boot camp

I unfortunately desperately need to install windows on my mbp but have no way of backing up all my information as my portable hard drive decided to pack up today how much of a risk am i taking if i install it without doing a back up of my hard drive first? thanks

djflair1 said:

I unfortunately desperately need to install windows on my mbp but have no way of backing up all my information as my portable hard drive decided to pack up today how much of a risk am i taking if i install it without doing a back up of my hard drive first? thanks

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It's a risk for sure. Anytime you repartition a hard disk, you're making a major modification to the filesystem. With that said, I've never seen Boot Camp severely damage the partition providing that:

1. You shut down the computer and clean boot it.
2. Close any programs that open automatically in the background.
3. Start up the Boot Camp Assistant and allow it to do its thing *without* doing anything else on the machine at the time.

djflair1 said:

I unfortunately desperately need to install windows on my mbp but have no way of backing up all my information as my portable hard drive decided to pack up today how much of a risk am i taking if i install it without doing a back up of my hard drive first? thanks

Click to expand...

I would not recommend installing BootCamp without a backup. I've experienced kernel panics and some strange errors when trying to partition my disk while running through the BootCamp utility.

If nothing else, back up your user files to DVD/CD.

No problems on the two machines I've done it to. It's a risk, but probably only a 5% one.

I not only partitioned with Boot Camp but also a week later un-partitioned when I decided VM with Parallels was sufficient.

Didn't do a back up because the machine was new and only had the basic configuration as supplied.

That said, both manouevres were flawless. 'It did what it says on the can'.

But there again, I fly 30 year old freighters, in the dark, in Africa, so obviously live dangerously anyway !