Re: Lost battle with BootCamp (Summation)

In article <1lip23lkc0op60sor57r9dl0gcsn8dphdn@xxxxxxx>,
Howard Brazee <howard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

As a result of the crippled installation of XP Pro on a Mac, there is a
big problem with bootable backup and restore of Windows XP Pro, at least
as far as I am concerned.


Therefore I am going to junk the very fast BootCamp, and return to using
the somewhat slower but much more flexible Parallels build 3188.

What happens when you use both? Do you have the advantages of
Parallels when it points to a Boot Camp Windows partition?

That was exactly my plan, to use both.

I implemented that plan.

First I installed BootCamp 1.2

Second I used BootCamp to partition my one Mac partition into two
partitions.

Third I installed and activated Windows XP Pro into the Windows
partition.

Fourth I installed Parallels 3188 into my Mac partition.

Fifth I used the checkbox in Parallels "Custom" install to tell
Parallels to use the existing BootCamp partition.



Initially everything worked fine.

I could operate Windows XP Pro either from Parallels, or alternatively
from BootCamp.

If I needed a slight bit more speed, I would run Windows XP Pro
_directly_ from the BootCamp partition, without running Parallels at
all.


If I needed more flexibility, such as the ability to use the Apple USB
modem, then I would open Parallels, and run Windows XP Pro from
Parallels, using the Windows partition created by BootCamp.



The problem with using Parallels in conjunction with BootCamp is that
apparently there is no way to create a ROBUST bootable backup of Windows
XP Pro.

Why? - because the commonly used bootable backup disks like the popular
Windows backup DVD "True Image" will not boot on a Mac.

In fact, the "True Image" DVD will not even boot on some real PCs, like
the ASUS laptop computer I own.

Why? - because Microsoft does not have tight control over the hundreds
of different PC brands. Result is that True Image will work on some
PCs, but not on others.

On my PC ASUS laptop for example, pressing the esc key at startup gets
me the text screen where I can select which bootable device to boot from.

The text screen of the ASUS PC lists True Image as a bootable device.

I highlight the CD/DVD drive to boot from, using the arrow keys.

Onscreen instructions tell me to press the Enter key, in order to boot
from the physical CD/DVD drive.

I press Enter, main text screen disappears, replaced by a line of text:

"Press any key to boot from CD/DVD drive"

....so I quickly press the spacebar while that line of text is still
onscreen.

ASUS computer totally ignores me, and boots into Windows !!!

Result is that I can not restore Windows XP if it breaks, and it WILL
break.



This crap does not happen with Apple computers, because Apple controls
the hardware as well as the software.




Back to the bootable backup problem with BootCamp
*************************************************
By ROBUST backup I mean a complete mirror image of ALL windows files,
partitions, drivers, file systems, EVERYTHING - - - such that if Windows
totally breaks and becomes 100% unusable, your backup scheme will
restore everything back to normal in a few minutes.

When Windows XP Pro breaks, it often breaks very badly.

Even simple things that Macs can recover from, like over-stuffing the
boot partition, breaks Windows very severely.



With normal Windows backup schemes like using True Image apparently
unusable via BootCamp, it becomes impossible to backup and restore a
bootable Windows partition if it breaks badly.

Well, not totally impossible, only 99.99% impossible.

It COULD be done by making a Unix "dd" copy of the whole darn Windows
partition, but this is not too feasible because of the huge amount of
disk space needed, not to mention the time involved in backing up such
huge files and later restoring them.



By contrast, it is _fairly_ easy to backup Windows XP Pro when using
Parallels. (build 3188)

Several backup methods work, fairly robust easy methods using
"SuperDuper" - - - or the _extremely_ robust method I use which is
complicated and therefore not too suitable for the usual Mac user.

Mark-
.

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