sticky-worthy" too.

[trappedatuf]

Thanks for the great instructions!

I do have a question however... Since I got the Macbook with only a 80gb harddrive I want to create the image on a removable USB harddrive. I would imagine I need a plugin for BartPE that would allow me to use a USB 2.0 HDD. Can anyone suggest a plugin or instructions on how I can do this.

Creating another partition is not an option because my WinXP partition is 60mb and it's almost full so there is NO way for me to partition the drive out to image it.

Thanks!

[ghporter]

What do you want to do with this USB drive? You cannot (without a ton of rather difficult and seriously complex work) boot XP from a USB drive. You CAN move a lot of stuff off the internal hard drive-I'd start with ALL my "My Documents" contents that XP will let you move. Programs can take up a lot of space too, and you CAN run programs from a USB drive.

[trappedatuf]

I'm sorry I was confused. I did not know that BartPE, by default, allows for external USB HDDs. I thought I needed a plug-in to allow me to use my USB HDD in the Bart PE environment but I found out I don't... it just works.

That being said I was able to backup my C-Drive to the external USB HDD (D-Drive) via DriveImageXML. Have a few questions though:

1. I chose compression... anything wrong/buggy with that? For more reliability should I go with no compression or is it pretty reliable?

2. I did not choose RAW mode. What is RAW mode and should I be using that?

3. I just clicked the restore tab to see what might be involved in restoring my computer with my new backup (because that's the point right, ha!). I was confused because it said this in the sidebar: "Note that you must put the image into an existing partition. If necessary create a new partition with Windows Disk Management".

I hope this doesn't mean I have to have the data to restore the drive on the drive itself in another partition. This brings me back to my earlier point... if restoring a drive that is pretty much full that would not be possible! Can't I just choose the restoration files from the external USB HDD and restore that way?

I appreciate the help because I want to make sure I have a 'useable' backup incase I ever need to restore.

[ghporter]

Compression should not be a problem-DriveImage has that pretty well down. I personally like to use it because it can be a space saver, but as the help says, uncompressed can take a lot less time. RAW is just that-unprocessed, and there's no big deal with using or not using it. You CAN restore onto an EXISTING partition-but realize that this means you will overwrite the contents of the existing partition. This is my definition of "restore" so it's not a problem for me.

[trappedatuf]

Ok, so I wanted a little more speed so I upgraded with a 7200 RPM 100GB hard-drive. I did this also to test if my backup/restore method worked before a harddrive crash actually happens.

FIRST ATTEMPT: FAIL

So I replaced the current hard-drive with the new one (which was simple enough since the macbooks are built so well). I inserted the Apple Setup disk and installed OSX. I then had some issues making the partition because I wanted my Windows partition to be as large as possible, but you have to have a 5GB buffer on the Mac partition so it ended up being about 25GB for OSX and the rest for Windows.

Once OSX was installed and updated, I downloaded bootcamp and went through until it said "restart to install Windows". I then restarted thinking since the drive was partitioned now (that's all I needed boot camp for anyway), that I could just restore my backup. So that's what I did.

I put the BartPE disk in the drive and ran DriveImage XML to restore the backed up image from a USB HDD. That left me with my drive properly restore but OH NO! When I held down the 'option (alt)' key on startup to select the newly restore Windows partition it didn't show up on the list. Realizing this has something to do with the boot record I booted into OSX to solve the problem. Well, since BootCamp never installed XP it still was asking me to start the install and didn't have the Startup Disk selection program installed. I then ran the disk utilities but I couldn't do anything to make the Windows partition active.

I re-ran the Bart PE disk and tried to run the Windows Disk Management program but that did nothing. Arghhh! After all this time invested I couldn't believe that I couldn't load up a simple FDISK program to set the partition active and bootable (which is what I thought needed to be done). I even ran the Recovery Console on the Windows XP install disk and ran such programs as FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Nothing worked!

SO BACK TO SQUARE ONE. I decided to do it all over and now I am typing this on my restored XP installation on my new 7200RPM hard-drive.

SECOND ATTEMPT: SUCCESS!

HERE'S A STEP BY STEP ON HOW TO RESTORE WITH DRIVEIMAGE XML and BOOTCAMP ON A NEW HARDDRIVE
(if you are just restoring on a current harddrive then you don't have to reinstall OSX and such, just skip to the last step):

1. Replace the old hard-drive with the new one.

2. Start up the computer and put in the OSX install DVD (disk 1). You will then enter the setup program. TIP: I wanted to use most of my space for WIN XP and didn't need all the OSX apps. I really liked messing around with GarageBand but it takes up over 2GB (with all the sound loops and such) so I didn't want to install it. When installing OSX you can select the 'customize' button and deselect ALL the programs you don't think you'll need. I got my OSX install down to a little under 3GB! Quite a savings. Check out a program call DiskSweeper that will go through and tell you what files/folders use the most space on the drive, if you want to minimize your install size.

3. Once OSX is installed you need to update your Tiger OS to the newest version. The update program will automatically ask you if you want to do this. Also download bootcamp from the Apple website.

4. After the updates are applied reboot your computer and then install BootCamp.

5. You will then be able to set how big a partition you want for Windows. I chose the most possible which is 5GB larger than the OSX used space (I guess Apple just chose 5GB of free space as a good buffer size). After it creates the partition you need to actually go through with the install of Windows XP.

6. Follow the setups and go through the entire WIN XP install process (takes a little under an hour). Once Windows XP is installed you will see it adds that choice to the startup options (when holding down the option/alt key on startup).

7. Now it's time to restore your WIN XP partition. Just boot up with your BartPE disk as described above and run DriveImage XML. Then select restore your image and after the restore process completes you can now boot into the Windows partition and use your computer just as it was with your new hard-drive.

THAT'S ALL FOLKS... A pretty simple process, just had to nail it down. Now I am sure there is a better way (and please let me know how) but this is a way I know will work now so I wanted to post it here.

The total process took me about 2 hours total. (A) Installing OSX takes about 30 minutes with minimal install size (B) Updating, installing and partitioning with boot camp takes another 15 minutes or so (C) Installing Windows takes about 45 minutes and (D) Restoring my 50GB drive image (onto my new 83GB partition) took about 45 minutes. TOTAL RESTORE TIME = 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I hope this helps and I do agree ghporter, I think this topic is "sticky worthy".

[ghporter]

Here's a link to Bart's PE and one for Driveimage XML.

Bart's stuff is awesome, but it takes a little time and some study to get it all working.

[billbear]

In parallels, add boot camp partition as the second hard disk, start the virtual machine and use norton ghost to clone and restore the boot camp partition. It works, the boot camp partition is still bootable. Seems to be a perfect solution but the strange thing is that the restoration takes too much time: backing up takes 4 min, restoration takes 76 min! backing up speed is 336MB/min and restoring speed is 18MB/min. i had thought that perhaps parallels writes to the boot camp partition much slower than reads from it, but when i copy a big file to and from the boot camp partition i see no difference in the speed. Maybe parallels is just slow at the block-to-block writting into a real partition.