winclone not compatible with Lion. Looking for suggestions/alternative

Winclone produces errors in Lion when attempting to make an image of the bootcamp partition. There are hacks that people have made to the Two Canoes Winclone 2.2 app... renamed by these hackers as "winclone 2.3" located on RoaringApps website.

the 2.3 hack also requires unchecking a bunch of stuff under options but you can eventually get it to make an image file of bootcamp. But restoring the image is a whole different problem.



Anyways, I don't want to mess around with a hacked winclone or trying any of my own hacks getting it to work. I've loved using it in the past but seems it is now time to say goodbye to it.

So what do you folks think of Paragon Manager 11? It is $80.
Paragon Partition Manager Professional - Full Features

I'm going to download the paragon 11 trial version to see if this product works for making an image of my bootcamp partition. Please let us know if you use this product in Lion and how do you like it.

What about CopyCatX? $50.
SubRosaSoft Products and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Compatibility
I've heard that this product can be used for making bootcamp images. Their websites says that it is compatible with Lion.

Any preferences or suggestions about these two products or do you have another solution as an alternative to good old winclone (rip)?

Thanks!

 

after some quick research it seems I have a few options:

Paragon Partition Manager Pro 2011
Clonezilla Live
CopyCatX
Casper 6


I'm going to try Clonezilla first because I like that I don't have to be IN a windows environment to restore (like I would if I were using Paragon's tools). If windows crashes how will I get to the Paragon tools I'd need for restoring? With Clonezilla it sounds like I simply make a bootable USB flash drive. Also, Clonezilla is free

Depending on how that goes, I'll try Paragon Pro next. Seems a lot of people like it who've tried all the others.

CopyCatX I understand is pretty slow (so is Clonezilla from what I read but at least it is free).
Casper 6 I've only read a little about but I've heard that it is not the most reliable (that was taken only from one thread I was reading on a different forum - so my comment about it's reliability should be taken with a grain of salt)

Thanks

 

Okay, apparantly the latest releases of Clonezilla will not work with Lion. I'm unable to get it to load into the Clonezilla screens using an EFI linux bootable USB flash drive with the Clonezilla image installed. It boots to the usb but then it just takes me to a Gnu Grub command prompt after Debian returns with an error. *on my other Dell laptops, the USB Flash boots (when using a USB formated at FAT32) into Clonezilla fine.

I'm going to purchase Paragon Partition Manager 2011 Pro. But the CampTune app from Paragon also does not work with Lion. That is the app you would use to rezise your bootcamp partitions, etc. I won't be needing that right now, I only need the other paragon tools to make an image copy of bootcamp.

Boy this is crazy not having hardly ANY means to make a full image copy of both OS X and BOOTCAMP. Even just getting seperate image backups of each partition is becomeing a chore just to find the tools that will work.

Thanks,

Ben

 

Okay, I've just realized something. If I run image backup software from any other place other than from inside of OS X then I am unable to use my eSata express card. Windows and even Clonezilla will not recognize the eSATA connection to my external drive via the express card slot

And so I must use a slow firewire 800 or USB 2.0 connection which stinks. With winclone (may it RIP) I was of course running inside of OS X using my eSATA card and I was getting min of 70 - 80 MBps transfer rate to the external drive. Using USB 2.0 or Firewire I will be luck to get around 20 - 25MBps

Oh well. As mention in my earlier post, I couldn't get Clonezilla to launch so I'm trying out Paragon Pro 2011 for $80 (the demo won't allow backups).

What I should be doing perhaps is migrating my Win7 OS into a virtual machine and make my backups all using CCC and vm snapshots!! that would be WAYYY easier than what I'm trying to achieve here.

Anyways, sorry for these many many posts. At least it gives me someplace to vent my frustration

I'm off to go purchase Paragon Pro 2001

 

Please let me know how it works.

I considered purchasing it at one point but decided it was cheaper to just do a reinstall.

But, if you find it works well and is compatible with lion, I may just go ahead.

D.

 

I am very interested in this as well, thanks for your research!

 

Hi, quick update. I'm still doing some product comparisons.

I actually bought CopyCatX to try it. Turns out it does a FULL partition image of Bootcamp. Running inside of Lion I'm able to use my eSata express card for 100MBps transfer rates to the external drive. Nice! But the problem is I'm only using about 130GB of a 500GB HDD that I'm using exclusively for windows in bootcamp. *I have two internal 500GB HDDs in my MBP. One HDD is dedicated to OS X and the other HDD is dedicated to the bootcamp win7

CopyCatX makes a 500GB image file in about 1 hr 15 min or so. whoa! even though I'm only using 130GB of that 500GB partition. The CopyCatX documentation says that it will only image the portion of the partition that is being used. That is true when making an image of the OS X partition (and if your backing up just OS X you may as well use CCC which is free)... but for the bootcamp partition CopyCatX just grabs the whole 500GB and makes a 500GB image file, not a 130GB image file.

And so, CopyCatX is a nice tool but it is unacceptable for me because I need to make at least weekly bootcamp backups and a 500GB image just eats up too much space on my external drives. I rotate eight 2TB external drives but even 500GB is too much unecessarily waisted space when I only needed to backup 130GB.

Okay, now I'm going to try Paragon Partition Manager for real this time.

 

I purchased Paragon Partition Manager 11 Professional

I've been testing it the last few days. It includes a pretty nice backup recovery toolset.

You are given a few options of burning a bootable recovery CD. A LILO boot CD or a WinPE3.0. It says you can make a bootable USB flash drive too but my 2009 Macbook Pro wouldn't recognise the bootable USB when I held the [alt/option] key during startup. In fact, my laptop wouldn't at first recognize the bootable recovery CDs either if I just held down the [alt/option]. I had to hold the [C] key instead (forces booting to CD).

I had been reading online that most people preferred and recommended making backups using the bootable backup&recovery CD method versus making backups using the Paragon software while inside of Windows itself. And so I immediately began making backups using the bootable CD.

I did try making backups using the application while inside of Windows but it would go soooo slowly... I eventually cancelled it after 5 hrs. But I had "hot processing" enable at the time and I think that was the reason (read about that below). I'm doing some additional backup and recovery tests now using the backup software from within Windows. I'll let you know how that goes once I confirm the restore process works.

*There is an option when backing up a partition via Paragons Backup & Recovery software called " Hot Processing". This option seems to be meant to allow you to do block level backups without having to unmount the drive. That Hot Processing option didn't work well for me with my bootcamp partition backups (it would drag on for hours and hours and hours before I finally killed that backup). So my advice would be to leave that option unchecked if you decide to use Paragon to backup your bootcamp partition.​

Pros:
- you can browse the archive/image file on the external HDD later and copy just individual files and folders to your laptop incase you needed only certain files and did not need to restore the entire partition or drive image.
- It will backup only the used space of a partition (unless you checked the sector by sector backup option). This is a huge advantage, obviously, over CopyCatX which would always do Sector copies. My Bootcamp partition is about 500GB but I only want to backup the 120GB that is used. If CopyCatX would make the sector by sector backups optional as Paragon does then I'd reconsider using CopyCatX.
- iso for burning a bootable backup&recovery CD.

Cons:
- The only issue I had was that I could not use my eSATA expressCard. Paragon of course does not run inside of OS X. And so my eSATA expressCard is not recognized unless I'm in OS X (my MBP is 17" 2009... later model 17" MBP express cards do allow eSATA cards to work inside of Windows so you may not have this issue that I had).

My write speeds to my external HDD are 18MB/s - 25MB/s using USB compared to 100MB/s - 120MB/s using eSATA. Two hours to backup 120GB via USB instead of 22 minutes via eSATA.


So, yeah I like this product other than I cannot use my eSATA. I spent $80 for it but I'm really only using the backup&recovery features of it. Turns out that if that is all you care about then you can download their FREE backup software "Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free".

Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition - Overview

I'm testing that free software now but it looks almost exactly like the backup and recovery stuff I paid $80 for with Partition Manager 11 Pro. The free software even allows you to burn a bootable backup&recovery CD.

*My tests environment involved two internal 500GB HDDs in my MBP. One drive is for Lion, the other for Bootcamp Win7 Ult 64. I backup to an external bare 2TB HDD plugged into a NewerTech Voyager (toaster) connected to my MBP via USB2. I boot from my external USB SuperDrive.

Backup steps:
- Turned on the MBP while holding [C] to boot to the Linux BackupRecover CD.
- Selected for backup the entire drive that contains the Bootcamp Win7 partition and a small 200MB EFI partition.
- Hot Processing disabled
- Compression set to Normal (120GB image compress to about 80GB)
- Checked option to skip backup of my windows page file
- 2 hrs later I had a PARAGON proprietary archive file.

Restore steps:
- Restoring to an empty and unused 500GB HD (exact same model as the one I backed up)... I removed the internal 500GB HDD that I had backed up previously and replaced with this new empty drive
- In OS X Lion, using Disk Utility, I formated the empty 500GB drive as GUI
- In OS X Lion, using bootcamp assistant, I created a new bootcamp partition on the empty 500GB target HDD of the same size I had on the previous 500GB drive
- Rebooted the MBP while holding [C] to boot to the Linux BackupRecovery CD.
- Selected for restore the entire backup image contents (both the EFI and Bootcamp Win7 partitions).
- Restored to the empty 500GB HD.
- Once completed I was able to boot into Windows bootcamp.

I'll write here again after I test the "free" software.

 

Thanks for all this.
I was waiting for this and then forgot about it until just last week... as I was contemplating upgrading the HD in my MBP (but did not want to set up the bootcamp partition again).

Now with the free link you gave I can go ahead and get it done this weekend.

+rep!

D.

 

Just be sure to test your restore using the free software version, before relying on it in a real emegency restore situation.

I've made a backup using the free software but I've not tested to see if I can restore using the free software yet.

If I get a chance this weekend I'll try testing a restore using the free version to be sure it works.

Good luck and thanks for the positive rep

 

Hello everyone, sorry my English using google translator
I had the need to use the MBP winclone a friend, with lion 10.7 and bootcamp partition with windows 7 64 bit. I tried but I could not winclone 2.3 so I tried to install OSX 10.6 on a firewire external HD, but the MBP went kernelpanic I tried on my MBP and all my MacMini with a lion and went all in kernelpanic.
For this I gave up. But now with the 10.7.1 update I tried to boot from external HD with OSX 10.6, I installed winclone 2.2 works, only that I no longer have my friend's MBP and I can try if you can clone the partition bootcamp.
You can try it?

 

I did some 'experiments.
I installed Windows 7 on my MBP (20 GB partition) and I tried to create image with bootcamp 2.3 and 2.3.1 winclone but does not create anything.
I booted from Firewire external HD with Snow Leopard, and I used winclone 2.2 I created an image of bootcamp then I restarted on osx lion I deleted the bootcamp partition with BootCamp Assistant and after I recreated one of 40 GB, then I closed my assistant I opened disk utility and bootcamp partition formatted in NTFS bootcamp.
Then I opened winclone 2.3.1 and I did the restore has been successful.
The partition is back after the restore of 20GB
I rebooted from windows, fully functional.

 

Another experiment.
I tried deleting the partition of 20 GB with bootcamp assistant and I created a 40 GB.
I formatted with NTFS disk utility.
I booted from Firewire external HD with Snow Leopard.
I opened Winclone 2.2 and I did the restore with the image I had (the one created by partition 20 GB).
Result Windows 7 partition 40 GB fully functional.

 

Got busy this weekend with a family members computer so I did not get a chance to do my backup... but I have the free version ready.... so I am just going to make a clone/backup with it then put it onto a new (larger/faster) HD and see if it works.

If not, I still have my original HD to fall back on but I think I should be able to get it going with minimal issues... may try tonight

D.

 

Cool! I'm not sure why I hadn't tried that. I'll boot up from a spare HDD with snow leopard installed along with WinClone 2.2 and my other utilities. This will be great if it works! It means I can make backup and restore my bootcamp on Lion using my the SnowLeopard boot disk and also take advantage of the eSATA expresscard again. yeah!

One question though, the backup from the post that I quoted above, that was made with Winclone 2.3.1 or 2.2? The restore was made with 2.2 though correct?

Thanks again,

Ben