Backup question for Macbook Pro, with bootcamp partition

[Paul2660]

I have a macbook air where I have 2 partitions, one for Mac the other for bootcamp, drive size is 256GB, divided to 128GB for Mac, 128GB for bootcamp.
Is there a way to create a back from the mac side that would be an entire disk image (both partitions mac and bootcamp), so that if I replaced the 256GB hard drive I could reload from that image and pull back both partitions?   To me this would be the easiest  way to back up both side,  i.e. one image that contained both partitions, so if I had drive problems, i could just have a new drive installed, and reload my image that had both partitions.

Also, is anyone using Acronis to backup a bootcamp partition?  I had tried to do this several  years ago using Drive Image but it did not work.   I am assuming that if I had problems on the bootcamp side and had a full image, I could just blow away the bootcamp partition from mac, create a new one and then install the image, but I have never tried this. 

Any suggestions or other methods that users are working with would be appreciated.

Thanks
Paul

[John.Murray]

Easy - Mac Disk Utility, select the Drive then New Disk Image. 

[Paul2660]

John:

Thanks for the reply.  Right now when I view the drive in Disk Utility, I see the main 256Gb drive listed, then below it the 2 partitions, mac and bootcamp.
So by picking the 256GB drive, I will get everything i.e. both the mac partition and bootcamp in one image.  And if I had to replace the 256GB drive, and picked that image, I should get both partitions reloaded?

I guess that I can also just pick the bootcamp partition, and image that, so if the windows side ever gets corrupted beyond repair, I could blow away the bootcamp partition from mac, and then reload the image.

Paul

[John.Murray]

No, backing up just the bootcamp partition will not work, unless, after replacing the drive - you reinstall windows via bootcamp, then overwrite that....

The first approach is far simpler and faster if you find the need to replace a drive...

So by picking the 256GB drive, I will get everything i.e. both the mac partition and bootcamp in one image.  And if I had to replace the 256GB drive, and picked that image, I should get both partitions reloaded?

yes you will find both partitions there, intact after a restore....

[shotworldwide]

Have you tried Carbon Copy Cloner? You should be able to create exact copy of your hard drive with this software and you should be able to boot from this new hard drive as well ...

http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Filip

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http://shotworldwide.com

[David S]

If you want to just back up the Windows partition, you might want to try Winclone currently at 3.02. (Twocanoes Software, Inc.)

Dave S

[chrismurphy]

I'm not finding any success stories using Disk Utility to image the entire disk. But because there are a number of ways to do both the backup and the restore, it's difficult to know what the problem is.

I'm not aware of a 3rd party product that does a particularly elegant job of doing this. The marriage of Mac OS and Windows on the same disk, and also Apple's unique firmware requirements, makes this difficult. If you backup only volumes (individual partitions), you cannot restore a full disk to the way it was, only partitions. There's data outside of the partitions needed for booting: MBR and boot block for Windows, and GPT and EFI System partition for Mac OS.

When imagine Mac OS only disks, Disk Utility (asr) will only do sector copies when you're booted off another disk. That's because a live boot disk is in a constantly changing state and sector copies almost immediately become invalid. So instead file copies are used. But the file copy isn't going to copy the boot blocks, partition map, etc. as those aren't files.

In the vast majority of backup plans, disaster strikes because of the lack of a recovery plan. The data is somewhere, but how to restore it goes awry. So it's kinda important to know exactly what needs to be done, even doing a trial run on an old system.

As time goes on without a drive failure, the chances increase that you will not get an identically sized replacement drive. And a sector copy of the entire original disk will only restore to that exact size for those partitions. To take advantage of the additional space, you will need utilities that can resize file systems. There are free utilities that can do this, but require a lot of knowledge about partition schemes, and the requirements for getting a particular file system to expand. You can't just image it into a larger partition and expect it to work - the file system itself needs to be made aware of the extra sectors.

[chrismurphy]

Digging this thread up again...

So the simplest solutions that appear to work pretty well are WinClone for the Windows partition, and Time Machine for Mac OS.[1] Due to the unique nature of Apple hardware [2] Winclone for Mac is aware of the unique *restore* requirements for a dual boot system. Tools that only expect Windows on the disk have a habit of causing major problems during restore. [3]  Quite honestly, due to the rabbit hole that is dual or triple booting on Apple hardware (I have gone down this rabbit hole extensively), my suggestion is to use a virtual machine whenever possible, rather than depending on Boot Camp Assistant based native booting of Windows.

[1] I've also found Carbon Copy Cloner, which uses rsync, and Super Duper which uses ditto, to also be sufficient but there are some differences between the backup and restore results. Time Machine by nature, with zero configuration performs

[2] Apple hardware uses EFI firmware, and GPT for partitioning scheme. But they have implemented a CSM-BIOS mode booting for Windows. When Windows BIOS boots, it will only honor MBR partitioning schemes for boot disks. This means a single disk used for Mac OS and Windows requires both GPT and MBR partition schemes to co-exist on the disk, and this is non-standard, complicated, fragile, flakey, and causes such disks to inherit the MBR 2.2TB disk limit: disk limit, not partition limit.

[3] Such backup tools are MBR aware only, and ignore the GPT, ensuring a disconnect between the MBR and GPT.

[John.Murray]

Which is why the built in Disk Utility is by far the simplest and easiest solution . . .

To restore (assuming your original drive has failed), boot off the Mac installation media.  If Lion, it will take you to the disk utility, Previous versions - select Disk Utility from the Utilities Menu

Select the Restore tab,
In source, click Image button and browse out to your backup......
In destination, drag the newly installed system drive in

[chrismurphy]

Which is why the built in Disk Utility is by far the simplest and easiest solution . . .

Since it exactly restores the partition table, and partition sizes, you cannot restore to a smaller replacement disk (e.g. if you wanted to move to an SSD). And if you restore to a larger replacement disk the extra space will be unallocated to either Mac OS or Windows.

Plus, they are not incremental backups. It's the whole disk every time and the image files are quite large.

[John.Murray]

...
Is there a way to create a back from the mac side that would be an entire disk image (both partitions mac and bootcamp),
...

The original post is about an imaged based backup