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How Do You Do Clone A Mac Drive using Win7 OS?

A have a MacBook Pro A1229 with the bad NVidia video chip issue. The laptop quickly lost video and I don't have a very current backup. Most of the cloning solutions (ie superduper) are Mac based. Does anyone know of a cloning solution that is Win7 OS based please? I'd like to read my drive in Win7 OS. I'd also like to back the drive up by cloning it to an external USB drive. I only have a Win7 OS laptop available to use at this time. It's my understanding the drive has multiple partitions due to BootCamp, XP Pro and Leopard 10.5 installed. I'd like to keep the full disk structure to restore after I have the recall logic board work done. Thank you for reading this...

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if you need your information during the repair the best thing would be to remove the drive and mount it in an external enclosure....... and use a bootable Linux distro to access your information...... and back everything up to a FAT32 drive so file permissions are not an issue later.

esp since until you do it, a disk image is not a guaranteed to work kind of thing....... if a new logicboard is installed windows "might" not like it and you may have to call microsoft to re-validate your license.

As far as cloning the drive and applying that image to the same size hard drive clonezilla would work. ( i have used clonezilla on multiboot OS systems before)..... a bigger drive would still work, however without using advanced features of OSX's command line diskutil or another partition tool...... resizing the OSX partition might be an issue......unless you just want to copy your drive for temp. access while its in the shop?

anyway you can clonezilla it and using Linux to mount the freshly cloned drive get your data......

I assume your taking the drive out to get the data since the laptop won't work with a graphics chipset failed cloning/imaging would be hard with any program since you can't see what your doing

So removing the drive before sending it in for service might be best, and Linux will read all the partitions. (read only mode to be safe and you will have to deal with file permissions later for any files you change.

If your lucky and the data you need is on the OSX side and you have remote login on you can SSH into the mac......... SSH requires command line experience and i don't know if you have that.

If remote management is on too, you can just remote the entire machine with VNC.

Sorry if non of this or just some of this makes sense.......tired..... just options i could think of before and after repair which exceeds the scope of the question.

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Brain - OP here, what an awesome answer! Thanks for taking the time to write. Yes, I've pulled the drive. I'm wondering if the local Apple store will do the logic board work with the HD removed. I'm looking for a clone solution after I reduce size by pulling all my data off first. Thanks for the warning, RE the logic board change for Windows, forgot about that. With the new logic board maybe chipsets will change and Windows XP Pro will be nasty for keeping licensing. Clonezilla Live will read HFS+ Mac drives, I'll learn what I have formatted for my Leopard partition. I'm thinking put Clonezilla in a UBCD distro to run it. I'm working IT now and we VNC all the time it's easier than walking the whole building every day. I've turned my remote access off for the Mac sadly. Didn't think about Secure SHell that's another nugget to get access. No apologies necessary, I appreciate the full answer, got my creative juices going with more options to complete the repair, much appreciated here... Thank you!

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it's tricky - but ou can access mac drives under windows os!

i used transmac to clone/manipulate mac drives/files under windows (back in my hackintosh days) - surely it has a weak workflow and you can't do everthing - but it's better than nothing!

there is a 15 days trial: CLICK ME

install it, connect the hard drive and when windows tells you something about formatting - click cancel(!!)

start transmac and read the quick start guide/help ;-)

(it's been a long time since i've posted something - time to say hi to the ifixit "seniors" ;-) - sorry guys, i'm pretty busy since i've replaced the soldering iron with my pizza oven and additionally started fixing scooters - it's a little bit more fun than fixing cell phones and computers ;-) )

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Hey Markus! Great to see you back... Learned loads from you so thanks! Pop over to meta, take a look at our junk competition... That pizza oven or scooters might win (pity there are no prizes.. Just for fun) hope to see more of you on here, all the best. Jen

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I have never tried to access a Mac drive with Transmac. I have tried burning a few things with it and none of them were recognized by the Macs I tried them in.

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i never tried burning anthing with it. i accessed files, cloned the setup disk to an usb pendrive and so on - worked always. since the free trial version is able to do anything - pcresolve could give it a shot. *hi jen, you learned something from me? *blushing* ;-)

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Markus - I will definitely give the trail a shot. Yes, I'd like to access the drive, pull all of my data files, then do a disk clone with a hopefully smaller disk size. Nice that it accesses volumes on a boot drive like BootCamp. Thanks for your feedback!

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That is nice to know that it always has worked for you to access files on a Mac drive and to clone. I'll give those functions a whirl. With my setup it would be nice to do those things. Thank you for the info. If I could up you again I would.

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I don't believe its possible to do what you want. The Windows OS is very unforgiving of other operating systems and usually won't read them. If you try this the Win 7 laptop will ask you to format the drive if it even recognizes it. I am including a link to the only OS7 cloner I know of. Good luck.

http://www.goldentroutsoftware.com/scc.h...

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+ You are correct, it is not possible. I have tried numerous programs. To date none have worked.

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Yup. I also purchased that software you recommended after my last windows 7 issue, it works great. +

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Windows cannot "see" the mac drive since its in the HFS format, windows uses NTFS, and the only common format between the two is FAT. To get around this problem you'll need a third system as an intermediary.

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It sounds weired to make clone of Mac using Win 7 OS and I am not getting why do you want to do this, when there are many software to Clone Mac Clone Macefficiently.

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This is old you are probably dead already, but he wanted to do this because HE DOESN'T HAVE ANOTHER MAC,

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