Virtual HDs and Physical HDs...

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Michael - 07 Oct 2008 17:03 GMT

I have been trying to backup an image of a virtual hd and restore it on a
physical hd. I have not had much luck using conventional backup/restore
progams (like Ghost). Anybody have any suggestions?

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Mark Rae [MVP] - 07 Oct 2008 17:14 GMT

> I have been trying to back up an image of a virtual hd and restore it on a
> physical hd. I have not had much luck using conventional backup/restore
> progams (like Ghost).

Can you be a bit more specific...?

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Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

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Michael - 07 Oct 2008 18:51 GMT

I work with several machines that have varying hardware. I would be a
great benefit to create a VPC that has the intended software, updates, etc.
Then sysprep and image that hard disk. Then I would have an update image
that I can roll out to physical workstations. As well as the benefit of
being able to open that image back up and make updates to it as needed with
out always having to find a physical tower to work with.
I made a VPC that has a virtual hard disk that is the same size as the
average among the towers that I would need to image. When I tried to make a
vhd based on a physical disk, it would not let me start the VPC (I'm using
Virtual PC 2007 SP1). When I try to use an imaging software (Norton Ghost
9.0 as well as a couple of others) through the VPC, I get errors when it
tries to access the hard disk.

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Mark Rae [MVP] - 07 Oct 2008 19:33 GMT

> When I try to use an imaging software (Norton Ghost 9.0 as well
> as a couple of others) through the VPC, I get errors when it tries
> to access the hard disk.

And what might those errors be? When asking for help in a technical
newsgroup, there's little point in saying that you "get errors" if you don't
actually say what those errors are...

Help the group to help you...

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Mark Rae
ASP.NET MVP
http://www.markrae.net

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Michael - 07 Oct 2008 19:52 GMT

I really can't say. The system locks or goes in a perpetual cycle (depending
on the software) and if an error box displays, it is blank.

> > When I try to use an imaging software (Norton Ghost 9.0 as well
> > as a couple of others) through the VPC, I get errors when it tries
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>
> Help the group to help you...

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Bill Grant - 07 Oct 2008 23:20 GMT

> I really can't say. The system locks or goes in a perpetual cycle
> (depending
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>>
>> Help the group to help you...

Regardless of what "hardware" you use, you can only use that approach if
the machines are identical. The sysprepped image contains the device drivers
for the hardware components in the machine. A sysprepped image prepared in
that way would only run successfully in an identical virtual machine, just
as an image produced on a particular physical machine will only run on an
identical physical machine.

There are proprietary solutions which can handle the driver mismatch,
such as Universal Restore from Acronis. Without this sort of help, the only
solution is to a do a repair install of the OS to load the correct hardware
drivers for the target machine.

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bMarx - 13 Oct 2008 15:15 GMT

Have any of you guys tried out "ShadowProtect" backup sfw by StorageCraft?

I think it might do exactly what you're looking for: physical to virtual or
virtual to physical regardless of hardware/OS platform.

Check it out and let me know how it goes.

> > I really can't say. The system locks or goes in a perpetual cycle
> > (depending
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
> solution is to a do a repair install of the OS to load the correct hardware
> drivers for the target machine.

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