Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Versioned Boot Camp Backups under Mac OS X
It may be possible to use Mac backup software to make versioned
backups of your Boot Camp volume, but the particulars depend on
the format of your Windows partition:
•
FAT32 (Windows XP only):
Because Mac OS X can read from
and write to FAT32 volumes directly, you can generally use your
existing Mac backup software to create and restore versioned
backups of your Windows files. Simply add the appropriate folder(s)
to your source—for example,
/Volumes/Windows/Documents and
Settings/your-username
.
•
NTFS:
You can usually use your Mac backup software to back
up files on an NTFS partition, but you'll be unable to
restore
them
from within Mac OS X unless you've also installed NTFS for Mac
OS X (as described just previously) or similar software. If your
backup program stores the files in Finder-readable format
and
your
backup drive is formatted as FAT32 (which could be problematic
if you're using the same drive to back up Mac files), you could also
reboot into Windows, mount the backup drive, and manually copy
the files back to their proper locations.
In any case, remember that because these methods depend on Mac
OS X software, which can't run until you reboot into Mac OS X, your
files won't be backed up while you're using Windows.
However, yet another option exists, and although it might involve
changes to your workflow, I think it's also the simplest approach. If
you install
MacDrive
($49.99 for Standard edition) under Windows,
you'll be able to mount your Mac volume and read and write files
on it directly, just as though it were a regular Windows volume. So,
if you do this and then ensure that you always save the Windows files
that you want to back up on your Mac volume, then they'll always
be backed up with the rest of your Mac files when your Mac backup
software runs.
