Just in case things go south...

On my Mac I always have a known good backup of my current system software/apps. Back to good in a reboot. What about XP?

I am running XP SP2 through Parallels 3.0.

---

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making
him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his
lot by all possible means — except by getting off
his back. - Leo Tolstoy, novelist and Philosopher
(1828-1910)

If you're using a virtual machine (VMware, Parallels, Xen, etc) then yes, you can make a copy. If you're talking about making a copy of a native installation it gets a bit tricky because Microsoft assumes that everyone is a thief. You can make a copy, but when you try to boot it it will likely give you grief because it is on a different hard drive which means that it is an illegal copy. They will force you to reinstall the OS. In theory this shouldn't affect anything, but I have often run into problems at this point and usually just end up re-installing everything from scratch.

Applications like Ghost will make the back up image and they do something to the files that will let you move it to new hardware. I've used Ghost and it works pretty well. There are other programs that work as well or better than Ghost though.

---

**************************************
MacResource User Map: [www.zeemaps.com]#

Yes, it depends on how XP is installed. Is it a partition on your Mac, a VM...?

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

It's a VM. I see the prompt under "File" in Parallels that I can clone my VM.

It looks like it copies everything (main hd with apps and secondary hds with files).

I just wanted to have a way back to good if something went terrible wrong.

As far as making a bootable backup. I guess I was thinking...If I want to change from using Parallels and go to using XP through BootCamp; could I use a disk image made through Ghost to simplify setting things up in BootCamp?

If the answer was yes, then all my settings/apps/fonts would be there and would save a hell of a lot of time.

---

I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making
him carry me, and yet assure myself and others
that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his
lot by all possible means — except by getting off
his back. - Leo Tolstoy, novelist and Philosopher
(1828-1910)

There is a free app that will clone a bootcamp partion so you can write it to a new drive, but I can't remember it's name. give macupdate a search and you'll find it. I don't believe you can use ghost or true acronis, but i could be wrong.

dot.

WinClone...works fantastically: [www.twocanoes.com]

---

Quote
onthedownlow
WinClone...works fantastically: [www.twocanoes.com]

Yea, if he was starting with a Boot Camp partition. Or are you saying one can use that with a Parallels image?

---

Help MacInTouch: Buy from Amazon? use this link [amazon.com]
Mac News & Info: [macintouch.com] [macnn.com] [tuaw.com]
Mac Benchmarks: [barefeats.com]
Used Mac Stuff [FS/T]: LowEndMac Swap List
Mac Software Updates: [macupdate.com]
Fonts: [dafont.com] [fontspace.com]
Online Computer Store With Mac Support: [macsales.com]

Note: only works on NTFS partitions, if you formatted your Boot Camp volume as FAT32 this won't work (yet?)