I upgraded the hard drive on my MacBook Pro to the Scorpio Blue
As a part of my upgrade, I also needed to transfer my Windows partition to the new drive
What I thought was a pretty straightforward process turned out to be a little more challenging than I thought
I ran into one issue that made me almost give it up... and I want to share the solution so others can benefit
Here are the steps I followed:
I backed up my OSX partition with Time Machine to an external 1 TB MyBook
I cloned my Boot Camp partition with WinClone (I highly recommend it) to the same external 1 TB MyBook (separate partition)
I swapped out my HD for the Scorpio Blue
I restored my OSX system from my Time Machine backup
****************************
So far so good... no problems or issues at all in that process
I used Boot Camp Assistant to partition my new Scorpio Blue to make room for my Windows Clone
I only partitioned, I did not reinstall Windows from the CD, add drivers, etc.
It only took about 2 minutes to partition and then I quit the Boot Camp Assistant
Then I restored the clone to the new partition
Now, this is where it gets tricky... the new partition has to be larger than the old one
Your clone will be only the size of the files you have on it, but it will restore to the full size of the partition
For instance, if your BC partition is 30 GB... your WinClone file may only be 12 GB
But, it will require a 30 GB partition to restore to... not a 12 GB
Now, getting it exactly the same size will likely be impossible, so it will have to be slightly bigger (trust me)
Once you restore, you should be able to boot natively into Boot Camp with no problem whatsoever
Ah... but using VMware Fusion again will be a real challenge
You would think you could just fire up Fusion and be off and running
I have restored my clone many times with no issues... to the original partition... but this is a new partition
I started Fusion and it would not access my Boot Camp partition
It saw it... it knew what it was.. but it gave an error message because the size of the partition had changed
Now, I tried everything to fix this, and was at the point of giving up
So I am going to tell you the solution...
You have to go to this path and delete a folder...
/Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp
Delete that Boot Camp folder... that is the trick to getting Fusion to read your new partition
Once you delete that folder... boot into Boot Camp natively... then boot back to OSX... and then run Fusion
It will initialize your Boot Camp partition and read it now
Unfortunately, that means you will have to activate your copy of Windows again
Install VMware Tools BEFORE you activate Windows
Once you activate Windows... you should be all set... finally!
Woof, Woof - Dawg
As a part of my upgrade, I also needed to transfer my Windows partition to the new drive
What I thought was a pretty straightforward process turned out to be a little more challenging than I thought
I ran into one issue that made me almost give it up... and I want to share the solution so others can benefit
Here are the steps I followed:
I backed up my OSX partition with Time Machine to an external 1 TB MyBook
I cloned my Boot Camp partition with WinClone (I highly recommend it) to the same external 1 TB MyBook (separate partition)
I swapped out my HD for the Scorpio Blue
I restored my OSX system from my Time Machine backup
****************************
So far so good... no problems or issues at all in that process
I used Boot Camp Assistant to partition my new Scorpio Blue to make room for my Windows Clone
I only partitioned, I did not reinstall Windows from the CD, add drivers, etc.
It only took about 2 minutes to partition and then I quit the Boot Camp Assistant
Then I restored the clone to the new partition
Now, this is where it gets tricky... the new partition has to be larger than the old one
Your clone will be only the size of the files you have on it, but it will restore to the full size of the partition
For instance, if your BC partition is 30 GB... your WinClone file may only be 12 GB
But, it will require a 30 GB partition to restore to... not a 12 GB
Now, getting it exactly the same size will likely be impossible, so it will have to be slightly bigger (trust me)
Once you restore, you should be able to boot natively into Boot Camp with no problem whatsoever
Ah... but using VMware Fusion again will be a real challenge
You would think you could just fire up Fusion and be off and running
I have restored my clone many times with no issues... to the original partition... but this is a new partition
I started Fusion and it would not access my Boot Camp partition
It saw it... it knew what it was.. but it gave an error message because the size of the partition had changed
Now, I tried everything to fix this, and was at the point of giving up
So I am going to tell you the solution...
You have to go to this path and delete a folder...
/Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp
Delete that Boot Camp folder... that is the trick to getting Fusion to read your new partition
Once you delete that folder... boot into Boot Camp natively... then boot back to OSX... and then run Fusion
It will initialize your Boot Camp partition and read it now
Unfortunately, that means you will have to activate your copy of Windows again
Install VMware Tools BEFORE you activate Windows
Once you activate Windows... you should be all set... finally!
Woof, Woof - Dawg