How to clone Vista/XP to new drive in a mac pro?

[tonywalker23]

heres my situation:

i have a mac pro with 4 hd's. bay one hd is in two partitions with vista and xp on the hd. bay 2 hd is my os x hd. bay 3 and bay 4 are 2 drives in a mirrored raid.

the bay hd starting makind sounds and apple is sending me a new hd. i have to mail the old one back. but ive got vista and xp both installed on it with all the updates and programs and it will be a super pain to go through all that again.

what is the best way to clone the hd in bay 1 with vista and xp to the new drive apple is sending me? ive read a few things online about this topic but they all deal with copying vista OR xp, not a single drive with 2 partitions with 2 os's.

any advice?

thanks!

 

[pastrychef]

If they are Bootcamp partitions, the only way that I know of to clone them is with an app called WinClone. You can find it here:

http://www.twocanoes.com/winclone/

 

[makku]

I recommend using the Unix command dd. You can use it from the terminal and is already installed in Mac OS X. It's easy to use and will give you an exact copy of the drive.

 

[tonywalker23]

I recommend using the Unix command dd. You can use it from the terminal and is already installed in Mac OS X. It's easy to use and will give you an exact copy of the drive.

can you point me somewhere to help me learn about this. about all i know about the terminal is that its in the utilities folder and it can mess stuff up if i dont know what im doing

 

[makku]

Using the Terminal could be dangerous if you are unsure what you are doing, so if you read below and are even 1% unsure you should try to find a different solution.

The basic command that you will need to type in the Terminal is something like this:
dd if=(input - the source disk) of=(output - the destination disk) bs=(block size - default is 512 bytes but 1MB is recommended to reduce copy time)

In your case the source disk is in bay 1 so the disk name should be something like disk0. To make sure open Disk Utilities, click on the source drive(not the partition in the drive) and click New Image. The default name should be the disk name. Since you are not trying to make a disk image click cancel and close Disk Utilities.

So if the source disk is in bay 1 and destination disk is in bay 3, the full command will be:
dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m

You probably need to type sudo to get permission to run dd. You also said that your drive is making a sound so there could be a problem when reading from the drive. You should also put noerror parameter as well to skip any problem on the disk.

So the complete command for your case if you decide to put the new drive in bay 3 is something like:
sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m conv=noerror
Note: Make sure you check the destination drive. If you type the wrong drive, that drive will be overwritten. This is probably the only dangerous part of dd.

It will ask for a password so enter your user password.
Depending on the drive size it will take a good amount of time.

You can find more information about using dd by searching for keywords like 'dd unix' or typing "man dd" in the Terminal.

Good luck.

 

[richard.mac]

so winclone and the above command can clone a ntfs volume/partition to another ntfs volume/partition… or does it have to be FAT32? im thinking about doing this for my problem

 

[pastrychef]

I recommend using the Unix command dd. You can use it from the terminal and is already installed in Mac OS X. It's easy to use and will give you an exact copy of the drive.

Would dd also copy the disk format used by Bootcamp? Can it be used to create a full bootable backup of an OS X drive?

Thanks for the info.

 

[pastrychef]

so winclone and the above command can clone a ntfs volume/partition to another ntfs volume/partition… or does it have to be FAT32? im thinking about doing this for my problem

Yes. It works fine with NTFS.

I wasted many hours trying Ghost and True Image with no success before I stumbled on to this app. In my opinion, it's a 'must have' for anyone using Bootcamp.

 

[makku]

Would dd also copy the disk format used by Bootcamp? Can it be used to create a full bootable backup of an OS X drive?

Thanks for the info.

Yes, dd will give you an exact copy from the very first data of the hard disk (or where ever you specify it from) so it will copy the format used by Bootcamp. It will also give you a full bootable backup of an OS X drive as well. It is very useful.

 

[pastrychef]

Thank you.

 

[tonywalker23]

I recommend using the Unix command dd. You can use it from the terminal and is already installed in Mac OS X. It's easy to use and will give you an exact copy of the drive.

thanks for the help! i havent gotten my apple replacement drive yet but i practiced on a hd i had in bay 4. (copied vista/xp in bay 1 to empty drive in bay 4) so when the new hd gets here i will put it in bay 1 and "dd" the data in bay 4 back to bay 1.

your help was very good. i went from knowing nothing about dd to getting it to work. i didnt use the noerror option but i did have one problem that i dont think was related. when i would type the command in the terminal it said the drive was busy so after thinking a few minutes i unmounted the drive i was copying to. that fixed it so im glad it wasnt more complicated than that.

anyways, thanks again for your help. now i dont have to go through 2 installations of windows and updating and adding software!