Restoring my Drive backup to a MBP w/ an XP partition and other ?'s

I'm ditching my PC and am currently awaiting a Macbook Pro. As my anticipation rises, I'm also having great anxiety about making certain that my XP partition will be identical to what it is on my current PC.

I currently use Acronis True Image to back up my hard drive. It is imperative that I still use Windows XP for all of my work related activities(Cisco VPN software, custom work software, etc).. Now, I realize that Macs use EFI and not BIOS, but if I use Bootcamp to install XP, can I run the Acronis rescue disc from the CD prior to boot like I would in Windows and restore my backup of my C drive (located on a 2nd drive I'll need an enclosure for) to the XP partition so that my C drive would be exactly as is right now?

I suppose what I'm also saying is that I don't know how to go into the set-up options prior to bootup on a mac to say, boot from a CD instead of the HDD. What is the comparable environment on a Mac, say when hitting delete or f2 to go into your BIOS like you would on a PC? I know this was long-winded, but any assistance or insight at all greatly appreciated.

 

First, your XP partition on your MacBook will not be identical to your XP partition on your PC as the MacBook Pro will need different drivers for its different hardware.

Your best bet is to follow the BootCamp process setting up the XP partition and re-install all of the same software you had on your PC.

To boot from a CD just hold down the C key while starting your Mac - although I don't know if a non Mac boot CD will work.

I installed XP and Fedora on virtual Machines under Parallels and it worked just great from those Boot CD's but they "booted" through Parallels. These virtual machines are just files on my Mac hard drive so they get backed up as part of my normal Mac Backup process (via SuperDuper).

For my purposes I did not like dual (multi?) boot and am much happier with virtual machines but I will try to boot from my Acronis CD when I get home to see if that would work and I'll let you know if someone else does not answer you first.

 

JIm, I appreciate the response. It was understood that I would need to get new drivers for hardware, but I assumed that I could still unfurl my drive back-up on the XP partition, then remove old drivers as necessary. It's pretty much out of the question for me to re-install everything, as I have VPN settings and custom software from work that cannot be obtained.

I'd really like to ditch the desktop altogether, but it's looking as though I may have to disappoint my friend and keep it.

I was hoping I could go through the bootcamp process, install a fresh XP and Acronis, then fire it up, browse to the image on my external and restore my backup. If there's some logic lacking in my plan of attack, please let me know, as it may change my outlook a bit.

 

I've been down the road of installing a Windows image on a machine it was not meant for and my experiences were - variable. Had one that worked with some fiddling on a desktop and two that failed on laptops after a lot of fiddling.

After going through the Bootcamp process, overwriting whatever is on that partition with the files and folders from your Pc is worth a try. Since OS X can read NTFS and Read/Write Fat32 you could even just copy stuff off your XP drive in an external enclosure over onto your BootCamp XP partition (while booted in OS X).

Another option if the above does not work is an XP install followed by one one of the many "move my stuff to a new PC" programs out there for $30-$60

Just as an FYI - all your Cisco VPN client settings are exportable and can be imported on a new Cisco VPN client running on a different machine (be they MAC or PC as Cisco Clients are easily obtained via the web.)

 

Nope, but in any case, it's never really a good idea to use an image from one machine on a completely different platform.

You would always want to do a clean install when dealing with a new machine.

 

I'd say it is not completely impossible, but it will be a nice mess. You'd have to fiddle away with the bootloader in XP, and drivers. If you by any chance know your way around those, you might give it a try. If possible, it would be easier to try and migrate the programs you haven't access anymore - copying registry entries, etc.

 

Well, I thank you for your interest in my issue. I suppose there's not much i can do until the thing gets here, so we'll take it step by step. Keep your eyes peeled on this thread, folks!

 

Apparently, according to a knowledge base article on Acronis' website, you can in fact port any XP installation image to new hardware by using a Microsoft utility known as sysprep to strip your image of all PC specific security identifiers. You can also reset your hardware to all generic devices. Once this is complete, Acronis claims that you can make an image of your hard drive and restore it to any new hardware configurations, provided you have drivers for all of the new hardware.
Considering that I am not planning on reading/writing between the XP and OS X partitions, I may just be able to format the XP bootcamp partition in NTFS and actually pull this off.

 

Hold down Alt to get the menu where you choose startup disk, be it a hard drive, optical drive or a network drive. It does have to be a bootable Mac drive either way of course.

Or you can just hold down C to boot from the optical drive.

 

Very convenient to know, thank you! I have purchased a couple of books linked from these forums to aid in my transition, and every little piece of knowledge I can gain makes it that much smoother.

 

Looks like Parallels is going to make a PC to OS X migration easy for you - at least if you want to run Windows in a VM (which is fine for business apps).

Take a look - its cool:

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/transporter/

 

THAT is precisely what I need. Now, this is a beta, so I have to figure out what I need to purchase first. I want to thank you immensely. Where did you find that link on their site?

 

You can download the beta (30 day trial) at:

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/

Just request a trial key. Then if you like it pay their $79

Some of the new features are awesome and even though this is a beta I have not had any problems.

 

Not to keep badgering you with questions, but basically, if my PC and Mac are on the same network, I can simply migrate everything on my current PC over to a VM on the Mac over my lan (all the stuff we spoke about earlier VPN, software, etc)? It is the whole partition as is?

 

Thats what the documentation for the Parallels beta says. I have not actually used that feature so I can't comment more than that other than to say that so far Parallels has been reliable and has done exactly what the documentation says

 

jim,

I've used it, and I can report that this did, in fact, work....almost. The phenomenal thing is that it transfered via my router no problem. In fact, I ported 80 GB's at about a gig an hour. The program even adjusted for the hardware differences. Phenomenal stuff. The VPN worked great for work too. Thing is, The USB mass storage is broken in the beta and you cannot listen to cd's or burn either cd's or dvd's from inside windows as of yet. Still, this concept should be stickied for all switchers to consider. It absolutely works, if your willing to accept some limitations(for now).

Me, I've decided it's best to hold onto my PC, at least for the time being. Always comfort in knowing it can be done once they iron some kinks out. Thanks again.

 

Thats great. Given the VM and OSX can share data you can just use OS X to listen to music or burn CD's and DVD's though.

 

That's another issue for another day. I've read David Pogue's book for "switchers", and was under the impression that everything is plug n' go. I know Mac OS X can at least read NTFS partitions, so I was a bit perplexed when the OS let me know that it could not read my 320 gig WD. It's not partitioned either. Any word of advice there? I'm gonna start sending you checks for these words of wisdom!

 

I love his books. Lots of hidden gold in them ;-)

My experience is most things are plug-n-go. I've tried several external HD's and some were NTFS and some FAT32 but nothing that large. I have a spare external 500gb WD that I'll try on the weekend (I know its FAT32 from the other ones I have).

What do you mean its not partitioned? Have you tried applications,utilities,disk utility to take a look at it?