How to create VMWare guest from Acronis TIB backup?

[BobAgi]

I have a crashed HP laptop, with Win7 x64 Pro as operating system.

The crash was hardware related (power supply) but it will be a while before it is repaired, so I want to virtualize the laptop using Workstation7. This way I hope to be able to continue working with it while waiting.

Note: I have not upgraded yet to WS8 because of the numerous issues I saw in this forum following its release. So whatever advice you can give it must be related to the WS7 level...

I have a full disk backup including all partitions of the laptop SSD disk done with Acronis True Image Home 2012 with Universal Restore option.

It was done on an XP computer where I had installed Acronis and with the SSD attatched via a SATA dock.

How could I go about converting this TIB into a working virtual machine?

I have done P2V a few times already with earlier HP laptops, but I used the Paragon GoVirtual product at that time and most importantly the operating systems on those laptops was always XP-Pro. Now with the hidden system boot partition of Win7Pro X64 it does not work.

At least I believe the reason it does not work is the boot partition...

Anyway, given the Acronis TIB backup with the whole disk, what can I do?

I have seen suggestions to convert to VHD format, but that is a no-go since VHD maxes out at 128 Gb and this drive is 256 Gb.

So how do I get it into vmdk format ready to go?

[GaneshNetworks]

Refer the post # 8 and 9 in the link: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/4078#comment-32404

~Ganesh

[BobAgi]

That is basically what I first tried to do, but it failed.... I did this:

1) Mounted the laptop drive in a SATA cradle and attached it to a PC with TrueImage2012, in my case my old XP PC.

2) Run TrueImage to make a full disk backup. This creates the TIB file.

(Make sure the folder where the TIB is located is shared on the network.)

Next on a similar laptop as the one I crashed:

3) Create a VMWare Workstation 7 guest for Win7 with a virtual disk of same size as the original (256 Gb)

4) Start an XP guest after attaching the empty virtual disk from the above guest

5) Inside this XP guest open DiskAdmin and "initialize" the disk. I did not do this at first but then the Acronis recovery program would not touch the disk...

6) Close the XP guest and connect the Acronis Boot media CD as an ISO file to the new guest

7) Boot the new guest and note that Acronis starts. Go to recovery and then use the network share function to access the TIB file from step 2.

😎 Now start the restore after selecting the system reserved and the main partitions as well as the MBR

9) At this point the restore in the guest seemed to work its way along, but unfortunately after some time (1.5-2 hours) it failed claiming the TIB was corrupt, which it is not.

I had intended to use the Acronis Universal Restore to make it bootable and running in the virtual environment but it was cut short.

Now I will try to convert the SSD disk to VHD format since I have heard that WorkStation can use such virtual disks too.

[continuum]

- attach the disk in a USB enclosure to a host with Workstation
- create new VM and add the USB-disk  as physical disk - name the vmdk "import.vmdk"
- do not start the VM
- clone the "import.vmdk" with vmware-vdiskmanager

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r "import.vmdk" -t 0 "new.vmdk"

- in the VM replace "import.vmdk" with "new.vmdk"

- start Converter and run "configure machine" against the VM

- when that is done you can start the VM for the first time

these are the steps in short
I have explained this lots of times before with more details

[BobAgi]

Thanks, most grateful for this description!

(It is hard to find old answers, unfortunately. I am probably no good at formulating search strings...)

Anyway, in order to verify that I have gotten the meaning of your info right:

I create a new VM and specify a virtual disk that is a physical disk. This makes WorkStation create a vmdk file with linking information to the physical disk inside.

Now I use the command line function to clone this virtual disk to a real virtual disk file. This will make the actual transfer of the data over from the physical hard disk to the vmdk file.

So now I have the disk in a VMWare format vmdk file. 🙂

Next step is to let vmware converter try to adapt the Win7 drivers on the virtual disk to the guest hardware environment.

Questions:

1) Will the vdiskmanager command clone the entire disk with all partitions intact?

I am especially concerned with the extra 300 Mb system reserved partition that Win7 has created on the laptop disk. I believe this is where the boot system lives so it must be made to work after the conversion.

2) Since the laptop-to-be-converted is a 64bit Win7, do I have to run  the converter on a host operating system that is 64 bit too?

3) You mention Converter, but I have seen a number of different versions of this product. Which one is suited to this task?

At the moment I have a choice of using my own XP-Pro (32 bit) DELL host with Workstation 7 (next to latest update) where I already have installed VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone client version 5.0.0-470252.

Or I could use my work laptop, which runs Win7Pro-x64 and Workstation 7.1.5 (latest update), but here I have not installed any converter program.

Would the process work OK on the Dell XP-Pro 32 bit machine in your opinion? Or do I have to get a newer version of Converter and install on the laptop and do the work there?

[continuum]

perfect - you got the idea and I am sure you will manage it.

For Windows 7 you can actually skip the Converter step completely - instead use a Windows 7 recovery CD.

Windows 7 migrates quite easy.

All you need to do in most of the cases is adjust one registry key.

Read my notes here:
http://sanbarrow.com/p2v2008r2.html

so once you created the vmdk make sure you assign it as

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsisas1068"
scsi0:0.fileName = "imported.vmdk"

with that settings you then adjust the start option for the lsi-sas driver.

I explained that on the referenced site - I am convinced you will know what to do

Ulli

[BobAgi]

Thanks,

I had to stop for a couple of days but now I am back again..

I actually have 2 laptops that have crashed, one back in october and the second (the replacement) about Nov 25th.

While being laptop-less I tried your suggestions as far as creating the setup to use vdiskmanager to copy the contents of the physical disk of the replacement laptop over to a new virtual disk using my XP computer and Workstation 7.1.4.

That seemed to work fine. I have not gotten to the point of starting it because since the operating system is X64 I need to have such a computer to run it.

Meanwhile I got a replacement for the crashed second laptop and moved over the SSD from he crashed to the replacement laptop and to all works fine.

So I am no longer in need of that converted virtual disk.

But I really would like to get at the first crashed laptop so I intended to repeat the operation again, now from my new laptop with WS 7.1.5 and with the disk of the first laptop.

But now I have not gotten very far! When I have stepped through the new virtual machine wizard and reached the end so there is only the Finish button to click, VMWare workstation throws up an error dialog saying "Internal error". Not very descriptive...

It is not possible to complete the creation of the virtual machine at this point.

Is there a difference between 7.1.4 and 7.1.5 that can explain the problem?

The connections used on this test are:

- Laptop with built-in 256 Gb SSD primary disk and a secondary 500 Gb mechanical SATA disk.

- Lacie USB3 1 Tb external disk connected to the superspeed USB3 connector

- SATA-USB2 docking station connected to the other superspeed USB3 connector, here the source SSD disk is inserted

The SSD presents itself as Disk3 in Windows disk management and the Lacie disk is Disk2

I have set the link to the physical disk to disk3.

I have placed the virtual machine on the Lacie disk because there is not enough space anywhere else.

The virtual machine was created for Win7X64 with bridged networking and the defailt SCSI controller. The disk file was placed on the LaCie drive and points to Disk3.

Why is there an "internal error" when I try to complete the machine creation???

EDIT:

I decied to try the procedure in the old XP-Pro computer with WS 7.1.4 in teh same way I did for the previous laptop disk.

So I moved the LaCie disk and the SATA dock over to that PC and went through the steps. This time there were no errors and I have now started the conversion (will take a few hours).

Very strange, is this because of a difference 7.1.4 <=> 7.1.5 or the fact that it is done on an XP versus Win7 platform?

LATER: After 6 hours it is 52% done. It takes considerably longer when the target is a USB2 disk!

My previous conversion was to the local hard disk, but then I had to copy over the 90 Gb disk file to a USB disk afterwards........

[BobAgi]

Success!

In fact I would not have needed the Win7RescueCD and the regedit hack because the value LSI_SAS/Start was already set to zero.

After a rather long time of thinking following startup and my entry of user/password it needed to restart to register new drivers.

On the next run I installed VMWare Tools, restarted, uninstalled VMWare Workstation (cannot use that in a guest...) restarted and now I am going to uninstall all of the other things that are not valid in a virtual computer.

But I have one remaining task I don't really know how best to do:

The source laptop was attached to our domain, but I don't want the virtual machine to be a domain computer so I need to unregister it from the domain.

I can do that, but there is one little catch-ya I have to address first:

I need to make a 100% clone of my domain account settings to the local account I will use henceforth.

By 100% I mean that all installed programs must work as they do today in my domain guise including all shortcuts and program configurations etc.

Before I unregister the PC from the domain (and lose the ability to log on using the domain account) I have to make the clone and also check that it works.

How can I do that?

EDIT:
I have created a new thread concerning the afterwork inside the migrated machine here:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/338966

Please use that when replying.

[LOLOPCBELGIUM]

Hello,

I do have 2 Machine in TIB Format with Acronis Backup & Server 11.5. I'm would like to virtualize them in Vmware Workstation 9 or Vmware Server 2.01.

I did try the converters of Vmware, format incorrect of acronis.
I did try with acronis true image to convert them to VHD, didn't work.
So i wanted to restore my TIB in a blank vmware Host using the acronis boot disk.
There I have a problem when I need to select the recover disk. I get a the Disk Selection and DISK1 is greyed out and can't select it.

I did try to change the disk format to GPT, Dynamic, etc.. but no change, all the time greyed out.
So i'm stucked, in short of ideas.

Any help, will be appreciated.
Regards,
Laurent