![]() ![]() Imagine my disappointment when I saw the Windows startup graphic disappear and instead be replaced by a Blue Screen of Death. This is the point where it fell apart, and also the point where running Sysprep would have helped. After installing Winclone I connected the external drive and then initiated the copy over to Boot Camp. ![]() Once again, it’s possible that there are Live CD tools I could have used but I decided to simply purchase a copy of Winclone (I only needed the $30 version). Natively, OS X just doesn’t care much for NTFS partitions. My Windows 7 install is NTFS formatted, so it wasn’t a case of just dumping the Windows partition into the Boot Camp partition. I needed to figure out how to dump this clone into Boot Camp. I stumbled upon this myself but as it turns out the folks at twocanoes also have an article titled Create a Boot Camp Partition (I figured this out before I learned about Winclone and decided it was the best tool in this case).Īnd so there I was with a clone of my Windows system and a Boot Camp partition waiting to receive it. Once it was finished I had my standard OS X partition as well as a new Boot Camp FAT partition. It will non-destructively resize the existing OS X partition. The next step would be to set the new partition format to FAT and then click Apply. Here, you can then resize the existing OS X partition along with the future Windows partition. This adds a new partition (only in the window, it hasn’t been applied yet). Next, beneath the Partition Layout box I clicked the plus (+) symbol. Instead, I went into Disk Utility and selected the partition for OS X (on a default install it’s typically labeled ‘Macintosh HD’). Not in Boot Camp itself but then again, it’s just a GUI for existing tools. My problem was that I already had a copy of Windows but there currently isn’t an option to just resize the OS X drive partition (non-destructive) and create a new one for Windows. The problem with Apple’s utility is that it makes the assumption that one is installing a fresh copy of Windows. This was an interesting little trick that didn’t actually require the Boot Camp utility. However, I have no complaints about the tool that I used. It took a while and would have probably taken less time if I had used a method that didn’t require the OS to be started and running. In the end I had a copy of my Windows 7 partition cloned to an external, USB 3.0 drive. As far as I can tell this actually worked just fine. I can’t explain why I didn’t pursue that route but I chose to use EaseUS Todo Backup Free (note, check the license regarding your intended use). It’s possible that I might have found a cloning tool that could boot from an external CD/DVD or USB. In this situation there weren’t many options. Since the original Windows 7 partition was installed to an SSD I didn’t really have any options for drive removal (this wasn’t a system that I owned so I wasn’t about to tear it down even if it had a SATA compatible SSD). However, even though I wasted a lot of time I did learn a few valuable things along the way. So, once again, I’m confident that I could have succeeded in this endeavor had I followed the advice from twocanoes. Perhaps if I hadn’t been trying to do this quickly I could have attempted this while also having a good fallback clone of the partition made BEFORE running Sysprep or any other changes (and it did not turn out quickly – I spent more time trying to make this work than I did simply starting with a fresh Windows 7 Bootcamp install). ![]() I was very concerned that I’d run Sysprep before cloning, only to then discover that it simply wouldn’t work. Now, my reason for not following it wasn’t irrational. Basically, this is the advice I did not follow. Should you be considering such a move then a good place to begin is a blog post by twocanoes titled Migrating a Real PC to Boot Camp with Winclone 4. As a result, I couldn’t simply pull a drive and execute more direct partition clones. This particular transfer was a bit more challenging due to the fact that both systems use SSD drives. After all, I did succeed in migrating the partition over and it did attempt to boot… In addition, had I followed some advice available in a blog post it’s possible that it would have worked. However, I have learned a few things that others will find useful. I need to make it clear that this project was not a success. I recently needed to transfer a Windows 7 install from a Lenovo notebook over to a MacBook Pro Bootcamp partition. I realize that a Mac is actually a PC but for the sake of simplicity I added it to the title so everyone would understand what I was trying to do. MacBook Pro (Late 2013, 13.3″ with Retina Display)įor the more literal folks, I apologize. ![]()
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