Superduper! and Windows 7

[ashleykaryl]

I recently bought a Mac Pro and for work I need access to certain Windows only software, so I was thinking of using Boot Camp to install Windows 7, which I understand goes on the same drive as OS X and Apple somehow creates a separate partition.

Would Superduper! also be able to backup the Windows OS and data alongside my Mac data to the same external drive? Any suggestions or advice would be gratefully received. I've been making use of my wife's PC laptop until now but it would be more convenient to have it all in one place if possible.

[dnanian]

Definitely not, Ashley. In general, I'd sugest using Parallels or VMWare, and storing your data in a 'disk image' rather than a BootCamp partition.

Not only will you get a more useful Windows installation (since you can run it while running OSX), you'll be able to back up that data as well (note that you shouldn't be running the VM while backing up).

[ashleykaryl]

OK thanks Dave, I'll have to look into how all of this is done because it's completely new territory for me.

In many ways I'd rather avoid installing Windows on the Mac entirely, mainly because I wonder if it isn't opening the door to PC viruses or system conflicts but many people seem to find it works well. It's just rather inconvenient at present having to constantly swap computers and having Windows on the Mac Pro should solve that.

[dnanian]

Nah, you'd be isolating your "PC Viruses" in your virtual machine. They're totally separate file systems... and VMWare, at least, has some neat drive checkpointing features that let you easily roll back to a previous day should you have problems.

In many ways - perhaps most - a virtual Windows is better than a PC.

[ashleykaryl]

This is all good to know and hopefully of interest to other SuperDuper! users. I had a brief look at the different emulators and many speak well of virtualbox, which is free. Parallels seems to get very mixed reviews.

I did wonder if these would be overly sluggish but I have no interest in gaming software so it should be bearable on a Mac Pro. I still think I'd probably want to install Avast for Windows and presumably make use of the Windows firewall.

[brich]

This is all good to know and hopefully of interest to other SuperDuper! users. I had a brief look at the different emulators and many speak well of virtualbox, which is free. Parallels seems to get very mixed reviews.

I did wonder if these would be overly sluggish but I have no interest in gaming software so it should be bearable on a Mac Pro. I still think I'd probably want to install Avast for Windows and presumably make use of the Windows firewall.
I run Windows 7 Pro inside Parallels Desktop 6 with Snow Leopard, and always do SuperDuper bootable backup clones to my external firewire drive. Works great for me. Regarding Windows and anti-virus, I'd say simply install the free Microsoft Security Essentials. On my MacBook with 4 gigs of ram, I allocate 2 gigs to Parallels.