How do you backup and restore Boot Camp?

Paragon Drive Backup

I use Clonezilla. I prefer to use SuperDuper for my MacOS, but to get my Boot Camp partition, I use CloneZilla. I have even been known to just image the whole drive using CloneZilla and it works, but I still prefer SuperDuper (for the MacOS). 🙂

For me, Paragon Hard Disk Manager Suite 2011.

It contains Clone OS and other tools, for $49.

I'm not sure Paragon Backup is "Apple Boot Camp" friendly or not.

All available Paragon Hard Disk Management technologies are available in onesuite.

Hard Disk Manager Suite 2011

While lack of mention of Apple Boot Camp in System Backup may not be an issue, I have never used it. Paragon also has volume snapshot and other Mac OS tools - but then they are not all offered in a Suite to provide NTFS, HFS, Mac repair, etc.

System Backup PARAGON

Top 10 Apple Articles| Paragon Software Blog Apple Tips and Tricks

Lion will have to modify the partition tables to add its own Windows 7-ish system recovery partition, so I would definitely get a good backup strategy in place - and tested - ahead of time. Contrary to the "shouldn't have any impact" I always see an impact, and also re-initialize drives when a new OS comes out (though maybe wait for the .2 release).

Paragon Drive Copy for Mac® OS X - Overview

Paragon Backup & Recovery Suite - Compare Editions

And you might want to use CampTune instead of Boot Camp Assistant when it comes time to install Windows. It prompts to make a backup before you begin, and probably has less trouble setting up a dual boot environment.

Paragon Software Mac - CampTune

To write to HFS+ from Windows:

HFS+ for Windows

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.

Hope that helps

It probably helps more if I pointed out that paragraph 1 refers to cloning OSX only .... oops

Paragon. HDM 2011 Suite - I use for cloning, for data backup.

The clone when you have multiple drive bays like Mac Pro or PC, are bootable, much like SuperDuper is.

Takes me less than 10 minutes to clone 35GB SSD

Working with dual boot - well Paragon does have almost the only Apple Boot Camp support. Ghost and Acronis don't; which I also bought thinking they would at some point.

When you used DU (I assume disk utility in the MAC OS), did you back up your bootcamp windows 7 partition and then try to restore it or did you only backup the MAC OS? This question is for CSound1. Thanks.

wa060802 wrote:

When you used DU (I assume disk utility in the MAC OS), did you back up your bootcamp windows 7 partition and then try to restore it or did you only backup the MAC OS? This question is for CSound1. Thanks.

DU can't clone the Boot Camp partition, I just reinstalled Windows after restoring the Mac partition with DU, I do not recommend the method, CCC or SuperDuper do a much better job, in my opinion.

CCC can't make a bootable copy of windows. SuperDuper clones only HFS+ not BootCamp/Windows.

So if I have an image of windows that I made with DU, you're telling me it won't restore?

wa060802 wrote:

CCC can't make a bootable copy of windows. SuperDuper clones only HFS+ not BootCamp/Windows.

So if I have an image of windows that I made with DU, you're telling me it won't restore?

Yes, that is what I said.

Has anyone been successful to "create a bootcamp partition of Win7" image and "restore it back to Mac Lion 10.7"??? I've create a "system image" and a "repair disk" from Win7 build in utility, which is basically a clone (snapshot) of my Win7 system, the repair disk is just a bootable disk provide me the option to restore the image back. I plug the disk into the Superdrive, and startup the Mac Mini by holding down the "alt' key during startup. The bootcamp recognizes it, and lablel it as "Window" CD. I selected to boot from the CD. However, during the boot up process, the installation process stall at the loading Windows. It behaves like waiting for somthing (or something is missing). I have done this process before for a PC, and I was expected to see a screen with a restore option, but it didn't happen. So, I wonder how to create a bootable disk??? Which allows me to restore the "system image" that Win7 created.....

Speaking from personal experience, don't restore that image unless you also have a very good, and more recent backup of your Mac OS partition...

When you restore the Windows 7 backup image, it will restore the Mac Partition as well, except that Windows doesn't know how to properly read/write Mac OS partitions, so it wil write a corrupted partition back over the top of your good Mac OS partition (making it useless). I have successfully used Clonezilla to backup and restore a BootCamp partition, but I don't remember if that was on Snow Leopard or Lion. I have since purchased Paragon Backup and I have made several backups of you BootCamp partition, but I have yet to restore one to know positively that it works (it is a huge PITA to swap drives in my old MacBook Pro to test the restore functionality). Based on experiences from others, and personal experience I have had with numerous different Windows backup tools, I feel confident that Paragon will work for me, or at least get me far enough along that I can recover the critical files I need and I can re-build the OS if necessary...