Re: Clone backups/restores ala Mark Conrad


"James Glidewell" <jimglidewell@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Jnyp2q.3Jt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mark Conrad wrote:
In article <0001HW.C304595D0005BFB3B019F94F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
TaliesinSoft <taliesinsoft@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I do run Vista on my Mac, but under Parallels Desktop instead of Boot
Camp. Because of that SuperDuper! has no problem backing up Vista and
the included applications and data.

I really prefer Parallels, backup is easy, however the Vista dictation
app' is extremely CPU intensive.

That limits me to BootCamp, for speed reasons.

So you say. What is the speed difference of Dragon under Parallels versus
running it "under" BootCamp?

And how did you make those measurements?

How much worse is the user experience under Parallels, and how do the
problems
manifest themselves?

Quite honestly, unless there is a significant bottleneck somewhere, it
seems
like running under Parallels should be plenty fast. CPU speeds have
increased
by at least an order of magnitude in the past three years or so, and voice
recognition has been around a lot longer than that, so it seems ludicrous
that you should not be able to run Dragon under Parallels.

Again, what are the relative performance and user issues that drive you to
a
dual-boot environment? Or are you simply making things more complicated
because of *theoretical* performance issues (and because it makes your
"special expertise" necessary)?

You would not believe how difficult it is to backup the Vista partition
created by BootCamp.


Just a small hint:

My Vista partition is 75 GB of which approx' 15 GB is used, 60 GB is free
space.

Well, that seems remarkably dumb. Why not just create a 20GB partition
and simply backup the whole thing? It's not like running out of space
is a big issue, since you seem to repartition disks almost as often as
I change my socks.

I had to load the free space up with special temporary files, such that
when I got through loading, the free space on the Vista partition was
only 4 MB. (that is 4 megabytes)

You know what ordinarily happens when you try loading up a vista
partition that much, it ordinarily crashes, crashes very heavily.

Completely unnecessary if you back up the whole partition. Or created
a block-oriented run-length-encoding program as I had outlined previously.

Penalty for not doing that step is that the archive compressed version of
the backup file is huge, around 80 GB.

Because you were foolish enough to create a partition far larger than
needed.

WITH the special loading operation, compressed backup drops down to about
13 GB, which _includes_ all of the Mac partition also.


Clone backups occupy a lot of space, but I have been using them for
years.

If you insist on having 60GB of free space on your Vista partition (for
"future growth" or some such) why not simply copy the whole thing
to an external firewire drive? Yes, it would take longer, but that is
why I do backups when I'm asleep. As usual, you have made a number of
dubious choices up front (like the 80GB partition size) and then have
to create elaborate workarounds to address the resulting issues.

Why you think that this sort of thing is interesting to anyone is a
mystery.

While there are a wide variety of ways to back up Mac and Windows file
systems, there appears to be only *one* person who has chosen to
follow the "Mark Conrad Method" of file system backups. Despite your
hundreds of postings on the subject. What is it about your method that
makes it so unpalatable that not a single other person is willing to
adopt it or even try it?

I don't think it has all that much to do with the method itself...

Thank God for people like you.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: BootCamp vs Parallels, final rehash
    ... How can you use Boot Camp within Parallels? ... So make a smaller partition or buy a bigger drive. ... Can't make a smaller Vista partition 'cause have really big Windows ... Mac partition does not mind, 'cause I can throw a lotta Mac stuff on the ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: How to "wipe" ALL Mac files slack space?
    ... Vista partition is 48.7 GB ... Yep, my "bizarre" reason is to have a robust backup, that can recover my ... Vista partition, it is a combined backup of both partitions. ... KillDisk that would work on present day Intel Mac with its HFS+ file ...
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  • Re: Parallels or BootCamp? - - - BootCamp or Parallels?
    ... And Parallels supports Boot Camp. ... virtual hard disks and Boot Camp partition with Windows XP /SP2 or Windows ... Vista installations only." ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: Clone backups/restores ala Mark Conrad
    ... I really prefer Parallels, backup is easy, however the Vista dictation app' is extremely CPU intensive. ... My Vista partition is 75 GB of which approx' 15 GB is used, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: Laufwerk D auch in meinem Ordner
    ... Das war echter Murks. ... Und: existiert die Partition D: wieder? ... Du ohne Sachverstand an wichtigen Innereien von Vista herumgebogen hast. ... Das Backup stammt hoffentlich noch von vor der Verbiegerei. ...
    (microsoft.public.de.windows.vista.administration)