Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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Some backup software, including SuperDuper, cannot read from
Windows partitions at all, regardless of whether they're formatted
as NTFS or FAT32.
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If you rely on Mac software to back up your Windows volume, then
backups can take place only when you're running Mac OS X. So if
you run Windows under Boot Camp for extended periods of time,
your risk of data loss increases.
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Even in cases where you can back up the entire contents of your
Windows partition while running Mac OS X, a complicated
procedure is usually necessary when restoring files to make sure
the restored Windows volume is bootable. So as with duplicating
a Mac OS X volume, it's a job better left to specialized software,
in this case software running under Windows.
Therefore, if you've decided to back up your Boot Camp volume, you'll
need to develop separate strategies for creating duplicates, versioned
backups, or both.
Duplicate a Boot Camp Volume
The easiest way by far to duplicate (and restore) a Boot Camp volume
without leaving Mac OS X is to use a $29.99 utility called
Winclone
.
It's a simple, straightforward program: you choose a source (your Boot
Camp volume), click the Image button, and follow the prompts to
create a disk image with a copy of all your Boot Camp files; you can
store that image anywhere you like, including on your internal hard
disk. You can also restore a Boot Camp volume without rebooting from
another drive.
Alternatively, you can make a bootable duplicate of your Windows
volume from within Windows. However, you should be aware that
in the Windows world, backup categories, terms, and behaviors are
a bit different.
In particular, a common way to back up a Windows installation
is called imaging. In Mac terms, creating a system image would be
comparable to duplicating one's entire disk onto a disk image stored
on another volume—the disk image itself wouldn't be bootable, but
