6 replies to this topic

[James G]

Somehow my file system on my vista partition switched from NTFS to RAW yesterday. The Mac partition is fine, and shows no issues at all.

I have been backing up my vista partition to WHS and have a good backup from yesterday (as well as several others earlier in the week). However, I am concerned about trying to restore from the server to the mac and subsequently wiping out the mac partition on the hard drive (I do have a Time Machine backup of the mac side).

First, if I use the restore CD to restore, will it put the partition back in the same spot on the hard drive. I assume no, it will restore to the first sector of the hard drive and ignore any partitions.

Second, if it doesn't restore to the old partition, can I restore to another hard drive, as long as that drive is big enough to hold the restore? I have a 320GB external drive (backed up partition is 80GB) that I can use as a temporary restoring ground, and use gparted to overlay the existing RAW partition with the newly restored partition on the external drive.

My final backup plan will be to ditch the bootcamp portion and simply make a virtual disk file of the 80GB backup to my hard drive. I lose the capability to boot directly into windows, but it is likely the easiest path to follow, given the mac portion of the hard drive is fine.

Any thoughts, comments or suggestions would be appreciated. I know this is a 3+ hour routine so I just want to be sure I get it right on the first restore.

[James G]

Completd the backup and thought I would post results and the process for any other users that might need it. I will also post a link in the Mac section.

Things you will need:

• USB to ethernet adapter (like the Linksys 300M)
• USB drive containing USB to ethernet adapter driver
• spare 2.5" drive (big enough to hold the restored partition, recommend formatting to NTFS prior to restore)
• latest microsoft WHS restore CD
• Blank CD to create WHS restore CD
• ISO burner (for burning WHS restore CD)
• SATA to USB dock (or dongle)
• CloneZilla Live CD iso/cdr
• ReFit Live CD
• Power cord for your Mac (make sure it is plugged in, you don't want to run out of battery during this process)
• External mouse (will make right clicks easier)
• Perform a Time Machine backup on your Mac prior to starting this process

First, if I use the restore CD to restore, will it put the partition back in the same spot on the hard drive. I assume no, it will restore to the first sector of the hard drive and ignore any partitions.

• No it won't. You have to wipe the entire drive when restoring. The restore wizard will throw a network error.This error is actually that the disk isn't formatted error. My process of using a spare 2.5" laptop drive worked perfectly. I pulled the original drive out of my Mac and installed the spare drive into the Mac.
• After rebooting your mac with the WHS Restore CD, WHS will not recognize the built in ethernet port on a Macbook Pro. When you get to the network devices and none are shown, insert your USB drive with the 300M driver, click on the details button and then click on the button that states "I have the driver". WHS Restore will automatically find and install the driver and the network section will list the network USB adapter.
• When you get to the final section of the restore, where you have picked both the backup and the internal drive, you can use the advanced button to format the internal drive. This is what I did (versus formatting the drive to NTFS prior to the restore).
• The restore for a 82GB partition took about 1 1/2 hours. From there, the Mac rebooted directly into Windows.
• Pull the restored 2.5" drive out of the Mac and reinstall the original Mac hard drive. Use a USB to SATA connector or hard drive dock to connect the restored drive to your Mac. You should see the BOOTCAMP drive on your desktop.
• Run Win Clone Select the external drive with the restored BOOTCAMP partition on it. Be sure to click on Preferences and change from a compressed image to a DMG (no compression). You may need a Windows machine to run CHKDSK on the restored partition (check the Win Clone log if the creation of the DMG image fails).
• I used a windows machine via computer management to shrink the restored BOOTCAMP partition down, since the partition spanned the entire spare 2.5" drive. Win Clone can do this, but I found that it errored out when shrinking the Win Clone image. If you attempt this, you need to click on the Win Clone tools, Shrink Image, and then pick the image you created in this step to shrink it.
• Now you will need to destroy the old boot camp partion on the existing drive. Run the Boot Camp Assistant (Finder > Applications > Utilities), choose the box that states you have the OS X install disk (you won't need this), and then Create Or Remove a Windows Partition. Click Restore to remove the Windows Partition.
• Rerun The Boot Camp assistant and create a new Windows partition. I made mine slightly larger that the resized BOOTCAMP partition (e.g, made it 87GB vs. 82GB). Quit the installer when it asks to install the Windows drivers.
• From here, use the CloneZilla live CD to copy the partition from the external drive to the new BootCamp internal partition.
• Install ReFit and then reboot your Mac. Hold the option key down on reboot and then select the Partition INspector. Use the Partition Inspector to fix the EFI partition

[SJ_UnderWater]

would it be possible to restore to an external drive (or spare partition, etc), then use Disk Utility to simply copy that drive back over to the bootcamp partition?
also if your disk turned to RAW, that could just be a partition type error, a utility like gdisk or fdisk could help restore it.

[James G]

would it be possible to restore to an external drive (or spare partition, etc), then use Disk Utility to simply copy that drive back over to the bootcamp partition?
also if your disk turned to RAW, that could just be a partition type error, a utility like gdisk or fdisk could help restore it.

I don't think you can restore to an external drive, but I didn't try that. I didn't find a way to restore to a specific partition, since WHS assumes it has full control to wipe the hard drive as it restores. I was hoping it would restore just that partition in the same spot, but the WHS restore didn't work that way.

I have attempted to move a partition back over and boot camp is fairly picky about where things go. Attempted gdisk, fdisk and partition magic, none would recover the partition. My sole concern was, how do I get the WHS vista backup restored on a Mac, and then put that copy back into a bootcamp partition.

[James G]

Sorry to report, but I had thought I got everything working and finally had to ditch the work and move to a full virtual machine. When I got the bootcamp partition rebooting, my home user directory wouldn't load. I even tried enabling the admin role, and had the same issue. I couldn't even delete my old account.

I had Vista x32 installed and decided to just start with a new install of WIndows 7 x64 in bootcamp. Bottom line was that I didn't have success moving the restored image from the WHS restored hard drive to the bootcamp partition.

[Craig Givant]

I ran a Boot Camp partition for years and while I was backing up to WHS (as you did), I always wondered if the restore would work if I ever needed it. I continued to back up figuring that the worst case scenario would be the need to jump through additional hoops but at least the "data" would be somewhere.

The "hoops" you listed were some of the ones I had in the back of my mind but what a PITA. Now that it didn't work, that makes me even happier that I switched to a VM. Simply put.... if you have the hardware resources to run a VM that is the way to go.

Thanks for sharing this information, sorry it didn't work.

PS... Did you try perhaps creating your VM from the restored partition even though it wouldn't boot properly? There is a chance that the process of creating a VM from that partition would somehow "fix" the Home Directory issue. It's a shot in the dark but ya never know.

[James G]

That worked without a hitch. Restored to an external drive, used the VMware conversion utility to create a VM, then put that on the hard drive. I may end up upgrading to WHS 2011 if I can find a suitable drive extender replacement, so that I can get the orbital technologies time machine plug in. Or I'll move to ubuntu with ZFS or LVM for drive pooling.