I just successfully installed VMware Fusion 5.0, and then installed Windows 7 Home Premium on an external USB 3.0 Drive. My host computer is a new Retina MacBook Pro. The external drive partition that holds the guest Win7 OS was formatted in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
I'm trying to work out my migration plan from my previous self built Windows XP PC which has a separate internal disk for my documents formatted in NTFS, and a separate internal two disk RAID array for pictures, also formatted in NTFS. I have about 160 GB on the documents disk, and another 500GB on the pictures RAID disk. All of this is backed up to a single external 1.0 TB hard drive. In addition, I have another internal disk that holds nothing but images of my boot drive disk as created by Acronis True Image Home 2011.
My first question:
Are there any errors in my methodology to format an external hard drive(s) to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), copy the data from the two internal drives mentioned above and connect them via USB 3.0 to my MacBook Pro? In addition to having the data local to my now primary computer, which includes both my MacBook Pro OS X (10.8), and the Guest Windows 7 OS's I'd like to use TimeMachine to do all of my backups. With the reformatting of the new external drives from NTFS to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), It appears that I'd be able to use time machine to do a very simple to manage backup for all of my data.
As info: I have a USB 3.0 ioSafe fireproof / waterproof 3TB hard drive that I plan on using for this backup scheme with TimeMachine. It too will be formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Unfortunately, my ability to go fully cloud storage with all of my data will be difficult since, because of rural location, my access speed to the internet is slow.
I guess this is a long way of asking for a better understanding of migrating data from an NTFS to a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted disks in an environment being handled by a virtual handler such as in my case VMware Fusion 5.0.... also will TimeMachine backup the Guest OS just as it does it's native Mac OS?
My second question:
Does TimeMachine create an exact copy of your files (data files and operating system files) to back up, or is it creating a compressed image readable only by the (in this case TimeMachine) program that created it as Acronis True Image does? As I've discoverd with my RAID array, I'm not as fond of a backup plan that's reliant on a program on my mother board to decipher the data that's on it... I much prefer a direct copy of my data as backup so it's transferrable to any computer. Granted, TimeMachine, being on any Mac is already allows my data to be transferrable in this regard, but still I'd like to understand how it works.
My Third question:
In this virtual OS world that I've now entered, it appears that I would be prudent to still have some sort of botable backup media available for my Guest OS... is that so? If so, how is it produced? Would a rescue bootable CD / DVD still work via a drive attached to my MacBook Pro?