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How do I restore a system image to my Mac's Boot Camp partition without erasing the whole disk?

Anonymous
2010-09-06T18:04:36+00:00

I have an iMac on which I created an extra partition (using the built-in Boot Camp Assistant app) to install Windows 7 Professional. I did so and then used Windows Backup and Restore to create a System Image of that partition (C:). I erased the partition later and then re-created it and now I want to restore the System Image that I created to the new partition, but am not given the option to do so during restoration.

Erasing the entire disk is not an option for me because I need to use the Mac partition as well.

Restoring the image and then re-installing Mac OS X is also not an option for me because of the necessity of the hybrid EFI/MBR partition that is necessary for dual-booting (concurrent to the fact that I want OS X as the first partition on the disk.)

In addition, I have already read these two articles and they do not address my situation:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-is-a-system-image

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Restore-your-computer-from-a-system-image-backup

Can anyone help here?

Windows for home | Other | Recovery and backup

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  1. Anonymous
    2017-11-01T19:10:14+00:00

    Could you please elaborate the method ? In OSX-10 Sierra, I have installed Windows 10 using Bootcamp. I have updated Windows 10 to latest 1703 release also. How do I make a backup & restore this Windows partition ? Bootcamp accepts only an ISO image.  Do

    I have to repeat the whole process again to re-install Windows from scratch ?

    What you want to do in this case (probably too late now) is make that bootcamp partition in macOS/OSX, but do not install Win10 to it. If you do, you won't be able to unselect "Format partition" option.

    Create a boot USB drive using Media Creation Tool (see https://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to-download-windows-7-8-and-8.1-installation-media-legally/) and then boot to that (holding Option key). Then go to Troubleshoot -> System Image Restore and hook up your external drive that has the System Image you created in Windows 10 from the "Backup & Recovery (Windows 7)" part of the Control Panel. The "Format" option should be unselected for you and keep it that way.

    So now you'll be able to restore from the image without having to format the whole drive. Hope this helps!

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-07-09T00:57:14+00:00

    I'm running BootCamp on a Macbook pro (late 2013 15 inch), and restored an image without any problems. My hard drive was failing, so I used the Windows backup tool to make an image (of the bootcamp partition). Once the harddrive was replaced with a clean install of OSX (and no bootcamp partition, since it was a new drive), I redid the bootcamp partition from OSX, and when I got to point where you install Windows 7, I did the restore from image option, which I had stored on an external HDD. I was afraid it was going to overwrite the Mac partition, but it didn't. Everything works fine now!

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-07-27T07:03:44+00:00

    Could you please elaborate the method ? In OSX-10 Sierra, I have installed Windows 10 using Bootcamp. I have updated Windows 10 to latest 1703 release also. How do I make a backup & restore this Windows partition ? Bootcamp accepts only an ISO image.  Do I have to repeat the whole process again to re-install Windows from scratch ?

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  4. Anonymous
    2010-09-07T09:02:41+00:00

    Thanks! 

    This is a question of writing to an NTFS partition, which Apple does not provide any drivers for. I followed your link and will post to technet.microsoft.com in addition to here.

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  5. Anonymous
    2010-09-07T08:37:26+00:00

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