I run Xp as a virtual machine (installed on top of Bootcamp) using VM Fusion, (which is similar to Parallels). I get differing but equally adamant answers to a very simple question: Does Time Machine back up everything that is on the Xp side of my computer? The confusion in answers relates, I think, to the fact that one can first partition a HD with Bootcamp, install Xp, and then install VM Fusion (this is what I did), OR one can install VM Fusion directly without ever using Bootcamp, and then install Xp. This seems to lead to two different results with respect to how TM "sees" what to back up. So, getting back to my question, given the configuration I used, does TM back up all the files on the Xp side of my computer?
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Does TM backup the Win side of a Mac?
- Thread starter Southin
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Yes it does.
My Time Machine backups include my Boot Camp HDD (at least the drive and it's data appears in the Time Machine application).
My Time Machine backups include my Boot Camp HDD (at least the drive and it's data appears in the Time Machine application).
i dont think it does. i seem to remember that after you install Boot Camp Time Machine automatically adds the windows parition to its exclusion list. plus Mac OS X can only read NTFS format.
if you install windows using Fusion/Parallels you would need to add its virtual machine to Time Machine's exclusion list as its virtual hard disk is a single file and simply booting Fusion/Paralles every hour would be enough to modify its virtual hard disk and Time Machine would backup up the whole file which is many GBs. Fusion's virtual machine is i think in ~/Library/Application Support/Fusion and Parallels' is in ~/Documents/Parallels.
but if you installed Boot Camp and then accessed it using Fusion/Parallels you wouldnt need to exclude anything as the virtual hard disk is on the Boot Camp partition which is not backed up by Time Machine and the only big file made by Fusion/Parallels is he virtual RAM which isnt modified every time you boot the virtual machine.
Well Time Machine doesn't appear to let me regress on my Boot Camp partition, so it looks like it doesn't back it up (or backs it up but will not allow a restore since it cannot natively write to NTFS, as you noted).