[Guy Kuo]

Drives are cheap and the MacBook design makes it very easy. I've upgraded more than once, but that also means migrating my OSX and bootcamp volumes. Most recently, it was a move from a triple boot (Tiger, Leopard, Windows XP) 250 GB to a dual boot (Leopard, Windows XP) 320 GB configuration.

Migrating an OSX partition is simple. Just clone using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Migrating a bootcamp bootcamp Windows XP partition isn't as easy, but it's far faster to migrate a Windows XP install than to reinstall from scratch. Here is how I do it.

1. Backup your OSX partitions using SuperDuper and an external drive. I like to keep external backup drives partitioned the same way my internal drive is done. That means simple cloning from one partition to another. One partition is also used to back up Windows XP bootcamp partition, but you can't do that using SuperDuper.

2. Create a backup .dmg of your original bootcamp volume using the OSX Disk Utility. This should be to an external drive. The dmg can be compressed image to save space. Also, note how large the bootcamp partition is. You'll need the new one to be same size or bigger.

3. Prep the new drive by partitioning it using DIsk Utility. (or Bootcamp Utility if you are only dual booting) For triple booting, create three partitions. The LAST must be the one for your bootcamp Windows partition. BTW you must select GUID format in the partitioning options!

4. The partition command won't let you choose MS-DOS format so that needs to be done next. Erase the future bootcamp partition to MS-DOS format using Disk Utility. NOTE this does not fully prep the partition to accept your restored windows image!

5. Clone your saved OSX volumes back into the new drive's OSX partitions.

6. Boot your Windows installation CD and begin a Windows install. You'll be shown a list of partitions. Ignore the small sized ones and the unknown ones. The unknown ones are your OSX partitions. Leave those alone. Work on the FAT32 partition and let the Windows Install CD quick erase it to FAT32. (I use FAT32 to allow OSX to also write to the windows partition). Some magic seems to be done during this step, for the process won't work if you skip steps 6 & 7 and attempt to just restore to a Disk Utility created MS-DOS volume.

7. Let the Windows install copy files. Eventually, the Mac will reboot. Let it boot into OSX instead of continuing the next Windows install phase.

8. IF AND ONLY IF, you have CHANGED the number of partitions on your new drive so it differs from your old drive, copy the fresh boot.ini file from your windows partition and save it on the OSX side. You'll need the newly created boot.ini to replace the one in your backup image because the one in the image has the wrong partition numbers.

9. Use Bombich NetRestore to restore your windows backup image to the your new Windows volume. This does it file by file (instead of by sector as Disk Utility) so it won't destroy the arrangement of volume information created by the combination of bootcamp and Windows setup.

10. IF AND ONLY IF you had to save boot.ini due to a change in number of partitions, replace the boot.ini on the restored windows volume with the fresh boot.ini saved in step 8

Your Windows XP bootcamp partition should now have been migrated to your new drive with far less effort than reinstalling Windows on the drive.

I have used this method with success through two drive upgrades. I hope this helps someone else facing the same situation.

[ghporter]

Interesting. Thanks for the guidance. It looks like you're pretty comprehensive and detailed here.

Thanks!

[mduell]

Seems like a long and slow way to do it.

1) Boot off the Leopard install disk.
2) dd source drive to destination drive.
3) Obliterate the Tiger partition and grow the Leopard partition with Disk Utility.
4) Delete the Tiger line from your boot.ini.
5) Swap internal and external drives.

Avoids the need for using another external backup disk, but it does require a $10 USB2<->SATA enclosure.

[Guy Kuo]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Seems like a long and slow way to do it.

1) Boot off the Leopard install disk.
2) dd source drive to destination drive.
3) Obliterate the Tiger partition and grow the Leopard partition with Disk Utility.
4) Delete the Tiger line from your boot.ini.

That does seem simpler, but the instructions won't be of much help to non-masters. Could you give some more details on how to do your process? Namely...

How do you dd a drive? Is that a unix terminal command? If so, could you lay out for the less unix literate how to get the right parameters?

Will this work if the tiger partition if it is the 1st on the drive? More specifically, can Disk Utility MOVE up and grow a second partition to use the space of a partition that was originally before it?

Lastly, what are the contents of the boot.ini and what should the lines be edited to read as? It looked like at least two lines needed to be edited.

Those details would clarify things immensely so people would not have to guess.

[mduell]

dd is a unix terminal command. Read the man page for specifics, but the basic command is dd if=/path/to/source of=/path/to/destination

As far as I know Disk Utility can grow in either direction.

boot.ini will probably only have one line for Tiger, and it's labeled as whatever you're picking to boot into Tiger.

[seanc]

Good instructions Guy.

I did this when I upgraded to a 250GB drive, but re-installed Leopard and cloned Windows.

I put my old drive into a USB 2 > SATA enclosure and booted the OS X partition. I launched Disk Utility and prepared the disk with the partitions I wanted. I used the restore tab to clone my old Windows partition to the new one.

I re-installed Leopard and used migration assistant to copy all of my data back.

[Waragainstsleep]

When using netrestore to clone the boot camp image to the new boot camp partition, do you erase the destination or leave it?

[blackbook204]

This is my 3rd attempt to clone a new MAC OSX/Windows HD using different instruction from the 'Net

this time I came close as I am now able to boot from both OSX and XP but I could not clone my original XP partition (all my windows docs/applications could not be copied)

the step with NetRestore gave me an error and would not complete
there are options in NetRestore that were not explained in the instructions ( erase target disk, etc)

also at what step do you physicaly put in your new HD into your macbook?

any help appreciated as I dont want to have to pay the local MAC place $70 to do this for me

[sehnix]

Thank you Guy, so far.

Your Instruction helped me very well for the first part.

I've been wondering how you were able to restore the clone-Windows back the from the Image to the FAT32 partition.
My NetRestore doesn't recognise the FAT32 partition.
So I now have a Clone of my Windows but I can't restore it.

Is there a way around that. Maybe some other tool or command line.
I would really like to keep the FAT32 instead of a NTFS formatted drive.
I understand that the image needs to be restored file-by-file?