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Are there any alternatives to Winclone?

SpookTheHamster

SpookTheHamster

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 7, 2004
1,495
8
London
I want to move my Boot Camp partition to a new hard drive, something which I would have used Winclone for in the past. Now it's been discontinued and seems to not work under Snow Leopard I need to find another way.

Are there any other programs to complete the same task?
 
SpookTheHamster said:
I want to move my Boot Camp partition to a new hard drive, something which I would have used Winclone for in the past. Now it's been discontinued and seems to not work under Snow Leopard I need to find another way.

Are there any other programs to complete the same task?
Click to expand...

Winclone worked just fine for me and I'm running snow leopard. I used it just a couple weeks ago to clone my windows partition. (running windows 7)
 
balamw said:
For W7 and Snow Leopard you need to use the DMG format and turn off compression as per the twocanoes website. Since the link is dead and does not seem to have made archive.org here's a link to all the references to it in the forums.

http://www.google.com/search?q=http...inclone/slwin7.html+site:forums.macrumors.com

B
Click to expand...

You seem to be very knowledgeable about all this windows cloning stuff - so I just wanted to ask you a question.

As I stated in my previous post - I downloaded Winclone, made an image of my windows partition - everything seemed to work perfectly. BUT reading your above post about the dmg format, and TURNING OFF compression led me to check my settings.

Apparently when I cloned my windows side I used the dmg format, BUT I had compression checked! Also my windows partition is about 25gb in size, my image was only about 9gb. However, when I restored my image it came back to roughly the same size.

Did I do something wrong although everything seemed to work out fine?

Sorry to hi-jack this thread - if it's more appropriate please feel free to PM me. Just looking to get educated in all this.

Thanks
 
balamw said:
For W7 and Snow Leopard you need to use the DMG format and turn off compression as per the twocanoes website. Since the link is dead and does not seem to have made archive.org here's a link to all the references to it in the forums.

http://www.google.com/search?q=http...inclone/slwin7.html+site:forums.macrumors.com

B
Click to expand...

I've already tried that. I get an error whenever I try to make an image. I managed to make one image, but when I try to apply it I get an error "you did not shut down your windowsproperly". I've rebooted into Windows and shut down correctly, but no luck.
 
SpookTheHamster said:
I get an error whenever I try to make an image.
Click to expand...
Please, post the Winclone log as an attachment the error should tell us where the problem is and (maybe) how to fix/get around it.

Mac-key said:
Did I do something wrong although everything seemed to work out fine?
Click to expand...

In principle the compression should work fine. The underlying problem may have been fixed by one of the 10.6.x releases, but the author of Winclone suggested disabling compression as a way around the issues folks were having. Now since he's "retired" we're on our own.

B
 
I have to say I'm a little surprised some enterprising individual/s haven't stepped up already to ressurect WinClone or to provide some alternative. Seems to me there are a lot of OSX users out there who need a bootcamp partition backup solution. I would do it myself except I know nothing. :eek:
 
True Image 2010

I tried True Image 2010 and was able to make a image on my mac pro. However when it came time to restore it would not work. The internal drives were not accessible. Same with Ghost 15.
 
dimme said:
However when it came time to restore it would not work.
Click to expand...

You booted to their restore CD I presume?

I haven't tried to restore using TI myself, but I would probably try install a fresh un-activated Windows on a small partition near the end of the drive and then TI on top of that and try restoring from that instead of the boot media.

B
 
balamw said:
Please, post the Winclone log as an attachment the error should tell us where the problem is and (maybe) how to fix/get around it.

B
Click to expand...

I get this error when it's scanning:

96.03 percent completed
ERROR: Cluster 1639688 referenced twice!
You didn't shutdown your Windowsproperly?
return value of "/Library/NTFSProgs/ntfsclone" -f -f -O /dev/disk3 "/dev/disk2s3" 1>&2 is 256

"/Library/NTFSProgs/ntfsclone" -f -f -O /dev/disk3 "/dev/disk2s3" 1>&2 did not complete successfully
cleaning up: Mounting Disk
Volume BOOTCAMP on /dev/disk2s3 mounted
Thu Nov 18 17:30:18 GMT 2010
 
SpookTheHamster said:
I get this error when it's scanning:

96.03 percent completed
ERROR: Cluster 1639688 referenced twice!
You didn't shutdown your Windowsproperly?
return value of "/Library/NTFSProgs/ntfsclone" -f -f -O /dev/disk3 "/dev/disk2s3" 1>&2 is 256

"/Library/NTFSProgs/ntfsclone" -f -f -O /dev/disk3 "/dev/disk2s3" 1>&2 did not complete successfully
cleaning up: Mounting Disk
Volume BOOTCAMP on /dev/disk2s3 mounted
Thu Nov 18 17:30:18 GMT 2010
Click to expand...

You've just got a crosslinked cluster. Two files are referencing the same physical spot on the disk. So ntfsclone (one of the worker bees that does Winclone's work for it) is telling you about it.

Try running chkdsk /f from Windows. http://www.w7forums.com/use-chkdsk-check-disk-t448.html it'll require you to reboot, but should fix that problem.

B
 
dimme said:
I tried True Image 2010 and was able to make a image on my mac pro. However when it came time to restore it would not work. The internal drives were not accessible. Same with Ghost 15.
Click to expand...

I posted a question on the Acronis support form. A true image rep replied with this information...

1746: Acronis Products Do Not Run on Apple Mac

Currently Acronis products neither support Apple Mac OS X nor run under Windows operating systems installed on Apple Mac

Standalone versions of Acronis products do not support Apple Mac machines.

Acronis products do not run under any Windows or Linux operating systems when installed on Apple Mac.

There are at least two reasons for this:

* Apple Mac machines use the EFI bootstrap firmware instead of the BIOS firmware;
* Apple Mac machines use different partitioning principles.

Acronis products will work in virtual environment created by means of Parallels Desktop. In this case, however, using Acronis products you will be able to manage only the virtual environment, and not the Apple Mac itself.
 
dimme said:
I posted a question on the Acronis support form. A true image rep replied with this information...
Click to expand...
That is their stock answer in their knowledge base. It certainly doesn't mean that Acronis TI isn't useful under Windows on a Mac. (It is, I use it all the time! Just not for my Boot Camp partition). It just means they don't support this use. In a similar thread on the topic @ the acronis forums someone came in after the stock answer was given. Here's the link: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6700#comment-32859

Its getting tiring seeing these replies from users who have obviously not tried this. As long as the plus pack is installed true home image backs up bootcamp partitions on a mac just fine. It sees all the partitions, including the Mac partitions, though I only backup the windows 7 partition. I have restored to this same partitions lots of times and it works just fine. I have not tried a "Boot CD" restore yet, but there would be nothing stopping you restoring the main partition from a windows virtual image under MacOS.
Click to expand...

B
 
Out of curiosity, what version of WinClone is it that works with Windows 7? A quick google search shows WinClone 2.2. as the last version out before it was discontinued in July 09. But Windows 7 wasn't out at the time. I don't think it should make a difference since its using NTFS like XP and Vista. But I just wanted to make sure. Winclone 2.2. is compatible with Win7?
 
mike31mets said:
Out of curiosity, what version of WinClone is it that works with Windows 7? A quick google search shows WinClone 2.2. as the last version out before it was discontinued in July 09. But Windows 7 wasn't out at the time. I don't think it should make a difference since its using NTFS like XP and Vista. But I just wanted to make sure. Winclone 2.2. is compatible with Win7?
Click to expand...

There was a page on twocanoes that highlighted the things you needed to set for it to work "properly" on W7 and with Snow Leopard.

Turn off compression and use mountable DMG format was the suggestion.

B
 
I am not understanding the issue.....I just wincloned my W7 a couple weeks ago and it works fine.


-1st, I used Winclone to image W-7, saved it to desktop.
-Used Superduper to clone old hard drive (and that will include the saved image of winclone on the desktop).
-The only prep for the new hard drive is make sure it is only one partition, hfs +, GUID.
-Install new cloned HD to my mac.
-I made the W7 partition using Bootcamp. I only used it for making the partion and then exited.
-Restore W7 image using winclone, to the bootcamp partition.

No problems or issues. I used the last winclone version 2.2.

I made no modifications to my Snow Leopard OS or Mac or did anything other than what I said above. Winclone 2.2 does work with SL.

Just use the free SuperDuper or CCC for your mac.
 
Last edited:
DonCarlos said:
I am not understanding the issue.....I just wincloned my W7 a couple weeks ago and it works fine.


-1st, I used Winclone to image W-7, saved it to desktop.
-Used Superduper to clone old hard drive (and that will include the saved image of winclone on the desktop).
-The only prep for the new hard drive is make sure it is only one partition, hfs +, GUID.
-Install new cloned HD to my mac.
-I made the W7 partition using Bootcamp. I only used it for making the partion and then exited.
-Restore W7 image using winclone, to the bootcamp partition.

No problems or issues. I used the last winclone version 2.2.

I made no modifications to my Snow Leopard OS or Mac or did anything other than what I said above. Winclone 2.2 does work with SL.

Just use the free SuperDuper or CCC for your mac.
Click to expand...

I also used Winclone out of the box, didn't change any settings at all and worked perfect with SL & Win7.
 
DonCarlos said:
I am not understanding the issue.....I just wincloned my W7 a couple weeks ago and it works fine.
Click to expand...

rgarjr said:
I also used Winclone out of the box, didn't change any settings at all and worked perfect with SL & Win7.
Click to expand...

I concur, I think that most of the problems usually end up being something else, but I will continue to repeat the developers suggestion to turn off compression and use DMG for when things don't work.

I suspect that a big part of the change may actually be changes to hdiutil in the point releases of OS X that have been released since the Winclone authors posted their suggestion due to an uproar of issues in their forums. (Winclone is really just a GUI front end for hdituil, ntfsclone, and other tools, some built-in others not.)

However, your mileage may vary and some configurations seem more problematic than others.

Unfortunately now the page with the recommendation is long gone, the Winclone support forums are long gone and Go Daddy is even trying to sell twocanoes.com.

B
 
Problem and Question

Not good news about the disappearance of Winclone/TwoCanoes etc. Any word on that front?

My real problem for which there is hopefully an easy solution:

My Macbook HD crashed and in the process of rebuilding I got the message: "AN ERROR HAS OCCURRED. CHECK THE LOG" I would gladly do that if I knew which log and where to look for it. Already re-installed OS 10.5 and with Bootcamp Assistant created a NTFS partition large enough to accept the expanded Winclone dmg I made last May.

The only difference between this HD and the previous is size-- the partitions are bigger. Nothig else has changed.

Suggestions?

Rich
 
The Winclone log is stored in ~/Library/Logs/winclone.log where ~ is shorthand for your home folder /Users/<USERNAME>. You can zip it and post it as an attachment here and I can take a look.

B
 
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