Is time machine backing up parallels and win xp?

*"I'm trying to figure out the easiest method to restore everything on the new drive."*

Then forget TM, and use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone your current system to your new hard drive. You'll have an exact duplicate, and be up and running on your new drive in no time.

After you've cloned your OS to your new drive like Templeton said you should go into your TM preferences and exclude the Documents/Parallels folder from TM. If you don't you will add the entire Windows .hdd file to your TM backup everytime you run windows.

Since the date on the file changes everytime you use it, TM will assume that it's a totally new version. This will fill up your TM drive very quickly. You can manually back up the Parallels folder when you want by just dragging it onto your TM backup drive icon. It will not bother TM at all or waste your drive space either.

The actual Parallels program will still be backed up by TM like all of your other applications.

GadgetNeil wrote:
if I put the new hard drive in my macbook, insert the Leopard install disc, and tell it to restore from the time machine backup on the ext drive, will I end up with everything the same as before, including windows and all the windows settings and apps that I currently run in parallels?

Yes.

You could also use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, but that would require a additional steps in order to create yet another backup of your system and would be more complicated to restore. I'm not sure, but using either of these to restore could require you to delete your existing backups. I don't use either of these programs, so don't quote me on that.

My advice is always to just install the new hard drive, run a default Leopard install, and then manually restore your data from your Time Machine backup. This method would give you the most stable system but would take the longest time to do.

Your original idea of using Time Machine and the Leopard DVD's Restore from Time Machine functionality is still very good. That should work perfectly fine and would be the quickest and easiest method.

Trying to start a new backup with one of those low-level, shareware or freeware tools like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! and then restore should also work but would be more effort than using Time Machine. I wouldn't do it though.

etresoft wrote:
You could also use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!, but that would require a additional steps in order to create yet another backup of your system and would be more complicated to restore. I'm not sure, but using either of these to restore could require you to delete your existing backups. I don't use either of these programs, so don't quote me on that.

There should be nothing wrong with the CCC or SD alternative. It all depends on where you store the backup files. If you point CCC or SD at any volume already containing files, then the existing files will be wiped out. But if you want to use your one backup drive because there's still more than enough extra space on it, no problem. Just use Disk Utilty to make a disk image on the hard drive, that sits alongside existing files. Mount the disk image and point CCC or SD to that, and they will operate only inside the disk image.

CCC or SD do not necessarily take more or less time than Time Machine. It depends on how much data you have. If you have a lot of data (I don't know, 50GB or more) it can take a couple hours to restore from those programs, also depending on whether you are using FireWire 800 (fastest) FW400, or USB 2 (oh god please no). I have tried a Time Machine restore, and it didn't take as long as I thought, but there wasn't much user data on that test machine. I wonder if Time Machine might take longer than CCC or SD when large amounts of user data are involved. The reason I wonder is that Time Machine must do some thinking as it reassembles the disk from a combination of the OS X install DVD and various backed up files, while all CCC and SD have to do is rip the restore right off the hard disk in one continuous stream, straight through, no detours.

Anybody timed the restore with many GB of user data between these methods?

dechamp--

just saw your response from a couple of weeks ago...and parallels is filling up my time capsule. the only file i want to regularly backup from my windows stuff is quicken.

do you know where parallels is usually set up and which file i should exclude? thanks

paul

RudoGolf, I also want to use Quicken on my XP side of my Imac. Did you ever figure out how to ONLY backup your Quicken Files while using Time Capsule and Parallels?

I too would like to exclude everything else other than my Quicken Files from being backed.

In Windows
To back up your quicken file you just drag the data file that the program saves on the Windows hard drive to your Mac's desktop or some folder you create for it and it will be automatically added to your Time Machine backup. You can also save the file directly to your Mac's hard drive if it shows up as a "Network Drive" in "My Computer" - my Mac's boot drive does show up there.

Just make sure the folder on the boot drive is not excluded from the Time Machine Backup. Files that get copied here can be dragged back into the Windows desktop and used to restore your Quickbooks data.

On the Mac
The Parallels hard drive file is located in ~/Documents/Parallels/

I just exclude the whole Parallels folder in the Time Machine preferences (this still lets TM back up the actual Parallels program) and keep a couple of older versions on another drive for damage control in case of a severe virus or other windows problem (I can sandbox a new application and if I don't like it I can just replace the whole Windows installation). All you have to do is to copy the duplicate folder back into the original location to overwrite a broken Windows system and get back to work.

Message was edited by: dechamp