Time Machine - Bootcamp and Virtualized operating systems?

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Time Machine - Bootcamp and Virtualized operating systems?

Just for my curiosity and knowledge, from a Software and Hardware stand point prospective, is the Time Machine capable to back up my personal Documents and Files located in my Windows Bootcamp Partition and eventually also my Document and Files located in my Virtualized Operating Systems (using Parallels for example) that I create on my MAC side?

Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Aug 15, 2015 7:21 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 16, 2015 2:02 AM in response to fabio168

Great question! Time Machine will only backup files that are stored on the same partition as Time Machine. This means that it cannot backup files that are in the Windows installation via boot camp.

If you use Parallels you can use Time Machine to backup the files, but keep in mind this can fill up your Time Machine disk pretty fast as it is backing up the entire VM. You can adjust it to where it excludes the VM and only backup the files. Or if you have a big Time Machine drive then you can backup both and not worry about it.

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Answer 2

Aug 16, 2015 11:43 AM in response to fabio168

As far as Parallels goes, this link will explain how to do that with Time Machine. This link will explain how Parallel's "Optimize for Time Machine" feature actually works, As you can see, while your automatic Time Machine backup process is frequent, what gets backed up isn't.

I don't use BootCamp but check out Post #12 in this link, which suggests how it might be done.

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