Need detailed steps for restoring to a Virtual Machine

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by jlvermont, Mar 8, 2007.

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  1. jlvermont

    jlvermont Registered Member

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    I just can't find this info and have spent a lot of time trying to do this.

    I have a backup image from a hard drive. I want to restore it into a Virutal Machine. I'm using Microsoft Virtual PC 2004.

    I created a VPC image that has Windows XP on it. Although I can see this "computer" on the network and I can even RDP into it, I was unable to use the True Image Mgmnt Console to install the components onto this Virtual machine. (I had successfully used this on another remote computer (physical not virtual) - installing the components and creating an image - the image that I want to restore into the VPC).

    So I installed the console, agent, workstation and universal remote directly onto the Virtual PC computer and am now trying to restore into it by starting up TI Workstation inside the VPC.

    After I select the image file from the network and then from there select the entire disk (there are 3 partitions, but I am selecting the whole disk), it does it's analysis. On the next screen where you select the destination, no drives are enabled. I see the drive for the VPC but it is not active.

    I then realized that maybe the VPC drive is too small (16GB) for the image to be restored to. So in the VPC settings, I created a 2nd hard drive. (Never did that before) and restarted the VPC.

    Then I started the recovery again, selected the image file, selected the hard drive and did the analysis. Still I have no place to restore to (though I see BOTH drives now) and am stopped here. I've attached the screenshot of this step.

    I really need better step by step guidance on this. Everyone just says "oh, restore it into a virtual machine" and the documentation refers to screens I'm not seeing (for Universal Restore - maybe they are after the one I'm getting stuck on).

    Can someone please explain step by step how to restore into a Virtual Machine or point me to where I can find this info?

    Thanks!!
     

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  2. jlvermont

    jlvermont Registered Member

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  3. jdmaddison

    jdmaddison Registered Member

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    I tried the same thing the originator of this post tried, with similar results.

    The detailed instructions do appear to work, but they are quite pedantic, yet they don't cover everything necessary.

    The answer to why you don't see any drive letters / volumes when you first try to restore is that the newly created drive is unpartitioned. If you put Disk Director on the rescue disk, use it to partition the space and then the restore lets you choose volumes.

    The second part, exactly how to get the TIB image visible to the virtual machine was not well explained in the MS article. Option 1 was to use removable media and restore from them. I did not get the VM to see the change of discs and I gave up on this approach. I wonder now, if maybe I should've tried the "Eject CD" option in the VM.

    Anyway, option 2 was the "Linked to a hard disk" option. It takes a second to create it, but you can't assign it to a VM-- it gives you a nice warning saying that this is no longer possible!

    There's a trick. You can create it and assign it, but then if you try to save and exit, it won't let you. Just edit the linked hard disk you just created and it will give you the option of copying it to a new virtual volume. Catches: it does the entire partition, so you need to have just the files you need on the partition-- a USB drive is good for this. The destination file can not be on that partition, either.

    Hope this helps,

    JDMaddison
    Minneapolis, MN
     
  4. mustang

    mustang Developer

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    Visit my website. I provide a guide on how to do it with VMWare. You can follow the same procedure with VPC 2004. All the needed downloads are on my site.

    It may look complicated, but once you try it you'll like it. It's very easy. The whole trick is to do the restore from an environment that allows TI with Universal Restore to see both the destination drive in the VM and the tib image at the same time.
     
  5. toby77jo

    toby77jo Registered Member

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    mustang, I don't follow completely your instructions. Would it be possible for you to share your PE iso that contains already what we need for vmware and acronis universal restore. Do you have a link where I can get this ready ISO image.

    I have tried the traditional way to boot from the Acronis boot image in the virtual machine, I do a restore with universal restore, I point to my SATA controller drivers and it goes fine until it asks for the vmware scsi driver, I skip it since I already pointed to the nvida sata drivers but I can not boot up my virtual machine, I choose xp in the boot menu and it says can't find /ntldr

    If you can share this iso I would hope I can get it to work. How nice it would be to run vista without dual boot and simply run xp in a vmware machine when i need it.
     
  6. mustang

    mustang Developer

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    Hi Toby,

    Sorry, I can't provide you with a BartPE ISO image.

    You say you get to the point where UR wants the vmscsi driver. You can download that driver from here. You can also grab that driver from a Windows XP installation running in a VM. You will find it at C:\Program Files\VMWare\VMWare Tools\Drivers\scsi.
     
  7. toby77jo

    toby77jo Registered Member

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    i have restored the image into vmware with 0 errors now thanks to adding the vmware scsi driver. but i still have the same error when booting the vmware machine.. error says can't find file /ntldr

    file is missing or corrupted

    but when i mount the acronis image of my xp the ntldr file is there

    any suggestion? can my image be corrupted or a problem of universal restore to vmware?
     
  8. mustang

    mustang Developer

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    Hi Toby,

    I'm not clear on what you have done. Did you restore an XP system with a dual boot boot.ini file to a VM? I would say you have MBR issues with the new VM.
     
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