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tony3dd

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 14, 2013
57
1
My son's Windows drive in his 2008 Mac Pro is failing. What the largest SATA2 drive he can put in?
 
Indeed your very best shot. A great peace of software that will safe you a lot of time and frustration!!! I'm a very satisfied user myself.

How easy is this program to use? I know almost nothing about Windows. His failing drive sea to pass the windows drive check, and boots up fine, so I'm hoping that installing a new drive in one of his open bays, and just cloning it will work. How does one set this up with this software?
 
How easy is this program to use? I know almost nothing about Windows. His failing drive sea to pass the windows drive check, and boots up fine, so I'm hoping that installing a new drive in one of his open bays, and just cloning it will work. How does one set this up with this software?

Very easy. You simply tell it where to save the image file. Then when you want to restore, simply pick the image file (if more than one), and tell it which disk or partition to put it on (pre format with FAT, WinClone will take care of the NTFS part).

It couldn't be easier to use, and it has worked perfectly the many times I have used it to move Windows to different drives/SSDs.

Worth every penny IMHO to avoid the tedium of Windows install/update/reboot/reboot/reboot ...
 
Very easy. You simply tell it where to save the image file. Then when you want to restore, simply pick the image file (if more than one), and tell it which disk or partition to put it on (pre format with FAT, WinClone will take care of the NTFS part).

It couldn't be easier to use, and it has worked perfectly the many times I have used it to move Windows to different drives/SSDs.

Worth every penny IMHO to avoid the tedium of Windows install/update/reboot/reboot/reboot ...

The only other drive besides the new drive will be a Mac formatted drive. Will it safely be able to write the disk image to that?
 
So do I run it under OSX, or while in Windows?

It is an OS X app ... you will run it under OS X for both creating the image, and writing it to the target disk.

Once it is written to the target drive, you will reboot into Windows using "startup disk" or using the "Option key while booting" method just as you did with the old Windows disk.
 
It is an OS X app ... you will run it under OS X for both creating the image, and writing it to the target disk.

Once it is written to the target drive, you will reboot into Windows using "startup disk" or using the "Option key while booting" method just as you did with the old Windows disk.

Ok great. Using disk first aid do I format at MS-DOS(FAT), or just EXFAT?
 
Just format it as "MS-DOS(FAT)" and WinClone will do the rest.

There are on-screen instructions which will lead you through the process.

Doing it now. Thanks so much for your help! I'll let you know how it goes as soon as it's done.

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He only had 275 gig of space for the disk image, I hope that's enough room.
 
Doing it now. Thanks so much for your help! I'll let you know how it goes as soon as it's done.

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He only had 275 gig of space for the disk image, I hope that's enough room.

WinClone gives you the option to compress the Windows image (caches, etc.) to minimum size before saving the image ... useful for moving from a larger disk to a smaller disk drive.

Your clone image should be about the same size as your current Windows installation with whatever programs/data you have installed.
 
Then he's going to need about 750 gig!

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Would it warn you that you didn't have enough space when you began the process?
 
Then he's going to need about 750 gig!

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Would it warn you that you didn't have enough space when you began the process?

That much stuff?
Yeah ... you will find out soon enough! :D

If you have access to a spare drive or external drive you could use that for temporary storage. Or delete some no longer needed stuff from the source.

You might be able to move some program files "outside" of the Windows environment, or even pre-copy them to the new disk if both are installed at the same time. This might "minimize" the Windows "image".
 
Can I just store the disk image on the new Bootcamp 2 TB drive? Then delete it when it's finished restoring? That should be enough space.
 
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Can I just store the disk image on the new Bootcamp 2 TB drive? Then delete it when it's finished restoring? That should be enough space.

Yes ... if you partition it into a OS X partition big enough to hold the image, then use the rest for NTFS Windows installation.

You can use the initial partition for anything you want after that ... OS X or Windows (reformat from within Windows).


If you make the OS X the second partition, you may be able to expand the NTFS under Windows to reclaim the space as a single drive (not sure on that ... been a long time since I used Windows that intensely).


Actually, I would probably do it that way anyway to be sure Windows is bootable from the drive. Make the Windows partition the first one on the disk.
 
Back in the days when I was a heavy Windows user, I always built my systems with a small "system" drive/partition for Windows itself ... and then a larger "data" drive/partition for my user stuff and programs. That way, when I had to re-format and rebuild Windows (often), I didn't have to reload all my data as well.

I guess I still do the same thing today in my MacPro ... I have a 256GB SSD for the Windows OS and a separate 1TB hard disk for data and program storage.
 
Think what I'm going to do is kill his time machine disk that will give about 750 gig. Then I'll copy his steam folder to another drive, that will free up another 400gig on his current Bootcamp drive. Then I'll install onto the new drive, and put the steam folder back into the programs folder.
 
Ok, I have the disk image saved, but when I go to restore it to the new MS FAT32 drive it says this partition is not GPT. Win clone requires a GPT PARTITION TYPE. what is that, and how do I make it?
 
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