Dual boot cloning for Macs with Boot Camp

Intro


Below is a guide to my "best practice" method of creating an image of Mac OS X 10.5+ and Windows XP+ on a dual boot Mac for later deployment to multiple machines. More info on the deployment of Windows partitions and images via Apple Remote Desktop can be found at the WinClone site.

Building the Source Machine


Mac OS X


The first part of the process is rebuilding the Mac OS X system to your desired specifications. A simple outline of the procedure previously used is as follows:

  1. Install Mac OS X 10.5.

  2. Install Apple iLife '09 suite.

  3. Run Software Update to ensure system is as up to date as possible.

  4. Install desired third party applications.

    1. Microsoft Office 2008

      1. Run Autoupdate repeatedly until software suite is up to date.





  5. Run Boot Camp Assistant.

    1. Create new Windows partition of 32gb (or whatever size you choose).

    2. Insert the Windows installation media. Start Windows installation.




Windows


The version of Windows installed is entirely determined by preference. For the previous installation, we have used Windows XP. Windows 7 is also a viable alternative. Windows Vista is not recommended as there seemed to be many inconsistent issues with the sysprep process and keeping the installation stable. The following outlines a basic installation procedure of Windows XP:

  1. Begin the Windows installation where Boot Camp Assistant left off.

  2. Format the Boot Camp partition:

    1. Windows XP

      1. Arrow down to the BOOTCAMP partition and press Enter.

      2. Choose the option to format the partition as NTFS. (NOTE: This partition will only be read-only under Mac OS X. If you need read/write capability from within OS X, format as FAT32.)



    2. Windows Vista/7

      1. Click Next.

      2. Click the BOOTCAMP partition in the partition table.

      3. Click Format to format the partition as an NTFS. (NOTE: This partition will only be read-only under Mac OS X. Installation of Windows Vista/7 to a FAT32 partition is not supported without additional tweaking. It is not recommended.)





  3. Proceed with the remainder of the Windows installation process.

  4. When the Windows installation is complete, insert the Mac OS X installation media and follow the on-screen instructions to install the necessary Boot Camp drivers and software.

  5. Install all third-party applications.

  6. Run Microsoft Update repeatedly until no new updates are found.

  7. Perform sysprep as usual using your desired settings or use the following procedure for Windows Vista/7:

    1. Run sysprep.exe, found in C:\windows\system32\sysprep\

    2. Choose Shutdown from the Shutdown Options drop-down list.

    3. Click OK.




Cloning the Source Machine










NOTE
The Mac OS X machine used for pulling the image from the source machine MUST be running Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. The software tools used in this procedure require the expanded command-level functionality that it provides.


After completing the creation of each individual OS, the source machine is ready for cloning. This must be done in a two-part process: cloning the Mac OS X partition and cloning the Windows XP/Vista/7 partition. This is not as simple as using Symantec Ghost or Disk Utility to clone each partition, because neither utility supports both partition formats. Instead, we will use the following software and hardware tools to accomplish this:

  • CarbonCopyCloner: This freeware tool offers a wide variety of imaging options in terms of file-level copying, but most importantly, block-level replication. It can be used to create a backup scheme for incremental backups of files or do a complete backup to create a bootable image of the source drive.

  • Winclone: Winclone is a freeware tool that allows you to clone Boot Camp formatted partitions to an image or to another Boot Camp partition.

  • Firewire cable: Using a Firewire cable between the imaging Mac and the target Mac, the target machine in target disk mode, allows you to utilize the target machine's hard disk volumes as an external Firewire hard drive. This simplifies the imaging process greatly.


Creating the Mac OS X Source Image










NOTE
You will not need to restart the source machine between partition clone operations.



  1. Boot the source machine into target disk mode by holding down the 'T' key immediately after powering on the machine.

  2. Run CarbonCopyCloner on the imaging machine.

  3. Choose the source Macintosh HD Firewire volume from the drop down list on the left column of the screen.

  4. Choose Backup everything under Clone options.

  5. Choose the option to create create a disk image from the drop down list in the right column.

  6. Choose a save location for the image.

  7. Click Clone.


Creating the Windows Source Image



  1. Ensure the source machine is booted into target disk mode. If it is not, do so by holding down the 'T' key immediately after powering on the machine.

  2. Run Winclone on the imaging machine. (NOTE: You will need to install the NTFSprogs plugin.)

  3. Choose the Firewire Boot Camp partition from the Source: drop-down list.

  4. Click Image and choose a save location for the image.


Restoring the Mac OS X Source Image



  1. Ensure the target machine is booted into target disk mode. If it is not, do so by holding down the 'T' key immediately after powering on the machine.

  2. Run CarbonCopyCloner on the imaging machine.

  3. Select Restore from disk image... from the Source Disk drop-down menu in the left column.

  4. Select the Macintosh HD Firewire volume from the Target Disk drop-down in the right column.

  5. Select Backup Everything from the Clone Options drop-down list on the left.

  6. Check "Delete items that don't exist on the source".

  7. Click Clone.


Restoring the Windows Source Image



  1. Ensure the target machine is booted into target disk mode. If it is not, do so by holding down the 'T' key immediately after powering on the machine.

  2. Run Winclone on the imaging machine.

  3. Click the Restore tab at the top of the Winclone window.

  4. Drag the Winclone source image to the Restore Image: field.

  5. Select the BootCamp Firewire volume from the Destination drop-down list.

  6. Click Restore.

  7. Set up


Configuring the Mac OS X and Windows Installations



  1. Boot into the Mac OS X operating system by holding down the Option key when powering on the machine.

  2. Click the Macintosh HD icon to boot into OS X.

  3. Change the computer name:

    1. Click the Apple in the top left of screen on the menu bar.

    2. Click System Preferences from the menu.

    3. Click the Sharing icon.

    4. Enter the computer name in the Computer Name field.



  4. Restart the computer, holding down the Option key to view the boot menu.

  5. Click the Windows icon to boot into the Windows operating system.

  6. Complete the sysprep wizard to name the machine and join it to the domain.

  7. Hold down the Option key when the system restarts to boot back into the Windows operating system.

  8. Right mouse click the Boot Camp taskbar item in the bottom right of the screen.

  9. Choose Boot Camp Settings from the menu.

  10. Click the Startup Disk tab at the top of the Boot Camp Settings window.

  11. Select Windows to set it as the default startup volume.

  12. Click OK.

  13. Shutdown the machine.

Comments

  1. Dual booting Windows 7 and MAC OSX on a WIndows networkJanuary 28, 2014 at 7:24 AM

    […] Suite and Winclone Pro to Image a Lab of Dual-Boot Macs ) Older guide for OS X 10.5 + and Win XP ( Dual boot cloning for Macs with Boot Camp | LikeableBias […]

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Continuously Monitor Folder for New Files with PowerShell as a WindowsService

Recently encountered an old-school application that used a cobbled-together external service to generate reports and deliver to end-users in PDF format. Unfortunately, this service didn't have any error handling other than dropping the intended source content into a flat file in an error directory on the local disk. No monitoring, no notification, just fail and pretend it never happened. As these reports are critical to end users, I needed a way to monitor this directory for any new files and notify someone so that the report could be manually re-generated. After some initial Googling, I decided a quick PowerShell script would be the easiest method to continuously monitor the directory and fire off a notification when a new file is found. I'm admittedly an extreme PowerShell newbie, so I'm sure there are better, cleaner ways to do this, but this works nicely and is stable enough for now until my legacy system is retired in a few months. The below PowerShell script will inst...
Read more

Unprotect All Excel Sheets for All Workbooks in a Directory

This Excel macro came in very handy when I had a set of workbooks in a folder (and subfolders) that all needed unprotected before running another macro to combine all of the workbooks into a single file. Be sure to update the bolded variables below.  Source . Const cStartFolder = " C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\My Documents\Spreadsheets " 'no slash at end Const cFileFilter = " *.xlsx " Const cPassword = " CleverPassword " 'use empty quotes if blank Sub UnprotectAllWorksheets() Dim i As Long, j As Long, arr() As String, wkb As Workbook, wks As Worksheet ExtractFolder cStartFolder, arr() On Error Resume Next j = -1: j = UBound(arr) On Error GoTo 0 For i = 0 To j Set wkb = Workbooks.Open(arr(i), False) For Each wks In wkb.Worksheets wks.Unprotect cPassword Next wkb.Save wkb.Close Next End Sub Sub ExtractFolder(Folder As String, arr() As String) Dim i As Long, objF...
Read more

ChromeOS Flow by Hexxeh Install to HDD

I finally decided to pull out the netbook again and check out the ChromeOS release of Flow by Hexxeh . I got the image downloaded, untar'd and imaged to the thumbdrive. Now comes the part when I want to actually install it to the solid-state disk in my Asus EeePC, right? Well, online sources said to just run /usr/sbin/chromeos-install and it would be taken care of. It kept erroring with "Attempt to install to a removable device: /dev/sda". Of course, this is my thumbdrive so that would make sense. Since it took me some digging to figure this one out, I thought I'd throw up the solution here to make it a little more visible on the Interwebs. Instead, run this command: /usr/sbin/chromeos-install /dev/sdb This should work if your internal device is at least 8gb. Unfortunately for me, mine is 4gb and my source media is 2gb. Instead, I ended up just copying the entire live image from my thumbdrive to the hard drive. Whatever works, right? Run this command instead of the ab...
Read more