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"Note: Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you
Post by Bo Berglund1) Disk2Vhd
As I noted before disk2vhd did not offer an option to reduce the size
of the target disk below the 128 Gb allowed by VPC2007.
So the resulting VHD file has a disk size of 160 Gb just like the
source disk even though the used part of that disk is just 32 Gb. :-(
When I tried it on a VPC guest it was recognized as 128 Gb and
corrupted....
I also tried to create a new virtual machine with a 100 Gb empty drive
where I attached the converted VHD as disk 2. Then I booted it off my
ISO version of the Acronis boot CD in order to try and clone the
converted disk onto the smaller disk. But that failed too because
Acronis saw the source disk as corrupt (and size 128 Gb).
Intersetingly the VHD is perfectly OK, I can view it in WinImage and I
see all the data there.
So I tried VhdResizer, which has been mentioned here before. But this
tool does not give an option to make the disk smaller, only bigger!
So I'd say that this type of P2V into VPC2007 is doomed unless someone
can point to a tool that will actually resize a VHD properly both ways
(up and down)!
2) VMWare Converter 4
Unlike the Microsoft solution, this worked right away! I just attached
the created virtual machine to my VMWare Workstation 7 and fired it up
successfully.
Before I did so I changed networking to be "host only" so the guest
would not appear on the network. The reason for this is that the
source PC is still on the network and is a domain attached PC so if I
allow the clone to also appear it will cause grief in Active
Directory.
But as a side effect of this the guest is not on line to the Internet
and when it starts up it requires activation, which is not possible
right now. So I had to shut it down. Will activate tonight when I am
back home and can let it reach the internet without problems with AD
at work.
Conclusions
My advice is to switch from Microsoft VPC2007 into VMWare Workstation
7 (at a price) or Player 3 (free offering) and use their converter for
the P2V. The result is a working guest which also has full USB and
DirectXX graphics support.
The only possibility to use VPC2007 and the disk2vhd tool is to first
use a partitioning tool on the source machine to make the source
partition smaller than 128 Gb.
Or alternately if someone here can suggest a method/tool that can be
used on a VHD that is too big but contains small amounts of data to
shrink the disk partition size.
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
Post by Bo BerglundIs there anyone reading this thread that has a suggestion for how one
can shrink a VHD image that was created by disk2vhd from a drive that
was > 130 Gb but contains less data than 130 Gb?
1) Use Acronis in a VPC2007 guest to clone the big disk onto a smaller
one. Does not work since the VPC2007 BIOS does not recognize the big
VHD drive at its true size. And Acronis is not smarter than BIOS....
2) Make an Acronis backup on the source PC and use this to restore
onto a smaller VHD in a guest. Does not work because now the HAL
adjustments are not made so the VHD is not bootable without
bluescreening (I do not have Universal Restore). And it is not handling
a disk2vhd image anyway.
3) Use VHDResizer from VMToolkit to reduce the size of the disk. Does
not work because it does not offer the option of *reducing* the size,
only to increase it.
4) Use a VirtualServer 2005 guest and attach the big VHD as a SCSI
drive that does not have size limitations. Then use PartitionManager
or similar to reduce the partition size below 128 Gb.
Then when that is done use Acronis to clone the partition onto a new
VHD disk smaller than 128 Gb.
I guess this would work, but involves multiple time-consuming steps as
well as obtaining a commercial software package (PartitionMagic) just
for this single job.
But can the VHD be attached to a VS2005 guest as a SCSI drive in the
first place?
Is there isome other method that can be used in situations like this?
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
1: Get universal restore, that is what I use.
2: Your virtual server idea should work well to boot in a partition
manager to copy and shrink the partition to a new <127G VHD. I do not
know if you can just shrink the partition on the existing VHD to be
under 127G and that would work, theoretically it could.
3: Don't know if this will work but it is easy, mount the VHD in Win7,
use computer management/disk management to shrink the partition to
<127G, unmount and try booting VPC from the VHD.
--
Bob Comer
Post by Christian BarmalaHi Bo,
Where is this option hidden? I did not find any options at all? The command
line syntax is "disk2vhd <drive(s)> <VHD file>" and the GUI has in input
field for the VHD-file and checkboxes for the available drives. I did not
even find a "version" command to check if I am using an outdated version of
disk2vhd.
A colleague intends to
- shrink the physical disk with partition magic,
- boot from the Acronis CD and create an image of the shrunken partition,
- create an empty VM,
- boot the VM with the Acronis CD and
- restore from the Acronis tib-file
Yet another idea would be to convert the tib file into a vhd. The latest
Acronis version can do this.
Christian
Post by Bo BerglundI downloaded the very latest version yesterday after seeing the
reference here. The program says Disk2Vhd v1.4 right on top of its gui
window.
Above the selection box for the VHD filename is the checkbox named
"Fix up HAL for VirtualPC".
I assume this is their way of handling the different hardware inside
the guest of VPC2007.
Why not test disk2vhd 1.4 with the HAL checkbox active at this point?
disk2vhd can be set to include only the volume you check into the VHD
(at least this is what I believe) so it should now be able to make a
VHD which is adapted for use with VPC2007 directly.
This would require the "Universal Restore" option in Acronis to have
any success at all of working.
VHD format is not enaough, you need to fix up the hardware differences
as well....
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
Post by Bo BerglundNow back home and could bridge the guest network adapter to my main
NIC and thus get an Internet connection to the guest.
Windows activation popped up again and now I could enter the code and
activate successfully.
After installing VMWare Tools (new version for WorkStation 7) and
rebooting the guest it now looks perfectly OK!
And all of the USB stuff is retained too.
This will run on VMWare Player 3 (free software) just fine.
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
Post by Christian BarmalaHi Bo,
I meanwhile have v1.4 too and it did the trick!
Thank you,
Christian Barmala
Post by Scott M.I downloaded the latest version and the option is not there for fixing the
Hal. Please give the url you used to download the tool.
Thanks.
Post by Christian Barmala(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx)
Disk2Vhd v1.4 is the version and the screenshot on the download page
is misleading because it does not show the checkbox for HAL Fix-up,
which is immediately above the disk edit box.
--
Bo Berglund (Sweden)
Post by b***@duxsysnospam.comVHDResizer will shrink a VHD (under the right conditions) -- I used it
for that a few weeks ago. I used disk2vhd just to copy the 32GB system
partition which is located at the start of my large disk, which is over
500GB. VHDResizer got it under 128 GB. I could attach to Virtual PC
(as provided for Windows 7), but could not successfully boot. I booted
a Windows XP retail kit, did repairs, and still was not successful. (It
took some guessing how to boot from a CD image when there was an
apparently bootable hard drive. The boot order needs to be changed in
the BIOS, and getting to the BIOS is non-obvious.)
Bob
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