Running Windows on your Mac is pretty easy these days as Apple provides Boot Camp that is built right into Leopard. Some Mac users may have found out that once they are running Windows they are subject to all sorts of malware, spyware, adware, etc. Even with running Anti-virus and other protection, Windows being Windows they might find themselves with a broken or crippled Windows installation, yes even on the Mac. Sometimes I am amazed when users think that running Windows on a Mac is somehow different. Anyway backup is essential.

Unfortunately backing up a Boot Camp partition is not as easy as you might expect as Mac cloning software like SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner do not work with Windows volumes. To run Windows without a complete backup is not an option as far as I am concerned. So here is where Winclone (free) comes to the rescue.

Winclone allows for cloning your Boot Camp partition for Windows XP or Windows Vista with ease. If you need to set-up multiple machines with both Mac OS X and Boot Camp like in a lab, Winclone will make your job a a whole lot easier. Simply create an image as you would for a backup, and Winclone will create the Windows partition and restore the OS and data onto the new partition.

Winclone even includes the script needed to deploy images with Apple Remote Desktop so you can easily send a new Winclone image to a group of Intel Macs, imaging the entire lab in minutes.

Check the Winclone FAQ here. Download Winclone and give it a spin.

    | Tags: backup, boot camp, cloning, Macintosh, Windows