How to back up Bootcamp partition in 10.7 Lion

Greetings!
I would like to know if anyone could explain how to back up a bootcamp partition in 10.7 Lion.
Winclone does not work in the new 10.7.
I see the partition in Disk Utility, but how do I back it up?
If I ever needed to restore it, how would one go about it?
I am not adverse to using a paid app for this task either.
Is there a way to clone the whole drive with both the Mac and Windows partitions in the resulting file?
Thanks all!
-P

I found a native OS X Lion compatible backup utility: CopyCatX 5 from SubRosaSoft .
From their technical support department:
CopyCatX is Lion compatible.
To copy a bootcamp partition, the whole device has be cloned to avoid any data integrity issues. You will need to use Duplicate (and NOT Backup). Your source is the model of the internal drive. For example, Western Digital ACxxx..., or Fujitsu MHWxxx..., or Seagate ACxxx...
(picture)
For BootCamp device, we suggest New Disk Image as your destination, and store it to an external drive.
To restore the disk image, double click on the disk image itself (on the destination drive), it will then be mounted on the desktop, then click on Duplicate (NOT Restore), select the mounted disk image as the source, and the drive you want to restore the drive to as the destination.
(picture)
Please let me know if you need more information.
Regards,
Mark Hurlow
<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Similar Messages

How to backup a bootcamp partition?

Will Winclone (or any other program) work under Lion to backup a bootcamp Windows partition? I currently use Winclone 2.2 under Mac OS 10.6.8. Also, is there anything else I need to know about my bootcamp partition before updateing to Lion? Thanks!

I would think you could use Winclone to migrate the previous Boot Camp partition to a newly created BC partition on your new drive. You would go through the Boot camp procedure to the point of installing windows then quit Boot Camp installation. You should have a partition ready for the old installation.
Not having done this myself, you need to get in touch with Two Canoes software for expert sdvice.
http://twocanoes.com/winclone/support
Paragon Software has been used successfully for backing up Winclone and they may be able to advise you as to their products capability to do this kind of migration.
http://www.paragon-software.com/products/home/
You of course will need to have a way to connect the old hard disk with either an adapter or an enclosure.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/universal+drive+adapter

I got a new harddrive for my MacBook Pro and successfully restored the mac partition, but I don't know how to restore the bootcamp partition.

So I got a new hard drive for my early 2009 version Mac Book Pro and some new memory to speed the little guy up. I was trying to copy the Mac and BOOTCAMP partitions onto the new drive, and I am close, but not home free.
Here's what I have done so far:
I got an external cage thing for the new/old HD.
I put the new HD in the cage and cloned the mac and BOOTCAMP partitions to the new disk while booted from a DVD.
I put the new drive in the machine and the old one in the cage.
I booted the machine and it loaded the mac side fine.
When I tried to use the 'option' key to, select the system I wanted to boot into on the reboot, it didn't show me the windows (bootcamp) option.
That's where I am at. When I go into disk utility it shows my BOOTCAMP partition in the list of logical disks under my disk, but it is grayed out. I can mount it, but when I restart, I can't select it. I feel like I am so, so close. What do I need to do?
(BTW, the old drive, the dude I am trying to clone, still exists in its entirety in the cage; I could put it back in and go from there if I had to.)
Let me know what you all think!
-Ricardo

Do you mean you want to reinstall Leopard? If you want to boot from your Leopard DVD do this:
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert OS X Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.

How to resize my bootcamp partition without deleting itit

How can i resize my bootcamp partition to make it larger without deleting it or having to reload windows?

Yesterday expanded my bootcamp partition from 50 up to 100 Gb using Mini Tool Partition Wizard Home Edition, a Freeware Windows Program after seeing this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeKeawqxUa0
Note that I have OSX Mavericks, Steps are:
1) backup all your files (optional but strongly reccomended).
2) Using OSX Disk Utility resize MacintoshHD partition leaving unallocated space as much as you need to add to bootcamp partition.
3) Set Bootcamp as Boot Disk and restart the mac.
4) in Bootcamp with Windows running launch Mini Tool Partition and select the bootcamp partition.
5) Choose "expand" option in order to expand the partition using all the unallocated space.
6) The program prompt to you to restart the mac for apply the task, cause is not possible while the partition is mounted and windows running.
7) Restart the mac and then automatically Mini Tool Partition will do the job in a "graphic msdos like" form.
I was lucky and worked for me, I have a Late 2009 Mac Mini with MAVERICKS and a samsung 250Gb SSD Evo.
Hope this can help the community but decline any responsibility, do it at your own risk, you can use programs like winclone or camptune if you feel more comfortable with a pay app.

How do I ensure bootcamp partition works after upgrading snow leopard to mountain lion

I am very apprehensive about upgrading to Mountain Lion due to performance concerns and the debacle with the new Auto Save feature which seems like a very poor and confusing solution to a problem that didn't really exist. I am only considering the upgrade, so that I can get the latest version of Xcode - 4.3; for some reason, 4.2 for SL is no longer available and my current 4.0 version is no longer supported, so I feel forced to upgrade to ML. Also, I have a bootcamp partition that I need to be able to use without issues after having upgraded to ML. So the essence of my question is this: what steps do I need to take prior to upgrading to ML to ensure that my Bootcamp partition is left intact and bootable. I have already created a compressed backup disk image and stored on a separate external hard disk for precautionary reasons. Is there anything else I should know beore going ahead with the upgrade?
Thanks.

Auto Save is actually a very useful feature. If you are typing a paper in Pages and you haven't saved in a long time, and then your battery dies suddenly, your paper is saved. Before Auto Save, you would have lost all your progress.
Your BootCamp partition will not even be touched during the install of Mountain Lion. As long as you make sure to select your Mac OS partition during setup, nothing will happen to your Windows side and everything will still work fine.

Can I install Windows 8.1 as Bootcamp partition from OSX Mountain Lion using a USB stick?

I have the following:
Bootable USB stick with Windows 8.1 - 64 bit
MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion 10.8.5 - it's probably 3-4 years old.
The Bootcamp partition currently has Windows 7 installed.
I want to know whether I can install Windows 8.1 from a USB stick into a Bootcamp partition. Apple's article on the topic refers to Bootcamp 5.1, but my OSX install has Bootcamp 5.0 - I am assuming 5.1 comes with the Mavericks version. I don't want to upgrade to Mavericks because I am running out of space as it is on the OSX partition.
Thus my question. So can I?

Your laptop has a DVD drive, right? If so you need to burn your ISO to a disc, will not work off USB

I am an Apple novice and need to know how to back up my programs on MB Pro - Lion

I know how to back up programs on PC, but am new to Mac and would like some advice about how to best back up programs on my Macbook Pro (purchased second hand) without disks. Thank you in advance

If you purchased a MacBook Pro secondhand and it came with third-party software on it, note that you do not own that software without disks. It is illegal for you to use that software. If some of that software is useful to you, you should buy copies of it so that you can use it legally, and so that you can reinstall it should the need ever arise. (Note that there is no way to reliably reinstall copy software from a backup in the event of needing to do a clean reinstall. You would need the disks so you could do a clean reinstall of the apps as well.)
Also, note that the very first thing you should do with a secondhand machine is erase the hard drive and reinstall the system from scratch. You don't know what the original owner has done with that machine, and there could be malware on it. You should never trust a system from an unknown party.

Bootcamp partition is no longer visible and bootable

I decided to change size of my bootcamp (windows partition) by following steps in this thread:
how to resize my bootcamp partition without deleting itit
I ended up with having bigger windows partition (which is what I was trying to achieve), that I was able to boot to, but my Windows disk was no longer seen in OS X. I reviewed the thread above once again and it was pointing to another thread where folks were discussing issue similar to mine:
Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition
Bottom line - Unfortunately, after performing the suggested action plan, I am no longer able to boot to my windows partition nor to see it from OS X
(I am able to select Windows disk while hitting Alt/Option during the boot, but then I get the message 'A Disk Read Error Occured. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart')
Please see the diagnostics below and please advise how this could be fixed - at minimum I would like to boot to Windows partition again, maximum - also to access it via OSX as well.
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=320072933376; sectorsize=512; blocks=625142448
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 625142447
      start       size index contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640 531562496      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
531972136    1269536      3 GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
533241672   27345080
560586752   64555008      4 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
625141760        655
625142415         32         Sec GPT table
625142447          1         Sec GPT header
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 38913/255/63 [625142448 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [     start -       size]
1: EE    0   0   2 -   25 127 14 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
2: AF   25 127 15 - 1023 254 63 [    409640 - 531562496] HFS+
3: AB 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 531972136 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254 63 - 1023 254 63 [ 560586752 -   64555008] HPFS/QNX/AUX
GycioMPB:~ gytis$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
MBR: hybrid
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 625142448 sectors, 298.1 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 000066EB-7670-0000-C052-0000E7240000
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 625142414
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 27345741 sectors (13.0 GiB)
Number Start (sector)    End (sector) Size       Code Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00 EFI system partition
   2          409640       531972135   253.5 GiB   AF00 Customer
   3       531972136       533241671   619.9 MiB   AB00 Recovery HD
   4       560586752       625141759   30.8 GiB    0700 Win HD
Command (? for help):
Thanks!

Hi Loner,
please see the output:
00000000 eb 52 90 4e 54 46 53 20 20 20 20 00 02 08 00 00 |.R.NTFS    .....|
00000010 00 00 00 00 00 f8 00 00 3f 00 ff 00 00 e0 69 21 |........?.....i!|
00000020 00 00 00 00 80 00 80 00 f8 07 d9 03 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000030 00 00 0c 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
00000040 f6 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 99 bf 2f fc e2 2f fc d2 |........../../..|
00000050 8c 92 fe 64 fa 33 c0 8e d0 bc 00 7c fb 68 c0 07 |...d.3.....|.h..|
00000060 1f 1e 68 66 00 cb 88 16 0e 00 66 81 3e 03 00 4e |..hf......f.>..N|
00000070 54 46 53 75 15 b4 41 bb aa 55 cd 13 72 0c 81 fb |TFSu..A..U..r...|
00000080 55 aa 75 06 f7 c1 01 00 75 03 e9 dd 00 1e 83 ec |U.u.....u.......|
00000090 18 68 1a 00 b4 48 8a 16 0e 00 8b f4 16 1f cd 13 |.h...H..........|
000000a0 9f 83 c4 18 9e 58 1f 72 e1 3b 06 0b 00 75 db a3 |.....X.r.;...u..|
000000b0 0f 00 c1 2e 0f 00 04 1e 5a 33 db b9 00 20 2b c8 |........Z3... +.|
000000c0 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 0f 00 8e c2 ff 06 16 00 e8 |f...............|
000000d0 4b 00 2b c8 77 ef b8 00 bb cd 1a 66 23 c0 75 2d |K.+.w......f#.u-|
000000e0 66 81 fb 54 43 50 41 75 24 81 f9 02 01 72 1e 16 |f..TCPAu$....r..|
000000f0 68 07 bb 16 68 70 0e 16 68 09 00 66 53 66 53 66 |h...hp..h..fSfSf|
00000100 55 16 16 16 68 b8 01 66 61 0e 07 cd 1a 33 c0 bf |U...h..fa....3..|
00000110 28 10 b9 d8 0f fc f3 aa e9 5f 01 90 90 66 60 1e |(........_...f`.|
00000120 06 66 a1 11 00 66 03 06 1c 00 1e 66 68 00 00 00 |.f...f.....fh...|
00000130 00 66 50 06 53 68 01 00 68 10 00 b4 42 8a 16 0e |.fP.Sh..h...B...|
00000140 00 16 1f 8b f4 cd 13 66 59 5b 5a 66 59 66 59 1f |.......fY[ZfYfY.|
00000150 0f 82 16 00 66 ff 06 11 00 03 16 0f 00 8e c2 ff |....f...........|
00000160 0e 16 00 75 bc 07 1f 66 61 c3 a0 f8 01 e8 09 00 |...u...fa.......|
00000170 a0 fb 01 e8 03 00 f4 eb fd b4 01 8b f0 ac 3c 00 |..............<.|
00000180 74 09 b4 0e bb 07 00 cd 10 eb f2 c3 0d 0a 41 20 |t.............A |
00000190 64 69 73 6b 20 72 65 61 64 20 65 72 72 6f 72 20 |disk read error |
000001a0 6f 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 0d 0a 42 4f 4f 54 4d |occurred...BOOTM|
000001b0 47 52 20 69 73 20 6d 69 73 73 69 6e 67 00 0d 0a |GR is missing...|
000001c0 42 4f 4f 54 4d 47 52 20 69 73 20 63 6f 6d 70 72 |BOOTMGR is compr|
000001d0 65 73 73 65 64 00 0d 0a 50 72 65 73 73 20 43 74 |essed...Press Ct|
000001e0 72 6c 2b 41 6c 74 2b 44 65 6c 20 74 6f 20 72 65 |rl+Alt+Del to re|
000001f0 73 74 61 72 74 0d 0a 00 8c a9 be d6 00 00 55 aa |start.........U.|
00000200
So do you think there are there any chances of fixing it?
Though it is sad that resizing of bootcamp is not supported natively (by Disk Utility?) as it seems a lot of people would like to have this.

How to clone Boot Camp partition when Winclone does not work

The hard drive in my MacBook Pro is failing. It has 2 partions, one for Apple and the other is a Bootcamp with Windows 7.
I tried repairing it with Disk Utility, which did not work. I also ran DiskWarrior, which resulted in the error message: "Directory cannot be rebuilt due to disk hardware failure". I was able to copy my Apple files through DiskWarrior although there were a couple of errors.
My question is how to clone my Bootcamp Partition. I tried making an image with Disk Utility but it failed. I also tried using Winclone and it failed indicating there were hard drive issues.
Is there another way to try to copy the Bootcamp partition? I can boot to Apple so running a program/app or trying UNIX commands might work.
Thank you in advance.

Some previous forum comments I have collected regarding backup of BootCamp.
Acronis 2011 w/ plus pak, didn't work well previously
Ghost 15 - probably not
Casper 6 works for Windows on Boot Camp only
CopyCatX is more lengthy and sector copy so takes the longest.
Paragon Hard Drive Suite 2011 because it works great and they have CampTune
Windows 7 system backup and restore - Apple's goofy HFS read-only interferes with system and file backup.
I have also used Casper, Clonezilla and Paragon but less regularly, Casper failed a few times, I stopped using it, Clonezilla worked but took forever (for me) Paragon (which I have only used twice) was the best but my sample is limited.
I have restored from DU, CCC, SuperDuper and TM, they all worked, TM was slower but not a lot, you can boot from the others, which I prefer.
Paragon HDM 2011 can do either offline or online backups, the difference is that with an offline backup, the entire partition (or disk) is unallocated. In an online backup, the backup utility is running against a partition that may be making changes to itself. When you run CCC or SD! in OS X, you're running an online backup. However, I would recommend (at least for the first backup) that you boot from the HDM recovery CD to do an offline backup. This will ensure that you have an *exact* copy of the parition/disk.
I tried the native Windows backup utility. It worked to backup and restore my Windows partition, but I noticed a "bad" side effect. When I would restore a Windows Backup to my HD, it would corrupt my MacOS boot partition, so I would then have to restore the Mac partition as well.
Winclone allows you to migrate your Bootcamp partition from one Mac to another Mac and make sure Windows will boot. However, if the processor (for example, Core Duo or i7) is a different type, the restored version of Windows may not be supported or be able to run on the new Mac. If you are migrating between Macs that are the same type (MacBook Air to MacBook Air, for example), you will have the greatest chance of success. You can try to restore Winclone images between different types of Macs (for example, a Mac Pro to a Mac Mini), but be aware that if Windows boots but does not reach the desktop, it is probably not an issue with Winclone, but rather the change in processor type.

Delete bootcamp partitions

Hi.
How i can remove bootcamp partitions?.
I have three partitions: Macintosh, linux swap, and ms partition (is debian really).
I need the disk space for Macintosh partition.
Thanks in advance.
Félix.

Start bootcamp and click "restore start volume"

Increasing size of the bootcamp partition

What is the easiet way to do this without having to wipe the partition clean and reinstall windows?
Thanks

12/24/12 Re: Winclone: How to increase the bootcamp partition size without starting over.
I never post but this worked so well for me that I will break down & tell my story. I use bootcamp only to Run Quicken via VM Fusion but I have been fighting a too small partition size for years & constantly getting "low memory" warnings from Windows. I didn't want to hassle reinstalling windows & quicken plus I didn't have the discs. I discovered Winclone 3.6, $20, gave it a try because of good reviews. It worked great. It made a copy of the bootcamp partition & placed it on my Mac osx, Lion, desktop. (I first had to convert my windows xp from fat 32 to ntfs but that was easy using built in windows commands after a google search on how to do it). I then used the Mac disk utility to delete the old partition & create a bigger partition. Winclone then restored the old bootcamp (windows & quicken) onto the new larger partition. The only issue was that I had to find a wired keyboard to reactivate windows (my wireless mouse worked but not the keyboard initially?). This program saved me a lot of grief. Good luck.

Re-sizing your Bootcamp partition

Is there a way to re-size my bootcamp parition? I partitioned out 25gb & am thinking that was a bit much for just occ. gaming. I'd like to maybe cut that down to ~ 18gb & recover some of my HDD space.

You could try the command line diskutil:
F.ex
$ diskutil resizeVolume disk1s2 limits
then
$ diskutil resizeVolume disk1s2 20G
Or something like that, not sure if it really works though. I'd be sure to backup any partitions before attempting it. Failing that you can just use diskutil to image your windows partition, then use the bootcamp assistant to restore the osX drive to how it was pre-bootcamp partition and start again.
how-to make disk images w/ Disk Utility http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1897.html

The guide to bootcamp assistant states that bootcamp can only be installed on a drive with a single partition. New Macs with Lion preinstalled have two partitions - the second is a recovery partition. How do I install Bootcamp?

Late in August 2011 I took delivery of a new 27" iMac with Lion preinstalled. I need to run Windows as well. Following Apple's written suggestion, I printed off the then current 12 pages of the document "Bootcamp Installation & Setup Guide" which clearly stated that the hard drive you were going to install on had to have on it, before install, a maximum of one partition. Using finder and disk utility I determined that there was only one partition. Unbeknownst to me, there was (is) an additional hidden (from those two pieces of software) partition on the disk. As of machines delivered new with Lion preinstalled, Apple has begun to include a "recovery partition". In that partition there is a copy of the software necessary to reinstall Lion via a download from the Apple App Store. Not knowing the partition was there, I cranked up "Bootcamp Assistant" which nicely offered to repartition my hard drive creating a "Bootcamp Partition" in addition to the existing. I told it how big to make each and hit the do it button, subsequently destroying my operating system. Oh, it very nicely told me, after the damage was done, how many partitions were REALLY on the disk and that I could not install Bootcamp cause there were too many partitions.
Luckily the the Recovery Partition, which at that point I knew existed, was not harmed and after doing some research on another compter, I used it to once again download Lion from the App Store and reinstall. So, I have recovered but am still stuck with the problem: how do I install Bootcamp in this new environment?

First you need to seriously back up your Mac.
A clone is an exact duplicate of your existing Mac HDD. Merely copying and pasting a drive will not make a bootable backup. In case of problems you can boot from an Ext HDD clone and use the utilities to repair, reformat, or clone the Ext HDD back to the internal Mac HDD. While Time machine back ups are easy you can not boot from it. The best thing to have for any kind of problem is a bootable clone backup on an external drive. Some even have two external backup drives in case one fails. There are two good apps for cloning named SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner.
In dealing with the recovery partition a simple approach is to clone the Mac partition to an external disk then re-partition the Mac to a single partition (GUID partition table) . Then clone the external disk clone back to the Mac. You will now have only one Partition and Boot Camp assistant sould not object.
Some have recommended getting rid of the recovery partition while others have advised not to do this. If you have the Lion USB Thumb Drive you do not need a recovery partition so can discard it without concern. There is another way to get rid of the recovery partition if you decide to do it but first be sure to have a backup of your Mac ( I know I sound like a nagging mom but many dead computers have been saved by this simple precaution).
Use Disk Utility.
1) Make the Recovery visible in Disk Utility by using a program like Secrets:http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27025/secrets or MacPilot:http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php (15 day free trial).
2) Highlite the Recovery partition and Control click it and select Mount the partition.
3) With the Recovery partition highlited, erase the partition, you'll get an error message, ignore it.
4) Now highlite the top identity of the hard drive and select the partition tab.
5) Highlite the Recovery partition and press the minus sign.
6) Click and hold on the bottom edge of the partition above and drag it to the bottom, if it doesn't go there automatically, the press apply.

How can I restore Windows 7 to Bootcamp partition - not reformat the entire hard drive?

Hello Apple (Mac) Community,
I originally posted this question over on answers.microsoft, but no help was forthcoming. Hope someone can help me with a problem that's (almost) making me nuts! I teach graphics to college students. In brief: I run Windows 7 Pro 64 on a Mac Pro tower, along with Snow Leopard (OSX). Windows is loaded on one partition of a 1TB drive. The other partition is a Mac backup. The Mac OS is on a different drive. Everything was going swimmingly with both OS, until recently. Unfortunately, the drive with Windows showed problems and I determined that the HD was either toast or needed a total reformat. My Mac data was all backed-up. Now I wanted to backup Windows so I can easily get back to the relatively happy point of my Windows 7 experience (drivers loaded, dual monitors all working, etc.). I did some online searching and the recommendation was to create a "system image" of the existing Windows 7 install by attaching an external drive, formatting that to NTFS and selecting "backup to image" in Windows. I did that and also took the opportunity to "create a backup disc" on a DVD. (Windows recommended). Next I rebooted back to Mac OS and completely reformatted the problem 1TB disc to a single partition, zero all data, just to see if it would actually reformat. It all worked! So far, so good. Next I used Bootcamp to create two partitions, one for Windows. I then restarted using the Win7 Pro (64) install disc, reformatted the Bootcamp disk to NTFS (as required) and installed Windows 7. After all that is completed and all working, I next try to use the restore from image function while booted in Windows. I'm instructed to restart from the Win install disc, which I do. Here's where things get difficult. When I try to choose restore from image, at that point the installer asks which drives to I want to exclude... but does not show partitions, only full HDs. I do not want to reformat the entire 1TB drive. I only want Windows on the 120gb Bootcamp partition (which is already formatted for Windows BTW). I spent a lot of time online reading through articles with users having the same frustration.
So here (at long last) is my question: How can I either restore Windows just to a Bootcamp partition... using "Windows System Image" or if that can't be done... can I somehow import all of the settings, etc. from the "image" (image is on external HD) into a fresh Win 7 install? So far the "backup disc" also seems useless. I can't even boot to Windows from it. BTW Apple folks: the only response on the MS side was that some "expert" simply posted links on how to install Windows and restore... not helpful with my particular problem of restoring to a partition.
Any help would be appreciated! Hopefully some help that even a Mac user / new Windows user could understand would be better! Thanks!
-melt

WinClone 3 is OS X and saves Windows image it makes for restore - that should work but you will have to try and you would need to make a new image unless it also works with a native Windows system restore image. It is now supported and has come a long way.
http://www.twocanoes.com/
Paragon Clone OS works and does disk-to-disk clone just like CCC you end up with two bootable drives. But does not work with your setup. It would let you clone and move your Windows install to an SSD or another disk drive though and be bootable.
During its clone process it checks for errors which is very helpful and lets you know - something CCC and others should adopt more of.
http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/demo.html
I wish for our/my sake you had re-read and rewritten the long 'story' and broken it into a brief list of facts we needed.
OS X
Windows
Backup (though external is much safer) and you want bootable OS X clones as well as TimeMachine
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1553
There are a number of things to do like chkdsk and others as well as Windows DVD to do automatic system repairs and find out why.
AppleHFS - the abilty to mount and read HFS volumes can be notorious.
I would rearrange and redo your storage setup and how you use the 4-5 internal hard drive bays.

Windows_7 Bootcamp Partition Back Up?

If i use traditional windows back up software for a bootcamp partition can i restore from same? I'm reluctant to upgrade to Lion without knowing my bootcamp windows 7 partition is safe and that it could be restored if necessary. I use Time Machine but was told that the bootcamp partition is not backed up by it.
Any thoughts?

Ralph below are reproduced a bunch of Bootcamp cloning comments previously posted on this forum.
I collected these so I would have a ready reference to the topic if needed. I give credit to and thank all the individuals who made these comments even though I do not have specific names recorded.
If Acronis 2011 w/ Plus Pak would work; Casper 6 does seem to work; Windows 7 has its own built in system image + backup + Windows Easy Transfer - but doesn't work with AppleHFS/MNT (that HFS read-only which confuses Windows 7 backup).
WinClone was handy for XP users but doesn't for instance check for errors during the backup only during restore (was how I found I had two bad sectors though).
Known? as I said it has been around and results using are mixed (everyone is different).
"Some" Windows clones? multi license etc? there are better tools for deploying Windows.
Acronis 2011 w/ plus pak, didn't work well previously, and they had complaints and issues with Windows 7 - on PC hardware. Check their forum
Casper 6 - known to work
Paragaon - they looked like their "Boot Camp Support" might, and they have CampTune; NTFS for OS X; and other products but backup/restore?
Ghost 15 - probably not, and they didn't like my comment so lost my userid there.
Windows 7 system backup and restore - Apple's goofy HFS read-only interferes with system and file backup so have to rename AppleHFS and AppleMNT to use. Also, MacDRive8 probably better if you need read and/or write ability to HFS.
People have used Linux CD (which is what Acronis and others use) on Mac and to update firmware etc on drives and graphic cards.
Obviously you want to test and have good backups.
If you are willing to reinstall, then all you need is Windows Easy Transfer (hidden folders like AppData need to be Custom/Advanced included) before and after; and all your updates etc. Then reinstall programs.
Ah, I don't see how backup of Windows that can't be restored is of any value or use! the whole purpose for backups is to restore files, OS, partitions, etc.
Yes, Windows 7 SP1 may be more sensitive but people clone Windows all the time.
I Use and recommend Paragon Hard Drive Suite 2011 because it works great on Mac Pro doing Windows to clone to/from SSD or any other drive. They have separate programs for Boot Camp too
I have restored from DU, CCC, SuperDuper and TM, they all worked, TM was slower but not a lot, you can boot from the others, which I prefer.
I have also used Casper, Clonezilla and Paragon but less regularly, Casper failed a few times, I stopped using it, Clonezilla worked but took forever (for me) Paragon (which I have only used twice) was the best but my sample is limited.

How to back up Bootcamp partition in 10.7 Lion

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for