backup MBP with Windows (Bootcamp) Parition
 

I'm wondering if there are best practices for backing up an MBP with both OS X and Bootcamp partitions? On my Windows desktop I use Acronis True Image to backup the entire drive with all partitions to an image file on an external drive. The Acronis install CD is bootable and allows restore of the backup image to the hard drive. Of course True Image doesn't run on OS X.

Thanks for any recommendations on how to proceed!

Sorry: we don't back up BootCamp. You could try to use something like Winclone, or a Windows-based backup program running from inside Windows itself...

Thanks for your response, Dave.

Does SuperDuper backup the master boot record on a drive? In other words can it do a bare metal restore?

Is there a way to backup the OS X drive to an image on an external drive so the external drive can be used to store other data? Or does the external drive have to be dedicated to the backup process?

Thanks!

Michael

No. We copy volume to volume, so you'd need to erase the drive, but that's easy to do, and there's no need to copy the boot record. But you don't use MBR with Macs. You used GUID/APM (depending on Mac).

You'd generally want to partition that drive into two volumes, one for the backup and one for the "other stuff", using either GUID or APM (GUID in your case).