For our disaster recovery process, we are backing up a physical Windows 2008 domain controller using the built-in Windows Backup tool.

We are doing a full backup which allows bare metal recovery in Windows 2008.

To recover, we create a new blank VM in VMware Server 2. We boot off the Windows 2008 DVD media, click REPAIR THIS COMPUTER, then select the WINDOWS COMPLETE PC RESTORE option.

We select the backup files then attempt to begin the restore. It fails straight away with the following error:

The Windows Complete PC Restore operation failed.

Error details: The disk that is set as active in BIOS is too small to recover the original system disk. Replace the disk with a larger one and retry the restore operation. (0x80042407)

The VM definately has big enough hard disks configured.

Instead of restoring a physical DC, if we use the same steps to restore a previously-backed up VM, into this new VM, the process completes OK.

Please note that the physical DC we are trying to restore uses dynamic disks in Windows 2008, not sure if that causes any problems.

Has anyone successfully restored a physical Windows 2008 server to a VM? Any ideas why I am getting this error?

Many thanks.