Mac OSX - cloning bootcamp windows installation

andrewc

andrewc

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I bought myself a Sandisk SSD for my macbook. Used carbon copy cloner (CCC) to clone my mac OS X partition, but I also have a Windows 10 partition I run under bootcamp - can anyone recommend a utility to clone this partition and make it bootable? CCC said it couldn't do it. Free or fully functional trial preferred.

Could I do this within Windows? Would OS X know/care?
 
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Acronis Disk Director 12 possibly?? I understand it will clone a disk rather than a partition so it may work and do both at once. I have never used it but have been considering doing the same as you, ie cloning a disk with OSX & Bootcamp on to a new SSD.

From reading the documentation on the website, you have to replace the disk in the macbook first and put the old drive in an enclosure for it to work and clone it to a bootable state. Boot the Macbook from a bootable ISO image (downloadable from the site) burnt to a disk.
 
I don't think there's a way to effectively do this without issue unfortunately :(
 
I have had the same issue previously:-

Use carbon copy cloner to copy OS X partition
Use bootcamp assistant to create new bootcamp partition
Use winclone to backup the old windows bootcamp partition, and then restore this backup to the new partition.
 
This is from the TrueImage for Mac user guide. Hope it helps.

  • I want to replace my hard drive with a new one. Can I clone OS X, the Boot Camp partition, and all of my data to the new hard drive?

    Yes, you can. Do the following:
    1. Back up your hard drive to an external storage media, such as Acronis Cloud, USB drive, or a network share.

    2. Turn off your Mac, and then replace your old hard drive with a new one.

    3. Boot your Mac by using Acronis bootable rescue media.

    4. Recover your Mac from the backup to the new hard drive.
 
Probably not as the motherboard, processor, ram etc, i.e. base system, are not changing.
Easy enough to reactivate though if it did need it
 
christurbo said:
I've done this loads of times and Superduper has been the tool for the job.
Click to expand...

That's ok for the Mac partition but won't do the Bootcamp one will it? Haven't used Superduper for years so could be mistaked, I use Carbon Copy.
 
I don't waste space with partitions. I run mutiple servers and OS on VMware Fusion so they all run at the same time and I can access them all without disrupting the next.
 
But the OP is asking about HIS setup, i.e 2 partiations, 1 OSX and the other Bootcamp - hence Superduper won't work for him.
 
Well TrueImage didn't work at all when I tried it. The one I did get working is Gpart. Created a bootable usb drive and it recognises the Windows & Mac partitions fine. You can't do a single disc clone which would be nice but it is copying my Windows partition as I type this. As it is 350GB it will take some time so I'll leave it running and start the Mac partition in the morning.

Hopefully it will all work ok.

I'll update this once it is all done and the best bit if it works is that it is all free.

In all I'm copying a 1TB disc to a 1TB SSD.
 
Well, Gparted Live (here) worked a treat. A few points to note - I'm not trying to teach your granny to suck eggs as the saying goes but some reading this may be newish to Macs and not know a few points.

Create a bootable USB flash drive or CD with the above ISO burn.
Take the old HD out of the Mac and install the new SSD/HD.
Place old HD in a USB caddy to be able to copy from.
To boot from the GParted USB drive hold the Option (alt) key down as you turn on your Mac.
After 10-20 seconds you'll see a list of Bootable partitions, which should be OSX, Windows and Recovery HD version on the (now) external drive, plus the GParted ISO.
Select the Gparted ISO and click the arrow beneath it.
Once it boots accept the default option (just hit return).
It will then go into a command type window and again accept the defaults (US English) and then '0' (can't remember what it stands for but is the default.)
It will then go back into a graphical interface.
Without going into all the ins and outs you select a partition on the old drive and click copy, select the new disk and click paste and then click the green tick to apply.
Work down the old disk until all the partitions have been copied.
Shutdown.

DISCONNECT THE OLD DISK IN THE CADDY.

Restart when all done.

If you just boot now you will get a message that no operating systems are installed on the drive.
Again you need to hold the option (alt) key down as you restart.
This time you will see the OSX, Windows and Recovery portions on the new disk listed.
Select the Recovery Partition.
When that boots you need to go to Disk Utility and run that.
Select the new disk and click on FIX.
This will repair the boot sector and once run and rebooted all should be fine.

At least it was for me and my system is back up and running fully on the new SSD.

I hope this helps.

One thing I forgot to mention, before you start all this, in OSX run Disk Utility on the root of the disk and the OSX partition. Then boot into Windows and run CHKDSK /F on the Windows partition - Windows will force you to restart before it can run the FIX so do that. Any errors on the partitions need to be fixed before you start the cloning.
 
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