Now that many Intel Mac users have a Windows Boot Camp partition on their Macs, backing up or restoring that Boot Camp data becomes a bit challenging, as most backup utilities only copy the Mac partitions; if you want to create a bootable copy of your Windows installation it's even more difficult. That's where tools such as Winclone, or Mike Bombich's NetRestore, come in; they allow you to easily make a disk image of your Boot Camp partition, which you can then restore to a separate volume, save for archival purposes, etc. Winclone can also be used to quickly deploy a Boot Camp image to a number of machines (e.g. in a lab). Mike reports that he recently used Winclone to successfully reimage the Windows side of 10 iMacs with only a few clicks, sending the image package and the install commands via Apple Remote Desktop. Comparing it to NetRestore, he likes Winclone better: "Using NetRestore requires a separate install of the ntfsprogs toolkit to add the NTFS restore tools. Winclone bundles the ntfsprogs tools and a Perl restore script in with the image, so it's portable -- just copy the image and run the script to restore the Windows boot environment."
Winclone is a free download from twocanoes software, and donations are requested. Macworld's Mac Gems blog has a thorough walkthrough of backup and restore of Boot Camp using Winclone.
[via Macworld]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-23-2007 @ 1:53AM
MacBookOwner said...
The MacWorld article mentions some of the downsides to restoring onto a different machine (drivers, etc.), but the most important question is: Can you reactivate Windows on a totally new machine? Isn't XP/Vista tied to your hardware config?
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12-23-2007 @ 3:58AM
Fritz Laurel said...
I transferred my Parallels image to an old Compaq box about 2 months ago. Pain in the butt, but I figured out how to do it. Would LOVE to have a utility to do it for me (anyone, anyone?)
Yes, Windows IS tied to your HW config and yes, you can reauthorize it on a different machine. MS just doesn't let you reauthorize but so many times with the same product code. After X number of times, they make you call in and speak to a rep to find out what you're doing.
You can google "windows reauthorization" or some other combo to find out more.
Cheers,
FL
12-23-2007 @ 8:53AM
Jason said...
To Fritz: For WinXP -> Uninstall Windows Media Player 11, use the Microsoft SysPrep utility, then something like Norton Ghost and you can run the image to a new harddrive.
"Winclone to successfully reimage the Windows side of 10 iMacs with only a few clicks, sending the image package and the install commands via Apple Remote Desktop" from the Article -> I hope that you used SysPrep or something to reset all the SIDS or else you will have many unexplained headaches if you join them to a domain or plan to use them long term.
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12-23-2007 @ 11:01AM
Michael Rose said...
Jason -- yes, we took the necessary steps to prepare the image.
12-23-2007 @ 10:45PM
Mike said...
Excellent app. It's like a sort of Time Machine for Boot Camp if used right.
I use it to backup a 15 GB Windows partition on a regular basis (compresses down to around 4 GB of actual file size on disk), ready for the inevitable times where I need to rollback Windows from a bad driver install or something.
Far quicker than installing Windows and everything from scratch.
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12-24-2007 @ 10:47AM
Jordan said...
I've used WinClone to successfully (and very easily) re-size my bootcamp partition on Leopard. A very handy tool !
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12-25-2007 @ 5:44PM
Ulf Dahlen said...
Would not Disk Utility and New Disk Image from the Windows partition, do the same thing? Do the restore from Disk Utility as well. Does Winclone do something more than this?
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12-27-2007 @ 5:56PM
bneyman said...
Disk Utility does a perfectly fine job of backing up the BootCamp partition.
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12-27-2007 @ 5:57PM
bneyman said...
Those of us who have formatted our BootCamp partitions as Fat32 to make it easier to copy files back and forth cannot use Winclone, which is NTFS only.
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