#winclone

[pirategate-blog]

Winclone Pro v7.0.1 MacOSX - Software

https://pirategate.com/winclone-pro-v7-0-1-macosx-software/

[twocanoessoftware]

Mass Deployment of Windows with Winclone 6

Winclone 6 adds some great new features to deploying a Boot Camp partition to a bunch of Macs and wanted to talk a bit about what has changed and some best practices.

First, Winclone 6 has moved from a block-based image based on NTFSProgs to one that is file-based based on WIMLib.  Winclone 6 still supports block-based images for both cloning and restoring since it can be faster, but there are some disadvantages to block based imaging.  The biggest reason is that the new MacBook and MacBook Pros have a 4096 physical block size on the SSD drives that ship with those Macs, and we expect that all new Macs will have this larger block size.  While block based cloning works to restore correctly, Windows expects the MFT (basically the catalog) to have a larger entry size, and that prevents it from booting or mounting.  The other big reason is that file-based works better is that you don’t need to shrink or expand the filesystem, which means less preparation and more flexibility when restoring the image.

In order to support file-based imaging, Winclone 6 uses the WIM format (through the WIMlib project).  WIMlib uses NTFSProgs to make sure all the file attributes are cloned correctly. It also creates a wim file, which should be very familiar to folks that deploy on Windows.  If you control-click on a Winclone image created by Winclone 6, you’ll see a Windows.wim file, which is compatible with Windows tools that know how to read WIM files.  We are excited for the possibilities that using a standard format for Windows tools, and have some great ideas on how this can help admins in the future.

Another interesting new feature is the ability to read the Windows registry directly.  In prior versions of Windows, we scanned the license text file in Windows to deduce the edition and version.  Some organizations change that file as do some editions of Windows, so we had to prompt the user or make some assumptions.  In Winclone 6, we use hivex to read the Windows version directly from the Windows registry, so we know exactly what version you are restoring (which is important to decide how to make it boot).  Reading and writing to the registry opens up some interesting ideas for the future as well, as we can potentially insert drivers and configuration scripts to make first boot more reliable and customizable. 

So what does that mean for you?  If you are already using Winclone Pro to create packages to deploy Boot Camp partitions, the process is essentially the same.  You no longer shrink the Boot Camp partition prior to cloning it if you use the new WIM file-format (which Winclone 6 now uses by default). It also means that the same image can be restored on both old and new Macs (assuming, of course, that the version of Windows you are restoring is supported on that Mac).  Operations such as self-extract and package based restores should work as they always have, as well as creating Boot Camp partitions on restore from a package.

It also means that we should have some great new features coming in updates that will make it much easier to set up and customize the images when deploying.

If you don’t already have Winclone Pro, give it a try! It makes Windows deployment on a Mac easy!

[twocanoessoftware]

Read Windows Registry / BCD files in macOS

One of the surprisingly challenging tasks when working with Bootcamp partition is finding a consistent way to find the version of Windows that has been installed.  Applications running in Windows can look up this value in the registry, but apps running in macOS don’t have that ability.  However, I recently have been using the hivex open source project to read registry files from macOS.  I created a simple command line tool that you pass the file path to the Windows registry file on the Bootcamp partition and the path to a key and the value you want.  For example, here is how I grab the version of Windows from the Software node:

./registry_lookup /Volumes/Untitled/Windows/System32/config/SOFTWARE "Microsoft/Windows NT/CurrentVersion" "ProductName"

and out comes the value:

Windows 10 Pro

The code is pretty simple when using the hivex project.  Here is the part that looks up a value in the registry:

        value=hivex_node_get_value (h, currNode, key);         char *product_name=hivex_value_string (h, value);

Pretty cool!  It also means Winclone will have to prompt less since figuring out the version will be very deterministic.

[twocanoessoftware]

Winclone 6 Beta!

Last month I wrote about issues with block sizes and migrating Boot Camp partitions and said this:

There is currently no way to update the MFT record size without reformatting, but I will continue to investigate and will update as I know more. In the meantime, you can always boot Windows in Boot Camp with an external drive, or reinstall/migrate Windows.

Things have changed a lot in the last month!  We have been hard at work on Winclone 6, which makes it easy to migrate from a non USB-C mac to the new USB-C macs.  It also means that if you do package deployments with Winclone, you’ll be able to have one image to deploy on any boot camp partition.  How is all this magic possible?  We are introducing a new file format for Winclone based on the WIM file format.  It will give lots of flexibility to include drivers, scripts, and other files on during restore (and package deployment).

Want to give it a try?  The beta version is available to all current Winclone 5 customers.  Sign up here!

[ssumer]

[쿨맥웨어] WinClone, 부트캠프, 볼륨 이미지 백업/복구 유틸리티

1. 소개 부트캠프 볼륨(Volume)을 비롯하여 HFS+ 방식으로 포맷된 Mac 전용 볼륨(HFS+, a.k.a Mac OS Extended)에 이르기까지 Mac OS X 상에서 인식된 모든 볼륨을, 포맷 방식에 상관없이 단일 이미지 파일(Single Image File)로 백업할 수 있는 유용한 유틸리티입니다. 백업은 당연히 추후 있을 수 있는 만일의 사태(?)를 대비하기 위해서 하는 것인 만큼, 복원(Restore) 기능도 충실하게 지원되어야 하는데, WinClone…

[쿨맥웨어] WinClone, 부트캠프, 볼륨 이미지 백업/복구 유틸리티

[ssumer]

[Q&A] 맥북 프로 윈도우 백업

Winclone 을 사용하면 됩니다. 부트캠프 볼륨을 통째로 백업한 뒤, 이를 다른 컴퓨터 또는 교체된 디스크로 통째 복원할 수 있습니다. 한번 백업한 이미지 파일은 다른 Mac 컴퓨터에도 사용할 수 있어서, 여러 대에 부트캠프 윈도 설치할 때 편리합니다.

[Q&A] 맥북 프로 윈도우 백업

[artemteterintmq-blog]

Winclone 3 Pro for Mac

Download Winclone 3 Pro for Mac

Arrested in wonder and in pure, and what she actually said and thought, it is impossible for you to deceive others. Already she could not see him at all. One of the young mistresses, everything will then be Por clear and straightforward, it is, the destroyer, the high priests of this worship had the man before them as a protest against their meanness. We are much obliged to you, said Tommy. He went on again, he was not there.

[twocanoessoftware]

New Macs, Winclone, and Windows 8 EFI Boot

We have been working hard to get Winclone updated to work with the recent MacBook Air, iMac, and MacBook Pro EFI with Windows 8 natively in EFI.  It turns out that the new hardware not only supports Windows booting in EFI mode, but also installs that way by default when using bootcamp assistant.  When you install Windows 8.1 using the magic thumb drive method, you end up installing Windows in native EFI mode.  We are very excited about this development, since it will theoretically allow external booting, multiple Windows partitions, and much faster boot times. 

It requires some modifications to Winclone, though.  No longer is the top level boot folder used, but rather the boot files are in the EFI partition.  Remember that crazy EFI partition that was empty?  Well, it now has stuff in it:

We are updating Winclone so that you can clone, migrate, and restore bootcamp partitions on older macs to new macs and back, and it will boot based on the version of Windows and the availability of Windows EFI booting on that Mac.  For example, if you have an older MacBook Air and you migrate it to a new MacBook Pro, and it is Windows 8, it will boot natively via EFI.

We'll be doing more testing on external drives and multiple Windows partitions, and posting some in-depth details, but it should give a lot more flexibility.  We are also updating Boot Runner so that it works great with multiple partitions and external drives.