Bootcamp backup / restore

Branoic

So I (stupidly) don't have any backup system in place at the moment on my 2010 iMac. I just got the email from Apple about the Seagate recall and I'll obviously need to get my @ss in gear and get some backup in place before I send it in.

I've got Win7 set up through Bootcamp, and I'm wondering what the best way of backing that up will be, as I understand Time Machine will only look after the OSX partition and will ignore Windows?

I don't have a huge amount of stuff on the Windows side - mainly just Steam with my PC games library. I need to make sure that this can be recovered properly on the new hard drive with all my save-game files intact etc.

What would people recommend?

I'm wondering if I need to go to the bother of a whole backup, or maybe I could locate all my Steam save files, copy them to OSX to let Time Capsule take care of them, and then copy them back to a newly created Bootcamp after the restore?

Liameter

I think that "Carbon Copy Cloner" will do what you want but I'll leave you to read about it and decide.

Sad Professor

CCC will backup the data on the Bootcamp partition but it apparently can't restore it onto a new drive for you. Not much use in other words.

There's Winclone which will do exactly what you need and I've used it in the past - and it failed me, leaving me with a useless disk image which the app refused to restore from, causing me a lot of heartache. However, this happened around time it became abandonware. It has since come back as a paid app, so maybe it's improved.

If, as you say, you don't have that much stuff on the Windows side it's probably better if you just backup the files manually and re-install Windows when you are back up and running. God knows Windows likes to be reinstalled every once in a while.

Spipov

Sad Professor wrote: »

CCC will backup the data on the Bootcamp partition but it apparently can't restore it onto a new drive for you. Not much use in other words.

There's Winclone which will do exactly what you need and I've used it in the past - and it failed me, leaving me with a useless disk image which the app refused to restore from, causing me a lot of heartache. However, this happened around time it became abandonware. It has since come back as a paid app, so maybe it's improved.

If, as you say, you don't have that much stuff on the Windows side it's probably better if you just backup the files manually and re-install Windows when you are back up and running. God knows Windows likes to be reinstalled every once in a while.

Winclone. Works as advertised and brilliant support

Branoic

Thanks for the advice. On a related note - how long should an initial Time Machine backup take to a network drive for about 250gig? I'm using a Seagate GoFlex Home in place of a Time Capsule. I started the backup last night and it said 7 days. I thought "hmm" and went to bed. This morning it had done 10 out of the 250 and now says 12 days!

Colonel Panic

It really depends your network speed and how good the network drive is.

Over even 5GHz Wireless N, that much data would certainly take days, over GB ethernet, it would take the bulk of a day.