Bootcamp + TimeMachine?

[belltree]

I'll be buying a new Mac Mini in the first half of September. My plan is to use Bootcamp to install Windows for some occasional gaming.

I'm curious to know how TimeMachine will behave with a Bootcamp created Windows partition (likely formatted to NTFS). I realize that TimeMachine won't backup the data if it is NTFS (nor do I necessarily want it to). Would it back it up if it was FAT32?

My concern is regarding the restoration process in the event of a total disk failure. If the HDD were to completely fail it would require the new HDD to have OSX installed then restore from Time Machine (i'm guessing as I have yet to use OSX). Will there be any issue if the original disk had multiple partitions? Am I making any sense?

 

[gr8tfly]

Time Machine will only backup HFS+ volumes.

I would suggest WinClone. It will create a bootable image file of your BootCamp partition (NTFS or FAT32). It will also automatically expand NTFS volumes if you later restore to a larger BC partition.

edit: If you need to move or replace drives, you first restore to a single, HFS+ partition from Time Machine. Then, use BootCamp Assistant to recreate your Windows partition. Once that's done, you can use WinClone to restore the partition. I've used it several times to either move to a different drive or increase the Windows partition size, with 100% success rate - i.e. it boots w/o any issues.

 

[devburke]

If the HDD were to completely fail it would require the new HDD to have OSX installed then restore from Time Machine (i'm guessing as I have yet to use OSX).

Actually, I don't think you even have to install OS X first. When you boot into the OS X installation DVD, if you open Disk Utility, there is an option to do a full restore from TM. Since TM backups aren't bootable, I'm guessing this works in conjunction with the fact that the disc can install the whole OS, but I'm not sure. How it works doesn't really matter, but I think that should work.

 

[gr8tfly]

Actually, I don't think you even have to install OS X first. When you boot into the OS X installation DVD, if you open Disk Utility, there is an option to do a full restore from TM. Since TM backups aren't bootable, I'm guessing this works in conjunction with the fact that the disc can install the whole OS, but I'm not sure. How it works doesn't really matter, but I think that should work.

Correct - you can restore from Time Machine from the OS-X Install DVD. It's an option in the "tools" menu (I forget the actual menu title). It's a separate tool from Disk Utility. You probably would need to use Disk Utility to prepare the drive first, though.