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Cloning XP drive to Dual Boot Mac Drive

E

eightball8

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 14, 2008
24
0
Hi all,

I'm desperately trying to get my wife off her XP laptop.

I'm wondering is there an easy way I can clone her xp drive onto a partition on a mac and then dual boot from there? Is there a pc version of something like carbon cloner? Will I be able to boot up from that cloned drive?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as it will save me countless PC headaches!

Thanks,

Anthony
 
Windows is not portable you cannot generally move an install from one machine to another.

That said, both VMWare and Parallels have tools to let you take a snapshot of a working PC install as a new virtual machine. They handle the hardware generalization required as well as the activation issues.

So if your wife is not a heavy duty gamer you may still be able to have her XP, apps and data brought over to the Mac as a VM and try to wean her off of it after that.

B
 
I was able to use Winclone to clone my XP bootcamp partition to an external hard drive, move it to a new computer, and restore the cloned XP bootcamp into a bootcamp partition on the new Mac machine. Had to install some drivers appropriate for the new Mac. Could you boot the XP laptop in some sort of target disk mode, or equivalent, connect it via firewire...no, never mind. But perhaps if you bring it over as a VM, as has been suggested, you could then clone it with Winclone. Just brainstorming.
 
Thanks for the Parallels migration suggestion.

Sadly, I tried it and ran into a snag. Her work computer is a dell with an OEM xp install. So Parallels wants to activate it and I don't have a key.

Any suggestions?
 
eightball8 said:
Thanks for the Parallels migration suggestion.

Sadly, I tried it and ran into a snag. Her work computer is a dell with an OEM xp install. So Parallels wants to activate it and I don't have a key.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

The key should be somewhere on the old machine, maybe inside the battery compartment. It's a requirement for OEM licenses.

I have not run into that with the XP->VMWare conversions I have done that I can recall.

B
 
I'm in the same situation as the thread starter -
I'm reading about a product called Parallels 6 "Switch To Mac" edition
It comes with migration tools and a direct connect usb cable in the kit
Was wondering if anyone has tried the product
My only problem is that my PC motherboard died so I cannot boot my pc and just have the XP hard drive to work from
 
nylonsteel said:
I'm in the same situation as the thread starter -
I'm reading about a product called Parallels 6 "Switch To Mac" edition
It comes with migration tools and a direct connect usb cable in the kit
Was wondering if anyone has tried the product
My only problem is that my PC motherboard died so I cannot boot my pc and just have the XP hard drive to work from
Click to expand...

While it is trickier than using the USB cable, you can remove the drive and create a VM from its contents. (e.g. instructions for VitrualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows Even if you ultimately want to use VMWare/Parallels you can convert the VirtualBox VM later.).

You may have to re-enter the product key to activate if it prompts you to do so (as the OP) so make sure you have that handy.

B
 
+1 for Winclone. It should do the job easily. Running computer labs you have no idea how much my life changed when I stumbled upon that app.
 
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