Cloning HD on MacBook Pro

I have OS X 10.6.6 installed and Bootcamp with Windows 7 Professional. Acronis true image was awesome for cloning the hdd, when this was in operation it would boot in dos to do this and make an exact clone of the drive. Does anyone know if I installed Acronis on the Windows partition if it would do it with the OS X partition? When I have done this on other computers after the clone disc is complete you could remove the internal drive install the drive you just made a clone to and everything would work without any issues.

 

use Carbon Copy Cloner.
after that you can swap drives, but the first boot may take a while, after it boots goto system pref. and make sure the right startup disk is selected.

 

Sweet! Thank you.

 

Carbon Copy Cloner only clones the Mac partition it wont clone the Windows (NTFS file system) are there any programs that will do both?

If not, after I clone the Mac portion and use my windows clone utility to do the windows side will everything work like it should, meaning the dual boot still work?

 

you'll have to use a few different tools. OSX disk utility to format the new drive... then Carbon Copy Cloner to make the clone of your OSX partition to the new drive... then Winclone to make an image file of your bootcamp partition. Then use the OSX Bootcamp Assistant to make a new bootcamp partition on the new drive. Then use Winclone to expand the image file into the new bootcamp partition.

Here is a walkthrough:
Cloning Both OSX and Bootcamp to larger drive : SUCCESS! - MacRumors Forums

only difference is that you will be using CCC instead of SuperDuper (or you can use SuperDuper)

I did this on a couple of our MACs when upgrading to larger drives. Worked great.

 

CCC is best or SuperDuper or is there something better?

If I am only cloning the OS X and nothing else.

 

I love CCC.

with that, it's easy as pie. highly recommend it. just set the source and destination and fire away. if necessary, you'll be able to boot right from that backup. it's so awesome.

 

Did you run Acronis on Win 7 under the bootcamp partition, or are you talking in general where you run Acronis on PCs with win 7?

I am curious to find out if Acronis runs fine under bootcam win 7. I want to buy a mbp and I want to restore my current win 7 hdd under the bootcamp win 7 partition that I am going to create so I don't have to reinstall all the software that I currently have. I kind of hope that win 7 will pick up any differences and install the proper drivers upon restart however I would not have to reinstall the other software.

I once sent an email to the copycatx folks and they said their product clones the entire drive that is osx + win 7 bootcamp. I haven't done it myself though.

 

I haven't tied this but you are say CCC I can clone the entire drive. Pull the HDD out and install the new drive. Everything will work as it did? Sounds like it is a good program.

 

No, read the post again ...

Both CCC and SDuper will only clone the OS X portion of the drive - the preference of which to use is a matter of taste, mostly. You need to clone the windows portion using another software package.

I'm unaware of any single software option to fully clone a bootcamp'd OS X drive in a single step.

 

I was just speaking in general, I havent tried it yet. I was hoping something was made to do both.

 

I like to use Winclone under OSX to backup the bootcamp partition. It's the easiest thing in the world, seriously. set the configuration like this:



for Windows 7 and save the image file. when you need to restore the image, open the same app, hit the restore button and select the location of your backup and the destination, then restore.

Windows 7 will boot like it had never been removed.

Note: Winclone will require the same minimum amount of HDD space used when creating the backup. for example, if your backup was of a drive that was 40GB...and you try to restore it to a 39GB partition, it will give you an error. As long as the new partition is the same size or bigger, you'll have no problems at all.

Also, you can't restore a winclone backup onto a new system (with different specs), I don't believe. I'm not sure what will work for that scenario (upgrading to a new machine, for example). But again, if your goal is to back up bootcamp to transfer...say...from a 2009 MBP to a 2010 MBP, I don't think Winclone will work.

 

Regarding Acronis True Image on a Mac...

Acronis will only backup a Windows partition from a BIOS system. When run from inside of Windows on a bootcamp partition Acronis will give an error saying that it cannot proceed because of the GUID disk. They do offer an add on package though named "True Image Home Plus Pack" for an additional $30 that is meant to make it work with GUID disks. And at first, after I bought and installed that in my windows bootcamp, it looked like it was going to work (I got past where the first error was being displayed). But then I tried to make an image and it couldn't do it, it failed.

That is because Acronis True Image (even after installing the "Plus Pack" addon) will not work on machines that use EFI... only on BIOS machines. It won't be able to make the image.

Here is a link to their forums with more information on the subject. Acronis True Image Home 2010 Plus Pack on Mac Boot Camp | Knowledge Base
*ignore Nic Wilson's post in that linked thread. He says he got it to work yet he doesn't explain any further. I tried everything I could with no success. I think Nic was full of it

Acronis True Image Home Plus Pack: Dynamic Disks and Disks with GUID Partition Tables (GPT) Support | Knowledge Base


Basically True Image will not work on Macs for two reasons:
GUID
EFI

Acronis does not mention anywhere on it's product pages that it will not work on bootcamp partitions. I only found out after trying it and from searching their forums.

Use WinClone to make the bootcamp image file. WinClone is free and everyone is using it

 

Thanks for your feedback.

Regarding CopyCatX, check out their website:

CopyCatX - High speed drive duplication for Mac OS X, Backup and Restore Apple Macintosh Hard Drives

From their website:

 

Hi Bikerc,

I've not tried using CopyCatX 5.0. I looked over their website but I'm not entirely sure if CopyCatX can do a clone/image of the entire drive(s) (inlcuding bootcamp) in one fell swoop or if it is a multiple step process of cloneing the OS X and then makeing a seperate image file of the bootcamp partition. Those are basically the same steps you can do using the free tools of CCC and WinClone.

CopyCatX's wording implies that you can indeed create a full clone of both the OS X and Bootcamp in one step. But I'm not sure if that is some trick verbage to draw people in. If it doesn't work that way then they say, "We meant that you can back them both up, yes... but not in one step... you still have to do each seperately using different tools included in our product". *If I'm wrong about that, someone please correct me because that would be awesome if it could do it all in one step.

I have two 500GB internal drives in my MBP. The primary drive is Snowleopard. The 2nd drive is just one large bootcamp partition. I backup by making non-bootable image files of OS X and bootcamp. But if I'm upgrading to a newer HDD or SDD then I'll make a bootable clone of the OS X (but still creating a seperate image backup file of bootcamp).

Here is what I currently do for making two image file backups from my Macbook Pro (one image of the OS X and another of Bootcamp):

I have a 16GB USB flash drive with bootable snowleopard and with CCC and a few other basic tools installed on it. I also have an eSATA expansion card and cable for connecting to an external SATA drive for the fastest transfer rate possible. If you do not have an expansion slot then you will have to use usb or firewire.

- I boot into OS X from the USB while holding the [OPTION] key. I do this so that CCC can later unmount my internal OS X HDD so that I can make an image file using fast BLOCK copies.

- I startup CCC and I tell it to make an image file of my OS X drive to my external backup drive (this is not a bootable backup). I name the file on my remote drive to something like myname-osx-yyyymmddhhmiss. During this process CCC automatically will unmount the source drive.

- Once that osx image has completed I startup WinClone and tell it to make a backup image file of my 2nd drive (my bootcamp volume). I don't think it does a block copy to the image file. This takes awhile longer. I name this file as myname-bootcamp-yyyymmddhhmiss​

That above method is what I use for making regular schedule backups of my OSX and Bootcamp.

To make a bootable clone drive it is very similar process except I tell CCC to Clone the OS X drive to the target external drive and to make it bootable versus creating a single image file backup. Then I make a winclone image file of bootcamp, just as before but I put it in a different location other than the new clone drive (another external drive perhaps).

Then you'd swap in that new bootable drive (which does not contain any bootcamp partition). You'd boot up with your new drive in the laptop. Then go into bootcamp assistant and tell it you want to create a bootcamp partition and of a particular size. Once that partition has been created you can just quit out of bootcamp assistant. Then you startup winClone and this time you tell it to take the bootcamp image (wherever you put it) and to restore/expand it into the newly created bootcamp partition.

At that point you've got your new drive along with bootcamp windows exactly as they were before except perhaps on a larger and/or faster HDD/SDD.

If CopyCatX can do all of that in one fell swoop and if it is fast, then I'd buy it.

 

+1 to ygohome's approach. it's the same thing that I do and it always works well for me.

 

This CopyCatX cloning software does sound fascinating, especially if it can clone both the Mac OS & Windows OS partition in one single step.

Hopefully, someone who has used that software can post some comments/reviews on it.

 

Does Clonezilla work on Macs?

 

Yes it does.

I use it for all of my platforms.

OS X, Linux (RHEL+UBUNTU), Windows and even my old BSD box.

 

The simplest way that I found to clone my HDD was to do a Time Machine Backup, and then boot with the OS Disc and do a Time Machine Restore to the new HDD. I had issues using cloning software because it didn't do some of the boot setup for the drive, which led to me booting taking a lot longer (it would take an additional 20-30 seconds to get the spinning icon to display on boot). I later found out that all of the software solutions inside do not set the drive as the startup disk. (This is just for the OS X part as an FYI)

See this Post for details

 

Does the time machine back up bootcamp partitions?

 

NO, need to use Cloning software that work on the PC side.

 

Cool, but how can you boot into a Clonezilla bootable CD/USB if Macs don't have BIOS?

 

Here is a link to a good thread on the apple support discussion site regarding cloning the entire HDD and a general explanation relating to Time Machine and BootCamp.

My earlier post was specific to the OS X partition as I noted at the end of the post, because I run Win7 through Parallels and so Time Machine is a good option for me.
HTH

 

Good link and it answers alot of the FAQs relating to Time Machine and Bootcamp.

I would disagree with one of the answers in that link though, assuming I understood them correctly...

that sounds as if they were saying that the wincloned bootcamp image file could only be restored to the original HD, which of course would not be true. You can restore a wincloned bootcamp image file to any other HD. How else would someone upgrade their bootcamp image to a newer, larger, faster drive if that were not possible.

I think I must be misunderstanding that quote. But good link none the less.

Thanks

P.S. I myself have not ever used Time Machine and it's incremental backups. If I had a desktop I probably would. But I'm on the go so often with my laptop that when it comes time to do a backup I just plug in the external drive and launch CCC followed by winclone. The advantage of using CCC is that I can easily rotate multiple backup drives each time I make a new image of my disks. So, if one backup disk is lost, damaged, blownup, or whatever I'd still have two other backup disks with an image file that was only a few days older than the one on the backup disk that was lost.

I should give TM a try though, perhaps this weekend. I can compare backup and restore times.

 

It boots from CD just fine.

While booting, hold down 'C' and let go after the apple logo.
If you want to boot from USB, restart the machine, hold the 'Option' key down until it boots the start-up manager. Select the HFS+-formatted USB flash drive and you'll be good to go (You can do this to get to a CD as well).


Never had an issue.

 

I see, thanks!

So Macs support booting off USBs, CDs. External CD drives too, I'm hoping?

Does the USB have to be HFS+ formatted, or will it boot off FAT32, etc. partitions also?

 

Does the CCC do VMware Fusion and windows files under this?

 

If you are using VMWare Fusion to run windows in OS X, its much like what I do, using parallels w/ win7. In that scenario, CCC is cloning the OS X partition and will thereby backup and restore your windows VM too. I personally used Time Machine to do my backup and restore, but the same principle applies to both.

 

Yes macs support all that you've posted. I'd assume that the larger macs can boot fro external cd drives, since the air has that functionality, but cant speak from direct experience. I guess it would also depend on the external cd drive.

I've only booted from hfs, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could only boot from them.

 

It does what it says. It will copy the whole drive, OSX and Windows Partitions. The only problem I've had with CopyCatX is that the drive you are copying to must be larger then the original drive. When I tried going from a 512GB SSD to a 500GB hard drive, it wouldn't work and wouldn't tell my why not. But when I originaly went from a 500GB hard drive to the 512GB SSD it worked fine.

 

Doesn't matter for the boot. As long as it has its own bootloader.

 

Nice! Questions though... does CopyCatX backup both the OSX and the bootcamp paritions to the same image file or does it make two seperate image files? Or does it not make image files at all and instead it clones the drive as a whole? Sounds like the later.

I wonder how CopyCatX would handle a system that has the OSX on one drive and the bootcamp partition on another drive (a bootcamp windows partition on a 2nd drive all alone by itself).

Regarding the requirement for an equal or larger drive. It sounds like it clones the empty/unused space as well as the used disk space in the partition(s). So it would then require a target drive of equal or larger size.

I may have to try CopyCatX myself. Although I'm happy with my current backup/cloning setup... last weekend I backed up 292 GB of my primary OS X partition at over 100 MB/s and it finished in 52 minutes using CCC.