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Move Boot Camp to a replacement drive

If you are replacing your Mac's internal drive with a new drive and need to move Boot Camp over, here are some steps to prepare for the move.

1. Boot Camp can be moved either before or after replacing the Mac's internal drive, but the process is easier to manage by first handling the OS X system migration, replacing the drive and confirming that your OS X system on the new internal drive is stable, up-to-date and functions as expected. 

2. You'll need a way to attach either the new drive (before upgrading) or the old drive (after upgrading)  to your Mac externally to transfer data.  USB-SATA adapters and enclosures are readily available from computer stores and online vendors and work fine for moving Boot Camp using Winclone.

3. Keep in mind that Winclone will help move the Boot Camp partition but you will need to use other utilities to move the OS X system from the old to the new drive. 

4. When setting up the OS X partition on the new drive, whether by migrating over from the old drive or installing OS X from scratch, you do not need to also create an empty Boot Camp partition.  You may wait to create the Boot Camp partition until after completing the OS X setup.  For the sake of simplicity, it helps to get the OS X system completely functional on the new internal drive before proceeding with moving Boot Camp from the old drive.  

5. Create the Boot Camp partition on the new drive using Disk Utility. Make sure to create a partition at least 3-4 GB larger than the source Boot Camp partition rather than exactly the same size or smaller than the source.  The rounding of size calculations in OS X can result in partitions too small to contain the image despite showing an exact size match.

6. Attach the original drive to the Mac using a USB-SATA adapter cable or enclosure.  You can also use a Thunderbolt or Firewire to SATA adapter, depending on which of these high-speed ports are available on your Mac.  

7. Verify that the attached external drive is mounted on the OS X desktop.  If it does not, make sure to uninstall any third-party NTFS drivers before proceeding.  

8. Install Winclone.  In the Sources column on the left side of the Winclone window, the external original drive's Boot Camp partition will be visible.  Select it then locate the new empty Boot Camp partition in the Destinations window and select it.  Click "Restore to Volume".  

(Note: you can also select the destination "Save image" to make an archive file of Boot Camp, then restore to the new partition or save it as a backup copy.)

9. Once the data transfer completes, quit Winclone, disconnect the external drive cable, restart while holding the Option key (or select Boot Camp in System Preferences-Startup Disk before restarting), select Boot Camp.

10. At initial startup, Windows will initiate a disk checking process to ensure data integrity.  This is normal and should be left to complete. The system will restart and Windows will boot normally. 

Let us know if you run into problems or have questions: support@twocanoes.com.

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