Best way to clone a Windows 7 Bootcamp Partition?

Question

Best way to clone a Windows 7 Bootcamp Partition?

I have a 1 TB hard drive that has 2 partitions, one for my OS X install and one for my Windows 7 Bootcamp which I am running parallels off of, and I want to move to a 2TB hard drive and am wondering what the best solution might be to clone my Windows partition to move it to the new drive. I will be using Carbon Copy Cloner for the mac partition.

I am assuming I need to partition the new drive, then use bootcamp assistant to make the new bootcamp partition, and then use something like Casper from within windows to clone the windows 7 partition? Can I run that while just running in parallels? I am assuming I can.

I see that people used to use a program called WinClone on the mac side, but it seems to have been discontinued, and was never updated to work with Windows 7.

Thanks for any help you can give me, it is appreciated.

Dual 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon MacPro, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 24 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB GDDR5

Posted on May 25, 2011 9:42 AM

Reply

Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

May 25, 2011 10:42 AM in response to Jonah Lee Walker

Why? if you have a workstation with 4 internal drives, leave Windows where it is.

I don't actually like to share a drive so having just Windows or Windows and a data volume.

Why do you think you need to?

As for cloning, Paragon I've found to be best with a Mac Pro to move Windows only to a new drive.

Reply

Answer 2

May 25, 2011 10:46 AM in response to The hatter

I am an editor, so the rest of the drives are full, so i can't leave it where it is, have to replace the drive, and I honestly don't use windows enough for it to bother me that it is partitions on one drive.

Reply

Answer 3

Asatoran

Level 4

2,532 points

May 25, 2011 2:52 PM in response to Jonah Lee Walker

I don't know of any free imaging programs for Windows. I use Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (a.k.a.: Ghost.) I've also used Acronis Trueimage in the past. Both work well and are quite popular, but are not free.

For situations like you describe, I prefer to reinstall Windows rather than image. And then install the current versions of whatever programs rather than move over all the leftover garbage in the Registry and old DLLs, etc.

In fact, if you're using Parallels, then if you made a typical virtual machine rather than have Parallels use your Boot Camp Partition, then you wouldn't have an issue "moving" Windows. A "typical" virtual machine is just a bunch of files so "moving" Windows means just copying the files within OSX. If you need the full performance of Boot Camp (i.e.: Photoshop, Autocad), then fine, but otherwise I say take this opportunity to reinstall Windows clean as virtual machine. Then when you want to move to a 3TB drive in the future, you're good to go.

Additionally, reinstalling Windows would avoid you having to buy an imaging program for Windows. So no $$$, just a few hours of labor. And if you reinstall Windows as a virtual machine, then the future "move" would still be no $$$ and even less labor. 🙂

Reply

Answer 4

May 25, 2011 7:48 PM in response to Jonah Lee Walker

The last time I replaced the hard drive in my MacBook Pro, I used Clonezilla (a free cloning app) to clone my Snow Leopard and Windows 7 partitions onto the new drive. It worked great for me, and only cost me a CDR and a little time.

Reply

Answer 5

May 26, 2011 7:30 AM in response to Jonah Lee Walker

I was recently introduced to Winclone . . . I love it! I originally found it b/c I wanted to increase my bootcamp partition with Win 7 already installed. It can be used to clone, back-up, etc.

URL: http://download.cnet.com/Winclone/3000-2242_4-172338.html

You install it on the Mac partition, run it like any application, select the bootcamp partition & select clone. Once done, you have a file which is a clone of your Windows machine. You can set up BootCamp anywhere, install this app, run "Restore" & select this newly created file to restore from.

Reply

Answer 6

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

May 26, 2011 7:55 AM in response to nestor a.

Not supported.

Slow

Have to know ahead if you plan to resize

Slow restore

On restore may learn it was a bad image and had errors

Paragon CampTune can resize, and they have supported backup and repair tools.

Reply

Answer 7

May 26, 2011 9:03 AM in response to Asatoran

I got what seems to be the easiest solution from the Parallels forums, it does necesitate losing my bootcamp partition and going with just a normal virtual machine though.

The suggestion was to run parallels and not start the virtual machine, and it has an option to import bootcamp. This creates a normal virtual machine installation, which can be backed up just like any other part of the mac. So I lose my bootcamp, but keep the same virtual machine, which is what I will be doing.

Sweet!

Reply

Answer 8

May 29, 2011 6:10 PM in response to nestor a.

Ditto, I'm using Winclone 2.2 with Snow Leopard to clone Windows 7 64-Bit on iMacs (Early 2008 & Early 2009) and Mac Pro (Early 2007). As a backup mode (same unit), no glitches; activation retained.

Reply