This may well be too late to be helpful, but it is quite possible to back up a Boot Camp volume via Time Machine. (And the previous answerer clearly didn't even understand the question, since he appears to be talking about writing backups to an NTFS drive.)
In fact, it's really easy. Rename the 'BOOTCAMP' volume to anything other than 'BOOTCAMP' and Time Machine will recognize it as a back-up-able drive. Then go to the Time Machine preference panel and click on 'Options...' You should now be able to select your NTFS volume and remove it from the exclusion list. Next time you run a backup, it will back up the NTFS drive.
HOWEVER: It may not be possible to restore a bootable NTFS drive from a Time Machine backup, due to permissions issues, metadata, etc. (Restoring would involve installing NTFS-3g or otherwise mounting an NTFS volume as read/write, and then restoring files to that, too, so remember there's an extra step.) Given that, though, it's a good way of saving your data files on Windows, if you have enough room on your backup drive.
If I have time, I may try a full restore from my backup to my boot camp partition. If I do, I'll record the results here.
EDIT: This may only work with 10.6, and/or may only work if you have MacFUSE and NTFS-3G installed.
EDIT: As far as I can tell, this has not worked correctly since 10.7. I have not yet tested it with 10.9, but in both 10.7 and 10.8 the boot camp partition is not backed up no matter what it is named.
You are correct. Time machine makes a sparse disk bundle to hold backups on Time Capsule and instead uses a folder for attached hard drives.
Due to the security settings on the backup files, it's not as easy or reliable, but here's how you could start:
- Get a first backup or two on the TC to set up the sparse bundle
- Disable Time Machine
- Mount the Bundle and disable the security that keeps you from writing to it
- Delete the current backups since they likely won't mesh correctly with the old ones. (I'm not 100% sure this is needed - but I would do it)
- Copy in the old history
- Re-enable the security and ensure file permissions on the Time Capsule files are correct.
- Enable Time Machine and start a backup to see how it goes.
See this macworld article for a version of the commands to disable and then re-enable the protection on the sparse bundle disk image. I haven't done this as I would rather not muck with the internals of Time Machine. I know I only have to connect the old hard drive to my mac to see all my old history. The risk of using old incorrect information isn't worth it to me - but that doesn't mean you don't have a good reason to move the files over. If I were to do this, I'd consult with a Apple technician as they gave me specific instructions on 10.5 when I had a MLB swap on how to migrate the old Time Capsule backups to work with the "new" mac. Do have a look at the end of the Time Machine lesson in Mac 101 There's a nice tip on option click of the Time Machine menu bar icon to view files on older volumes than the current one.
Good Luck
Best Answer
The format of the backup has changed a lot between 10.6.8 and 10.9. There were several upgrades and some newer versions recognised backups from previous versions. This could be one of reasons why Apple recommends upgrades for each new OS sequentially.
If you continue backups, most likely Time Machine will do one of two:
I am not sure what it chooses and when but I had both those cases happening. If you do not need old backups, just remove them. If you need them, you can move them to a subfolder.
One more solution for you could be to remove and add a Time Machine disk. Sometimes that helps Time Machine to recognise that the drive has backups. Logic of Time Machine is very strange sometimes.