Hard Drive Cloning

i'm about to order a new drive for my MBP and currently have an XP partition. what I want to do is just clone the entire drive and just install it onto the new drive. do i need to back up XP in XP or can i just clone the entire contents of leopard and the bootcamp XP partition?? if need be i'll just use time machine, but i don't want to have to reinstall XP and all the games that are on it.

You can use super duper for the OXS partition and Winclone for the bootcamp partition

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and was about to ask the same question.

Isn't there a cloning program that just clones the whole harddrive including bootcamp and other partitions like a bit for bit cloning.
Carbon Copy Clone does bit for bit but I can't find an answer if that includes the the whole drive or just the "OSx" part.

@ mrplow: how would that work? Do you clone the OSx to the 2nd drive and then clone the bootcamp part on top of the 1st clone?

PS: I'm rather new to the Mac world and still learning, Mac pro and still on 10.5.8 until I solved the cloning part

Greatful for an answer.

The original answer given by "Mr. Plow" still applies. You can use either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your OS X partition only. In order to copy the Boot Camp partition you'll need to use WinClone.

Regards.

Thank you chscag.

So there are no REAL hard drive cloning tools for the Mac world?
It sounds more like those tools are advanced copy/backup tools than clone tools.

Asking as i'm a long time DOS/Windows user and I been using it for long there to make an exact copy of a HD no mather what it was on it.

Well, I guess I can buy a new cheap windows puter, attach my OS HD via USB and an empty HD on another USB and use my Casper Welcome to Future Systems Solutions cloning program to clone it but it seems like an overkill to me so to say

Cloning a multi-partition disk bit for bit onto a larger disk will give you 2 partitions and a lump of free space after those partitions. You'll then need to format this and end up with 3 partitions or use another tool to move and resize the existing partitions. Not to mention that OSX is paticular about the number of partitions and the bootcamp partitions position within that structure.

You are best releasing your vision of 'real' cloning tools and taking the simplest and most robust solution.

Use the tools mentioned previously to image your OSX partition and bootcamp partitions to a USB drive or similar. Then install your new disk and reimage with the saved OSX image.

Boot into OSX increase the partition size to take advantage of the larger disk. Create a suitable partition for windows using the bootcamp wizard then clone back the bootcamp data.

I was a basic/dos/windows user of some years (and still use and maintain them on a daily basis) now a switcher of nearly 3 years. The principals of disk cloning/backing up are fundamentally the same even if the tools differ in approach.

Thanks a lot for your explanation mrplow, finaly I understand why it doesn't work.
I thought in my wildest fantasy that the OSX partition would expand to fill the new drive and that the bootcamp part. would just follow unexpanded in the "right place for OSX".
Perhaps in the future

Thanks again.