Winclone seems to be working again

Question

Level 4

2,096 points

Winclone seems to be working again

Winclone was rock solid for me back in the days of Leopard and Vista, but with Lion and Windows 7 it became unrelaible. I moved on to Paragon which has been rock solid as well, provided there are four or fewer partitions (including EFI and Recovery).

Winclone 2.3.3 has just been released by the chap who has picked up the pieces after the creator dropped it. So I have been testing it.

I created a test Windows 7 x64 Bootcamp partition (not whole dedicated HD) in my Mac Pro running 10.7.2. and made a Winclone image of it. Then I tried restoring it in three different scenarios:

1. Restored it straight back to the partition I had imaged it from.

2. Wiped the hard drive the original had been on, recreated the Bootcamp partition with Boot Camp Assistant, and restored it to that.

3. Restored to a Bootcamp partition on a completely different hard drive.

All three restores have been completely succesfull.

The link is http://bubba.org/winclone/

Message editted to add link

Posted on Jan 29, 2012 10:14 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Mike Boreham Author

Level 4

2,096 points

Jan 29, 2012 10:52 AM in response to Mike Boreham

Make sure to turn off NTFS for Mac driver before imaging, if you have it installed.

Reply

Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Jan 31, 2012 12:12 PM in response to Mike Boreham

Maybe make this "primary" thread WinClone?

Reply

Answer 3

Mike Boreham Author

Level 4

2,096 points

Feb 1, 2012 3:20 PM in response to Mike Boreham

I am afraid I have to report two restore failures in further testing.

The three successful restores in the initial post were all imaging and restoring a partition on a drive which also had a mac partition. This is obviously representative of the normal use of Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro

When I use Winclone to image the Bootcamp volume on my Mac Pro, where it is on a dedicated drive, the restore fails to boot each time, with a message about autocheck not being found and skipping, ending with a blue screen.

I tried twice, the second time after running CHKDSK before imaging.

Reply

Answer 4

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 1, 2012 4:14 PM in response to Mike Boreham

For $19 Paragon "Clone OS" makes bootable copies (you can use either and no activation type even required) for those with dedicated Windows drives to work with.

So for most people WinClone does offer help and hope.

Reply

Answer 5

Mike Boreham Author

Level 4

2,096 points

Feb 1, 2012 9:56 PM in response to The hatter

I actually have Paragon Hard Disk Manager 11 (thanks to you in another thread I think) which seems to be a package of a large number of tools that Paragon also market separately under different names. HDM 11 will also clone bootable activated copies or image/restore whole disks or partitions as I'm sure you know.

As I said in the first post HDM11 has been very successful for me (always booted form the Paragon Rescue CD), with two provisos:

1. It was solid when my MacBook Pro only had three or four partitions (EFI+OSX+Bootcamp+data or EFI+OSX+Bootcamp+Lion Recovery). When I had five (EFI, OSX, Bootcamp, Lion Recovery and data) it gave errors. I previously tried it with six and although the Paragon Rescue disk appeared to boot, HDM11 wouldn't actually launch from it. Had two long support tickets with Paragon on this and they clearly said six partitions was not supported, and less clear but not surprised that five gave errors.

2. Most of my testing has been cloning/imaging whole HD, but the couple of times I have tried making an image of just the Bootcamp partition and restoring just the Bootcamp partition they were unsuccessful. Probably my error somewhere, but I have always felt more comfortable with Paragon and whole drives.

3. The failure of Winclone in whole drive mode is not too important, though it does undermine confidence somewhat. In whole drive mode for Bootcamp is easly cloned or imaged with CopyCatX or similar, although device copy methods don't offer the flexibility to resize/adjust to different size destination.

Reply

Answer 6

Mike Boreham Author

Level 4

2,096 points

Feb 2, 2012 1:08 AM in response to Mike Boreham

I should have mentioned in previous post that I created the extra partitions on my MBP with iPartition, which possibly may have somrthing to do with Paragon's inability to handle 5 or more partitions.

The normal situation when creating a Bootcamp partition with Bootcamp Assistant is that you end up with just two partitions. If you subsequently use Disk Utility to create more partitions the bootability of the Bootcamp is broken, but not if you use iPartition.

Partitions created by iPartition show up as empty space in the Partitions Tab of Disk Utility, although they do appear in the partition lists on the left hand side of the DU window.

Reply

Answer 7

DIESEL-X

Level 1

49 points

May 3, 2012 2:51 AM in response to Mike Boreham

Hi, thanks for all the useful info.

It's regrettable that Lion has borken the previous ability to do perfect complete backups and restorations of Bootcamp; something I have always been able to enjoy and do with Acronis True Image Home 2010 when using Leopard/Snow Leopard. For me back then it just worked and had saved me many times because as often known Windows can on occasions become easily corruptable.

The fact there is no definitive Bootcamp image backup procedure within OS X (for Apple's supported Bootcamp feature) is disturbing and a current void for Mac users that require both OS X and Windows, especially for those having actually got a Mac on the basis that it can run both OS's natively from boot.

I now have a .tib Acronis Bootcamp backup image which I did make while using Lion, but naturally it will not restore using either Acronis Tue Image Home 2010 nor 2011 versions while running Lion OS; however I think I've read somewhere that the new 2012 version (possibly including the plus pack) can deal with EFI boot systems. Does this mean now being able to successefuly restore an aAcronis .tib backup image on a Lion Mac?

Reply

Answer 8

DIESEL-X

Level 1

49 points

May 3, 2012 3:07 AM in response to DIESEL-X

2012 version of Acronis True Image also states "Windows Dynamic Disks and GPT volumes support available with Plus Pack add-on." I presume that GPT refers to GUID Partition Table, a necessary feature for functionality within this discussion.

Tried to edit this into previous post but the forum site-maintenance appeared upon update post and stopped it going through in the nick of time 😁

Reply

Answer 9

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

May 3, 2012 5:03 AM in response to DIESEL-X

acronis has had gpt for years but that does not = works with apple and boot camp and proprietary partition table used.

GPT Drives

Windows GPT UEFI FAQ

Tech_ Secrets of the GPT

Reply

Answer 10

DIESEL-X

Level 1

49 points

May 4, 2012 7:18 AM in response to The hatter

What your saying is slightly confussing? I'm assuming you meant "does not = works with apple's Lion and boot camp installation under Lion" right? Naturally this is entirely true with regard to to Lion.

I have personally restored Windows 7 (x64 Ultimate) BOOTCAMP ' Acronis made .tib backup image files back-onto the Bootcamp partition of my then previous MacBook Pro 17" early 2009 machine with Snow Leopard running as the OS. Of course I had to use an external drive either formatted in NTFS or use a TimeCapsule as a remote WiFi network disk in order to do the Backup image within Acronis True Image Home 2010 and then restore the Acronis .tib backup image contained on an external HTFS formated drive only which was the best way for the Acronis Media BOOT DVD procedure to be able to see it and retrieve it. For me it just worked! until Lion of course... If that wasn't supposed to work then something I did obviously made it work (maybe formerly editing the partitions with iPartition chnged the structure - who knows, but it worked and I never had any problem from the restored Bootcamp version.

Reply