04-27-2011, 10:26 PM

Hey All

Just made the switch yesterday to mac after have a pc in the house since 1970 something. I do have some things I can only run on pc so I was gonna do bootcamp, fusion, parallels with my XP disk. Well my XP disk is bad (too many scratches). So now I'm stuck. I have heard that you can clone a drive. Is this possible??? If so are there step by step instructions??

Thanks
Cactus52

04-27-2011, 11:22 PM

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

If your XP disk is bad, and it's a compatible disk that can be used with Boot Camp, or VM software, you can either burn a copy of it or ask MS customer service to send you another.

This assumes the disk is genuine and legal and that you have the PID (serial number). And, your copy of XP is not currently activated on another machine.

04-28-2011, 04:00 AM

Have you looked into whether or not there are Mac versions of the programs you want to run? How about Mac equivalents or better? I've rarely seen (other than certain vertical market and accounting software) any need for actually running PC software.

04-28-2011, 06:57 AM

Originally Posted by Cactus52

Hey All

Just made the switch yesterday to mac after have a pc in the house since 1970 something. I do have some things I can only run on pc so I was gonna do bootcamp, fusion, parallels with my XP disk. Well my XP disk is bad (too many scratches). So now I'm stuck. I have heard that you can clone a drive. Is this possible??? If so are there step by step instructions??

Thanks
Cactus52

I hope you don't mean bootcamp, fusion AND parallels!

04-28-2011, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by Cactus52

Hey All

Just made the switch yesterday to mac after have a pc in the house since 1970 something. I do have some things I can only run on pc so I was gonna do bootcamp, fusion, parallels with my XP disk. Well my XP disk is bad (too many scratches). So now I'm stuck. I have heard that you can clone a drive. Is this possible??? If so are there step by step instructions??

Thanks
Cactus52

I believe the question you are asking is if there is anyway to clone your existing Windows PC drive onto the Bootcamp partition on your Mac - correct? I don't believe you can - and I'm sure you really won't want to. If your PC has been running for any amount of time (more than a month), your registry will be sooooo bogged down with extraneous JUNK that it would not be worth it (one of the reasons I've made the switch to Mac).

Unfortunately, your best bet is like chscag said - if it is a legitimate copy of Windows, you can contact MS to get a duplicate (or your original PC manufacturer. Or, bite the bullet and buy another copy.

Sorry.