Dual / Triple boot Disc cloning

[GreenTrees]

Well Hello !

 

Lost count of how many times I've done the install(s) but happily I now have OSX 10.6.7, Windows 7 & XP on my HP G7000 laptop (on a single HD).

 

For anyone who would like to do the same... the biggest hurdle was due to the built-in Atheros wireless card, I had to delete the Atheros kexts to make it go without crashing, now I have a Broadcom wireless card instead & it's much easier. Made it work with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] /[url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] + Voodoo PS/2, Voodoo HDA audio then Voodoo Power which calmed the CPU fan. To do the multiboot... format only via OS X then install W7, Ghost a copy of a previously installed XP over then add OS X.

 

Now for my question please........ What is the best tool to use to clone my now almost sacred Hard Drive ?

 

So far I've had little (no) success with Acronis, CloneZilla, Gparted or Norton Ghost but would be happy to persevere with one of them if I only knew which one !!!

 

Many Thanks -GT

[mulcyber]

Well Hello !

 

Lost count of how many times I've done the install(s) but happily I now have OSX 10.6.7, Windows 7 & XP on my HP G7000 laptop (on a single HD).

 

For anyone who would like to do the same... the biggest hurdle was due to the built-in Atheros wireless card, I had to delete the Atheros kexts to make it go without crashing, now I have a Broadcom wireless card instead & it's much easier. Made it work with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] /[url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] + Voodoo PS/2, Voodoo HDA audio then Voodoo Power which calmed the CPU fan. To do the multiboot... format only via OS X then install W7, Ghost a copy of a previously installed XP over then add OS X.

 

Now for my question please........ What is the best tool to use to clone my now almost sacred Hard Drive ?

 

So far I've had little (no) success with Acronis, CloneZilla, Gparted or Norton Ghost but would be happy to persevere with one of them if I only knew which one !!!

 

Many Thanks -GT

 

"The EASY way on a Hack is to use CCC (because it gives more choices than TM or DU) then install Chameleon. And as you said earlier, TEST." Carbon Copy Cloner

 

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=678629

The last two posts, 8 & 9, by Tact were insightful.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Disk_Cloning

 

Cloning an entire hard disk [This requires booting externally like with a Gparted cd.] Read the instructions.

"From physical disk /dev/sda to physical disk /dev/sdb

 

dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror

This will clone the entire drive, including MBR (and therefore bootloader), all partitions and data."

 

Using this method brings up the UUID concern that Tact mentions. I think you can get away with leaving one drive unhooked instead of changing UUIDs though. I tried the dd method and it took eight hours to clone a 1TB drive.

[Dellmantt]

@GreenTrees

The way I have done it in the past to back up a drive with OS X & Windows XP to another drive. Partition backup drive with the same partitioning scheme as you used for original drive, I use GUID. This is important for windows, os x does not seem to mind if you clone from a GUID to a MBR partitioned disk and back to GUID. Use Carbon copy cloner to copy the OS X partition. Use a Windows Utility or CloneZilla to clone your Windows partitions. Then install whatever bootloader your using (Chameleon?) to the target disk. If the target disk is internal, test to see that it is bootable on all partitions. If you are using an external drive you won't be able to boot Windows XP (and assume Win7). Well you can but it is another subject. You can still test if OS X is bootable on an external drive.

[GreenTrees]

Thank you both for the replies, they have been most useful and I have made some progress. The UUID info explains some of my previous failures, sigh... but I don't intend to "use" both drives at the same time, the intention here is to clone my current progress so if (when) I mess up I can go back to the 'good so far...' clone

 

As suggested, the same partition setup, Carbon Copy (and the Chameleon re-install) has done a great job for the OSX setup, I am using it as I type but sadly Windoze doesn't want play, W7 just blinks a black screen cursor at me.

 

I've set my 500Gb drive up like this... Six partitions 1: (70Gb) NTFS W7, 2: (260Gb) NTFS Data, 3: (60Gb) NTFS XP, 4: (60Gb) Journaled Mac, 5: (20Gb) Journaled for later use by Time Machine ? 5: (20Gb) Spare unformatted & reserved for a later install of Ubuntu. The arrangement of W7 on C: Data on D: XP on E: reflects a previous Windoze setup and I am using easybcd on the W7 partition to get to XP. The W7 install is a fresh one & it has created an 'EFI' system partition which I also cloned across with CloneZilla.

 

Some more background... The XP setup on E: has lots of programs that I like & use so it needs to be there as does the Data on D: W7 seems to go easily on C: and easybcd gets those two working nicely. Ultimately I'd like to acheive a quad boot: OSX, W7, XP & Ubuntu setup on one HD and have been working toward this on & off over the past four weeks.

 

I have the OSX, W7 & XP setup all working nicely on one 500Gb drive but my 2nd (Clone) 500Gb drive isn;t quite there.

 

 

Thank you again -GreenTrees

[mulcyber]

Thank you both for the replies, they have been most useful and I have made some progress. The UUID info explains some of my previous failures, sigh... but I don't intend to "use" both drives at the same time, the intention here is to clone my current progress so if (when) I mess up I can go back to the 'good so far...' clone

 

As suggested, the same partition setup, Carbon Copy (and the Chameleon re-install) has done a great job for the OSX setup, I am using it as I type but sadly Windoze doesn't want play, W7 just blinks a black screen cursor at me.

 

I've set my 500Gb drive up like this... Six partitions 1: (70Gb) NTFS W7, 2: (260Gb) NTFS Data, 3: (60Gb) NTFS XP, 4: (60Gb) Journaled Mac, 5: (20Gb) Journaled for later use by Time Machine ? 5: (20Gb) Spare unformatted & reserved for a later install of Ubuntu. The arrangement of W7 on C: Data on D: XP on E: reflects a previous Windoze setup and I am using easybcd on the W7 partition to get to XP. The W7 install is a fresh one & it has created an 'EFI' system partition which I also cloned across with CloneZilla.

 

Some more background... The XP setup on E: has lots of programs that I like & use so it needs to be there as does the Data on D: W7 seems to go easily on C: and easybcd gets those two working nicely. Ultimately I'd like to acheive a quad boot: OSX, W7, XP & Ubuntu setup on one HD and have been working toward this on & off over the past four weeks.

 

I have the OSX, W7 & XP setup all working nicely on one 500Gb drive but my 2nd (Clone) 500Gb drive isn;t quite there.

Thank you again -GreenTrees

 

It's a lot easier to do this with two hard drives. Because one drive has a limit of four primary partitions.

So sometimes this requires a workaround like logical partitions.

 

File backups work better when the source and target partitions are the same file format. But not

total complete clones that work bit-by-bit and are identical, but there is more Win software than

Mac software. I have two same size 1TB WD drives. I split a 2TB USB drive into two equal 1TB

partitions. That's not really as good as having an internal drive you can just replace. For laptops,

they have an external usb contraption that you plug a target drive into for it to be cloned.

 

Dual booting is getting harder. Easybcd does ok with grub legacy but not as well with grub2,

but Chameleon added the linux grub2. Install linux to the root of the linux partition, not the

MBR if you want 3rd party bootloaders to see it. Good Luck.

 

 

I used a total, everything, Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC), clone backup of Snow Leopard from one of the 1TB partitions and it booted without a reinstall of Chameleon. It works in reverse, restoring the target backup partition to the new SL partition on the drive, I labeled it SnowyBak, using the same clone everything method. How do you think I was able to use the CCC app?

[GreenTrees]

I'm getting there & now have a Quad boot !!!! XP, W7, SL 10.6.7 + Ubuntu 10.04 on my Hp G7000 Lappie.

 

I started over -the priority being XP / W7 so partitioned the drive as MBR, 5 partitions: 2 x FAT, 1 X Mac Journalled, 1 x FAT (to later use for Ubuntu) & 1 x unformatted for my Data partition (again for later) did a fresh XP SP3 install then fresh W7 install added SP1. Then easybcd.

 

I used Carbon Copy to clone over my Snow Leopard setup (from another GUID drive). Easybcd has a portion that claims to support OS X but it didn't work for me, turns out that easybcd loads a file called nst_mac.iso, I over-wrote that with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url].iso with moderately good success.

 

Then installed Ubuntu 10.04 (ext 4 & let it install grub), used easybcd to re-write the MBR and selected Linux option there.

 

Net result:- a Quad boot perhaps not that elegant but it works, the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] solution isn't perfect as my Broadcomm wireless doesn't work anymore but I figure I can rebuild the .iso file to something that better suits my setup when my own knowledge is more relevant.

 

Hopefully the above may help others, I have another question though....

 

Snow Leopard seems to sulk whenever I use the other OS's, I've labelled the two partitions it could see as .W7 & .XP but whenever I come back to SL it seems to stop on a white screen, a black one or occasionally insists I hold down the Power button. When I reboot 3 or 4 times I get the White / Black / Blue / Success and all seems well. ???

[mulcyber]

I'm getting there & now have a Quad boot !!!! XP, W7, SL 10.6.7 + Ubuntu 10.04 on my Hp G7000 Lappie.

 

I started over -the priority being XP / W7 so partitioned the drive as MBR, 5 partitions: 2 x FAT, 1 X Mac Journalled, 1 x FAT (to later use for Ubuntu) & 1 x unformatted for my Data partition (again for later) did a fresh XP SP3 install then fresh W7 install added SP1. Then easybcd.

 

I used Carbon Copy to clone over my Snow Leopard setup (from another GUID drive). Easybcd has a portion that claims to support OS X but it didn't work for me, turns out that easybcd loads a file called nst_mac.iso, I over-wrote that with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url].iso with moderately good success.

 

Then installed Ubuntu 10.04 (ext 4 & let it install grub), used easybcd to re-write the MBR and selected Linux option there.

 

Net result:- a Quad boot perhaps not that elegant but it works, the [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] solution isn't perfect as my Broadcomm wireless doesn't work anymore but I figure I can rebuild the .iso file to something that better suits my setup when my own knowledge is more relevant.

 

Hopefully the above may help others, I have another question though....

 

Snow Leopard seems to sulk whenever I use the other OS's, I've labelled the two partitions it could see as .W7 & .XP but whenever I come back to SL it seems to stop on a white screen, a black one or occasionally insists I hold down the Power button. When I reboot 3 or 4 times I get the White / Black / Blue / Success and all seems well. ???

 

You've been quite enterprising! You must be doing something new with nst_mac.iso mine says

Entry #3

Name: Snow Leopard

BCD ID: {f23b1181-635d-11e0-aae7-c540b7ed5238}

Drive: F:\

Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

 

When it insists you hold down the power button that is known as a kernel panic, KP, and for me has been due to conflicting .kexts; I have yet to experience SL getting well on its own with a few reboots. It is standard to install grub to the root partition of linux, rather than the MBR if grub isn't to be the master bootloader. I don't think most other bootloaders can boot linux unless it is installed to / during installation (often a hidden choice) as I mentioned before.

[mulcyber]

You've been quite enterprising! You must be doing something new with nst_mac.iso mine says

Entry #3

Name: Snow Leopard

BCD ID: {f23b1181-635d-11e0-aae7-c540b7ed5238}

Drive: F:\

Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr

 

GreenTrees wrote: "I used Carbon Copy to clone over my Snow Leopard setup (from another GUID drive). Easybcd has a portion that claims to support OS X but it didn't work for me, turns out that easybcd loads a file called nst_mac.iso, I over-wrote that with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url].iso with moderately good success." [sounds inventive!]

 

I think that the SL hidden 200mb EFI partition is the active boot partition; did you try both SL partitions with Easybcd?

 

I mentioned my different Easybcd entry because it took about 30 seconds and this .iso stuff sounds harder.

I use the Snow Leopard menu option to load Snowy which evokes Chameleon. Cham was the only bootloader

which would provide a choice for Pinguy, a Ubuntu derivative, which uses grub2, Easybcd couldn't see Pinguy.

However Cham doesn't see Fedora 14 which uses legacy grub, so I use Easybcd for Fedora which was quick.

Easybcd = WinXP, Win7, Fedora and Snow Leopard-->. Chameleon = WinXP, Snow Leopard, Pinguy, no Win7.

When Chameleon is installed it's more dynamic about seeing new OS or detecting removals. Fedora 14 has

added support for learning the programming language D. OS X support has the bonus of "shared libraries"?!

[mulcyber]

I used Carbon Copy to clone over my Snow Leopard setup (from another GUID drive). Easybcd has a portion that claims to support OS X but it didn't work for me, turns out that easybcd loads a file called nst_mac.iso, I over-wrote that with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url].iso with moderately good success.

 

I found a solution to your *.iso problem at the Easybcd forum, frbowen,

 

http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6327&page=2

 

"Like everyone else, i am having problems, but instead of video issues, other issues exists that cause kernel panics when loading osx via chameleon rc4 and easybcd. If i were to boot directly from the osx partition using a configured chameleon rc5, everything works perfectly. I ended up using a program called Lizard (can be found at kexts.com) which makes a bootable iso using your current .plist files and extensions directory. After making the iso in osx, i added a newentry into easybcd using the portable/external media method and selecting the iso. The biggest problem is that the iso needs to reside in a directory with no spaces so i currently have it sitting in my root (c:\). This method allowed me to finally boot into osx through easybcd, however, i believe a better approach would be to configure chameleon through easybcd natively (fingers crossed). On the bootup, easybcd still uses chameleon rc4, but seems to use the custom kexts..."

[GreenTrees]

Thank so much for your help mulcyber.

 

I battled on with easybcd (making my own .iso's via Ubuntu then trying them on OS X) for a while then finally gave up and realised how much easier it is with Chameleon. I just use EasyBCD for the Windows 7 / Windows XP switch now and boot into Windows / OS X / Ubuntu via Chameleon. Thanks to your pointers on the MBR/Partition table saving I now have a safe record of that which, naturally, I have had to use on the odd occasion !

 

Gosh, this can be so frustrating / time consuming but then, hey, I have ended up with an amazing multi-personality laptop ! -took it down the pub the other day, it turns heads, ha ha !!!

[mulcyber]

Gosh, this can be so frustrating / time consuming but then, hey, I have ended up with an amazing multi-personality laptop ! -took it down the pub the other day, it turns heads, ha ha !!!

 

I live by the shore. A person goes to one of the ubiquitous coffee shops with outside seating. I recall the

good old days when you took a book to the coffee shop ... and then a notebook... now popularly a laptop.

I've had a chance to test both of my hard drive backups. I cloned SL to an unallocated partition on Windows.

[blix3]

To image my OS X 10.64 / Windows 7 Ultimate dual-boot disk I've been using Easeus Disk Copy. You have to copy to a disk of the same size or larger. The backup image is an exact replica of the original and has saved me several times when I messed up the original disk.

[mulcyber]

To image my OS X 10.64 / Windows 7 Ultimate dual-boot disk I've been using Easeus Disk Copy. You have to copy to a disk of the same size or larger. The backup image is an exact replica of the original and has saved me several times when I messed up the original disk.

 

I have used Easeus also for windows 7. I'm not sure that Easeus works when Windows

is on one drive, but the OS X second drive is GUID partitioned, mac journaled. My 10.6.6

failed after taking 10 hours for a 1TB drive. Windows was also slow but worked well.

[blix3]

After spending days getting my dual-boot OS X 10.6.4/Windows 7 Ultimate to work (tinkering with [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url], chameleon, EasyBCD, Windows boot manager, etc., etc.), I just had to have a perfect backup image. I tried a dozen imaging tools, but the only one that created a perfect image of the original WD 640GB disk on a backup WD 640GB disk was Easeus disk copy. Even copying with both drives internal (I have removable KF-91 cartridges, so it's easy to insert and remove disks), it takes several hours to make the copy. But it's worth it.

 

From Linux, Parted Magic sees both installations, but only recognizes the HFS+. It says the other file system is unknown. From OS X, the disk utility reports Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for Snow Leopard and Windows NT File System (NTFS) for Windows 7. From Windows, Partition Wizard recognizes the NTFS but not the HFS+.

 

Somehow everything works fine, including the slow-but-perfect backup with the freeware version of Easeus disk copy.