If I get a new hard drive, from lets say 120 to 200 or 80 to 160, will Disk Utility copy the partitions made in the original hard drive? I ask because I've got boot camp with Windows XP and was wondering if Disk Utility which is found in the application-utilities folder will do everything for me and not just mess things up on the new drive. If it does copy partitions and copies the original partition, how can I change the settings for partition? Currently the Macbook Black has 120 divided in 60gig for OSX and 60 gig for Windows XP The white ones have 80 divided 40gigs each. Will be doing the upgrade for all in the house so thinking if it could be done without using Super Duper.
I hope somebody savvy can help out this guy, before his thread gets buried. It's on page 5 now and still no responses.
got this from Apple discussions: DO NOT FORMAT WINDOWS PARTITION AS NTFS 1. Format the Windows partition as Fat32 so the Mac can write to it. I created a 32 GB Fat32 partition and then installed WindowsXP via Boot Camp. 2. Create a normal Apple HFS backup partition on your backup drive. Mine is a 250GB LaCie, Firewire only, external drive. My backup partition is 32 GB. 3. Prior to backing up to the external drive use the Disk Utility "erase" function to ensure that the backup partition is empty. 4. Use the Disk Utility "Restore" function to restore the Boot Camp partition to the backup partition on your external drive. (checking the "erase destination" box will cause an error. Erase manually prior to "Restore" as per step 3). You now have a complete backup of the Windows partition on our external drive. It is not bootable.... it is a backup. When you need to reload the backup to restore WindowsXP you: 1. Use Disk Utility to erase the Boot Camp partition on your internal drive. 2. Use the Disk Utility "Restore" function to restore from the external drive's Windows XP backup partition to the internal drive's Boot Camp partition. All will be running exactly as it was when you created the backup. Hope this helps.
thanks but im still trying to figure out if Disk Utility keeps the partitions. I'm guessing not! dang. How do I adjust partitions with OSX?
@Hero33 Hi. Disk Utility will not do it............I'm guessing that you want to "clone" your partitions in such a way that it will boot up using the new drive. Which means copying the boot records to the proper sectors. You will need Super Duper. I have not tried copying/cloning the Windows partition, so I can not comment if a cloning software can do it. I use Carbon Copy Cloner for creating backups of my bootable partitions.
