TrueImage Home on an Intel iMac?

I'm replacing my PC with an Intel iMac in order to "dual boot" (using Boot Camp) between Windows XP Pro and Mac OS X "Leopard". I also plan to run Parallels 3.0 (which can now actually use the actual NTFS partition as it's "virtual" Windows XP installation) so I can have the best of both worlds; native Windows XP and virtualized Windows XP when needed under Mac OS X.

This iMac configuration will have two partitions on the drive; one NTFS for Windows XP Pro and one HFS for Mac OS X. Since TrueImage Home is a low-level disk utility, my concern is how it will react to finding a HFS partition on the drive. Will it simply ignore it and move on (HOPEFULLY!) or will it roll over and die? I have seen some mention on other forums that it dies (without mention of which version of TrueImage was being used).

While having TrueImage Home be able to actually backup the HFS partition would be fantastic, I doubt that's coming any time soon. I just want to make sure I can continue to run TrueImage Home when the iMac is booted as Windows XP (the norm for me) to backup my NTFS partition.

I've been a die-hard Acronis user for 4+ years; it has saved my backside NUMEROUS times. I don't know what I would do for backup if TrueImage Home won't be able to simply ignore this HFS partition.

Anyone have any experience with such a configuration? What is Acronis' "official" stand on "unsupported" partition types?

 

Hello dsearles,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Currently there is no Acronis True Image edition that will provide its full functionality on iMac computers, even when running Microsoft Windows XP using boot camp or in a virtual environment. However Acronis is planning to offer a special Mac edition for Acronis True Image in the nearest future. Unfortunately we cannot tell you neither the exact time frame for the release nor the functionality of the upcoming version. Please be aware that you can receive the latest information on Acronis software by signing up for Acronis Newsletter.

If you have any further questions concerning our software, please feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience and we will do our best to assist you as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Alexey Bogomolov

 

I run Windows XP under boot camp,and have True Image Home v10, when you say it doesnt provide its full functionality on iMac computers, does this mean it will do its basic job though of backing up to animage and restoring? Im not bothered about re partitioning etc, as long as I can just take a backup to an image and restore it to the same size partition

Can I not just install TI v10 onto XP under boot camp and back up the image?

Why does this not work? it is a full OS onto a partitioned part of the hard disk.

I was hoping to do this now I have moved over to a Mac.

I dont want a Mac verison of TI yet, I would rather Ti for windows worked on my boot camp XP

please help
cheers

 

It means it doesn't run at all! When it sees the GUID Partition Table, it simply stops and does nothing. I'm using TI Home V11 and it rolls over due to the GPT disk format.

I found a Mac program called WinClone which can create an image backup of your Windows partition while booted under MacOS. I use this as my "fail safe" backup and use a crappy file-based backup while booted under Windows.

I still hope TI will come out with support of GPT disks VERY SOON!

 

ok thats TI out then!!

What about Norton Ghost? does this work?

Have you tried that WinCLone under boot camp does it work then? is t any good? how does it work? how would you go about restoring teh image for boot camp?

Any other solutions?

 

No, Norton Ghost doesn't support GPT disks either. Basically, I have found NO Windows backup tools which currently support GPT disks although several (TI, Ghost) are "working on it".

Yes, I have used Winclone and it works. Accidentally, I screwed up my boot camp partition with a buggy version of Parallels and was able to restore it using Winclone; an unplanned trial by fire and it worked! The downside of Winclone (for me, anyway, as I use Windows 90% of the time) is that it is a Mac application (so I have to boot MacOS) which backs up to a file on the Mac HFS+ filesystem which means restores must happen under MacOS as well. This is why I use if more as a "fail safe" to get me back up and running quickly and rely on some file-based backup tools for more "current" backups.

Winclone is just that, a partition cloner. It creates a backup image of the entire partition. To restore, you run Winclone and have it restore the partition from the backup image. It supports resizing the partition at restore time but I don't use that feature as the description of it made me a bit nervous. It takes me about 35 minutes to image 19GB of data from my NTFS boot camp partition on a 2GHz Core 2 Duo iMac.

It's not as clean a solution as TI would be but it IS a solution which works in the interim (plus it's free!)

 

Winclone dismounts the NTFS partition before backing it up so it cannot be changed during backup. I also use the Paragon NTFS for Mac filesystem to support read/write access to NTFS while booted under MacOS but since Winclone dismounts the partition before backup, even paragon's code cannot update it during the backup. This guarantees the backup image is consistent; no partial updates.