how to clone a PC as a bootcamp partition

[juan9999]

I have a windoze XP work laptop which weighs a ton that I'd like to clone onto a macbook air. It currently also runs pointsec HD encryption. It is on a 120GB hard drive although 80% of that is empty.

Does anyone have any tips on how to clone this and restore it onto a smaller bootcamp partition?

 

[Quad5Ny]

There's a good chance your going to run into encryption, licensing, driver and space issues if you were to just copy the WinXP install over.

Is this a company issued laptop? If so you better check their policy's before trying anything.


What you would need to do is:

• Decrypt
• Install/Enable Intel AHCI drivers
• Clean (out temporary files/system restore points)
• Defragment
• Shrink the partition (I doubt you have enough space on your Air's HD for a 120GB Windows partition)
• Clone the partition onto a spare USB drive using some kind of backup software
• Use the Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows Partition
• Restore your backup onto the Boot Camp Partition
• Pray you don't run into any Driver/HAL/Boot issues
• Re-activate Windows
• Remove unnecessary drivers/software (trackpad/video/network/power saving software/ect.)
• Install the Boot Camp Drivers
• Re-encrypt both laptops (Air and original laptop) if your company requires that
• Wipe the USB drive you used (Your company might require this if they were using encryption)

Seriously though, you are much better off doing a fresh Windows XP install in Boot Camp or even downloading VMware Fusion/Parallels Desktop/Oracle VirtualBox and installing a fresh copy there.

 

[maflynn]

Your best and safest bet is to install XP fresh as opposed to cloning it onto your old laptop onto a MBA.

 

[juan9999]

Thanks for the suggestions- it may be easier to copy the firm applications to a new install of xp. The only challenge is that for a lot of them (custom versions of Ipass, VPN software, Notes, ..., I don't have the install disks for)... hum dillema!

Do any of the virtual PC machines create a virtual machine out of a real install?