Backing Up A Windows Boot Camp Partition 5
Tutorial
Hey
Today will be the last post in the mini series that has evolved on backing up your data. So far I have covered general backup solutions, and cloning your hard drive. The final post will be on cloning your Windows boot camp partition. Backing up this partition is slightly more problematic due to the fact that your partition can be NTFS or FAT32, and not a partition that is compatible with Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner. This technique will not create a bootable partition but one that has all your data in the form a disk image. You can then use this disk image to restore you data at a later date.
The first step in backing up boot camp is to download and install a tool called WinClone. It designed to do exactly what we want to do. You may have to install some supporting software to get it to work. When its installed and ready to run open the application.
Using this application is very simple. There is really only two functions, image and restore. Within the image tab select your boot camp partition from the drop down menu. Then press image. You will be prompted for a location to save the disk image. I recommend a disk which doesn’t already hold your boot camp partition, I would also suggest putting it on a disk with plenty of space. When you are done, let the process run. It shouldn’t take to long. Unlike using Carbon Copy Cloner in the previous post you can still use you Mac since it isn’t accessing Mac system files and locking up your system.
When the app has finished you will have an ISO file of your Windows partition. You can now continue your day. If you want to restore you files simply use the menu option “Restore” in the application. Before you start have a quick ready through the help on the website.
Restoring Windows is quite simple but not as sophisticated as backing up your Mac disk. This way seems the most useful and easiest to use. I do recommend you have a backup of important files in Windows anyway. This method is to create an image for quickly restoring your system to a certain point.
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5 Responses to “Backing Up A Windows Boot Camp Partition”
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1
I’ve been using Winclone for a while now, and love it. However, I cannot seem to get a definite answer for being able to use this app on Snow Leopard. Some people seem to think yes, and others no, and the creator of Winclone seems just fixed on creating version 3.0. Any comments?
Comment By Andrew D on September 11th, at 3:12 pm
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2
i´m using first NTFS for MAC OS X, then select my partition inTime Machine… and i think it´s ok…
Comment By efrias on October 29th, at 8:03 am
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3
Any other solutions? Winclone was discontinued earlier this week :(
Comment By Lori on November 27th, at 8:57 am
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4
Recently I used Winclone to make a copy of my Bootcamp partition (running snow leopard on a MBP if that is important). It seemed to work, but when I booted into Vista, I had to repair Vista using the original Vista install disk. This makes me less likely to rely on Winclone. And I have not yet had an opportunity to test the Winclone backup.
Comment By Dave Peck on January 1st, at 4:02 pm
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5
im using winclone 2.2 with snow leopard and windows 7 to back up and restore an backed up image file for my computer (macbook pro) with out a problem and find this is the only proven way to back up bootcamp. the only thing that i don’t like is having to manually backup everyday or every week. i wish there was an automated way like time machine to do this, better yet not having to do this on the mac side but on the windows side.
Comment By Martin on January 26th, at 7:31 am
