Backing up with Time Machine , SuperDuper and Winclone

Do you have an Intel base Mac Computer running bootcamp or maybe on parallels or vmware fusion? Please read on.
If you ever felt that someday your internal hard drive would quit and stop working please don't hesitate to figure out your backup solution. There are thousands of ways to backup data or restore system drives but what I will give you is something that is widely use and proves to be efficient and simple.
The first step is to make sure you have the following hardware or software:

1. A USB/Firewire External Drive 250GB and up. Best to have the mini Portables.
2. SuperDuper! by Shirt Pocket for bootable backup.
3. Winclone by Two Volcanoes for backing up WinXP or VISTA
4. Time Machine enabled (This means you have it working with either a Time Capsule or another external Drive.)
5. Patience and Time.

Before we dive into this lets pause for a moment and lets discuss what we are trying to accomplish here.

A. I want to have a standby bootable clone of my Macintosh HD if something catastrophic happens to my tiny 2.5 inch drive.
B. I want to be able to restore my bootcamp partition running WinXP or Vista should it be compromised with Virus or the drive itself failed.
C. In Mac, I want to go back in time and retrieved files I deleted today that happens to exist 2 days ago or a month ago.
D. I want to continue to work while my failed hard drive is waiting to be replaced. Can I do this with Time Machine? Perhaps no.

For those of you who love Time Machine, It is not the fastest way to restore your failed hard drive provided even if you have a spare drive in your pocket. It is absolutely still a great compliment to Super Duper! or Winclone or vice versa.

WARNING: Novice Mac Users proceed with CAUTION. Always double-check the disk your are working with.

STEP 1: 2-3 MINS

Okay, Lets prepare the external drive we have (250GB and up) the size really depends on how much Gigabytes of space you are using in your Mac. For my own rig, my MacPro Book came with 320GB. I have 32GB of Windows XP for bootcamp and the rest of the drive I'm only using 122GB of it. In my rig, I was using a 300GB external drive. Using Disk Utilities, I partitioned the drive into 2. 1st partition is 229GB and 2nd one is 50GB. You can name the 1st one MAC HD BU and the 2nd one Bootcamp BU. For those of you that have not started Time Machine yet, this is the time you can perhaps consider adding a 3rd partition and call it Time Machine BU.

Note: on the bottom click on OPTIONS as you select the volume scheme; it is advisable to use GUID for compatibility with Intel Macs. Once you hit apply it will do its chores and you will see 2 or 3 drives on the desktop after it completion.


STEP 2:
Install SuperDuper! and Run the app. 4 hrs (122GB) depends on the size of USED space.
Super Duper! I would say is easy to use. It has a simple interface and one thing I like about it is the smart update. You can download it from here. Now this process will take hours and hours. Depending on your used space on the drive, this is something you might do before you go to sleep. Just for safety I would go to Energy Saver and put the Computer Sleep option to Never.


STEP 3:
Install Winclone and run the app. 2-3 hrs (32GB) also depends on the size of BOOTCAMP partition. Winclone to me is the most easiest to use. I recommend it due to my experience using it. You can find Winclone here for free. In the IMAGE tab you are creating an image of the Source disk, which will be Windows partition, created by Bootcamp. In my rig it is called Bootcamp. The RESTORE tab is the opposite, this is when you want to revert or restore back to your previous image from the last time you did your image. This is a handy tutorial from coreworkz which is basic.

Note: Winclone does not make a bootable copy of your Windows partition. All it does is create image disk. There might be some program out there that can do it. This approach is practical and easy. Other methods might be more of a headache.

STEP 4:
Time Machine Setup. 2-4 hours (Initial Backup only) follow up backups takes less than 30 mins. I will leave this link for you since Apple has done a great job on its tutorial. I am personally using Linkstation Live 1TB as my network attached storage for its TIme Machine Support. Stay tuned for that tutorial, as it is tricky. For now, the easiest way to do this is using your external partitioned Time Machine BU that you have created if this is your first time in STEP 1.

Okay folks, there you have it. If you think this needs revision or something is missing feel free to leave a comment.