Norton Ghost 15 Backup To VMware Virtual Machine

[Migration User]

The machine that I had been using crashed at the motherboard / cpu level but the disk is fine and the NG Backup is valid and current. What I would like to do is convert this image of the C-drive to a Virtual Machine. I cant see to understand what to do as all references from the Virtual Centre Converter seem to need a running machine rather than an external backup file.

Does anyone know how to either convert an existing .v2i of the C drive file or a .vmdk file (created by Ghost 15 from the old machine C drive by converting the above .v2i file)

If I can convert the ghost image to a VM then I can run my old machine sucessfully in a VM and not have to manually pull off all my data after reinstalling the OP system.

Thanks in advance anyone..

[Migration User]

Hi,

You can convert your gho image into vmdk image. You need to run the command like this assuming your ghost file name is a.gho and you wanted to convert this image into vmdk with b.vmdk name --

ghost32.exe -clone,src=a.gho,dst=b.vmdk,mode=restore will restore your GHO into a VMDK directly creating it if doesnt exist.

Please let me know if you need further assistance on this.

[Migration User]

Ok so how do I get this C drive Vmdk file to run as a Virtual Machine. Maybe I am missing the point and cant do that but I really need to spin up the machine on VM Desktop or ESX Server rather than just mount it as a disk.

Thanks in advance..

[Edward Tippelt]

This is a GSS support forum, not a VMWare support forum, so would it be a good time now to crack open the VMWare documentation and read up on how to do this?  

If I recall correctly, the process of creating a new VM in VMWare Workstation includes a step where you either create a new virtual hard disk or use an existing. I suggest that the choice of using an existing hard disk, and pointing at your VMDK file, might be the way you need to go.

Incidentally, if you look at the sticky posting located at the top of this forum, you will find a link to the Norton community where the Norton Ghost product is supported. Ghost Solution Suite is actually based on a different technology than Norton Ghost although there are some similarities.

[ShawnOfTheFarm]

I create A VM machine first and then target that VMDK to restore your image to.    There isn't a way to go from GHO to full VMware system that has all the needed files.    

1. Use the VMware tools to make the VMware system.
2. Open a command window and run the following

• ghost32.exe -AD=<Full path to the filename of your VMDK> 

This will Mount your vmdk as a drive that can be restored to using the ghost GUI.   When the ghost GUI opens you will see a drive that is the same size as your VMware system's drive that you created.   Use ghost to do a Local Disk from Image restore using the VMDK as your target.

When it is all done you can fire up your vmware system and should be good to go.  

You may find that your restored image will blue screen with a 7b error.   This is because the hard drive controller on the machine you took the image from was differnt that the vmware machine and you will need to run a tool like Deployanywhere or sysprep to over come the hardware differences.

You should look at BESR there is a tool that VMware makes that will import BESR images directly and will build all the information off of the files that BESR created.  Very smooth and I haven't had the BSOD issues using this meathod.

Cheers