Cloning dead PC to VMWare Workstation using Converter?

[BobAgi]

Notice:

I posted this in the WorkStation group before I knew about this mor appropriate one. So now I am duplicating it here in the hope to get more responses....

My PC died on me this week.... It will only run for about 5-10 minutes

until it locks up. If I restart at this point it runs only for 1-2

minutes before locking up.

I assume that there is a component failure that is sensitive to heat so

it triggers when the temperature rises. In any case the PC is 5 years

old and due for replacement, but until I have gotten that I would like

to continue using it virtualized.

So I figured that VMWare Converter could convert the hard drive (which

is working fine by itself) to a virtual machine, which I could

subsequently run in my Workstation 7.1

I have previously

converted physical machiners to virtual ones before scrapping the

originals and it worked fine, but then I installed the converter agent on

the running machine and did a hot clone. Now I cannot do this since the hardware has died....

Whilst googling I did not come across any descriptions of this

particular case except some esoteric ones using Linux as a go-between to

create a disk image.

Can anyone here advice as to the best way to make a clone of the dead PC

from its disk drive?

I have Converter 3.0.2u1 build 62456 installed on my main PC (the one I

have used to clone before).

But when I start the "Import Machine" wizard it does not give me the

option of importing from a hard disk drive, only from running physical

machines, or a VMWare virtual machine or a Microsoft Virtual machine or a

3rd party disk image. None of which is applicable here....

I need to convert from a physical disk....

Thanks in advance

[a_p_]

You could attach the HDD to another PC (don't boot from the HDD) and create an image by booting e.g. from an Acronis CD. Then convert the image to a VM.

André

[BobAgi]

Thanks, but I don't understand how to handle the hardware differences....

The Converter live cloning somehow deals with this so that the final image is running virtualized with no problems. But if one uses the disk cloning tools you mention (Acronis for example) then this special virtualization adjustment will probably not happen and this is what I am after because I need the PC to actually work after the cloning.

I think your suggestion is as follows:

1) Create a disk image using Acronis. This is done on the host itself.

2) Use Converter to convert this image to a virtual machine (as a 3rd party image source)

The problem with this indirect sequence is that I need twice as much disk space as I would going directly from the original drive.

The disk involved is 320 Gb in size and I only have a 500 Gb empty drive, which I bought today, to store the virtual clone machine.

Making an image would probably use up so much of the space on the empty drive that the conversion would fail.

Is there really no way I can create a virtual machine from the physical drive itself without first imaging it with Acronis or the like?

I recall that about 6-8 months ago I saw a discussion regarding cloning a laptop that did no longer boot but where the disk data was intact. I tried finding that again through the search feature of this forum but failed (probably did not get the search terms right)...

Is there anyone else who remembers this? I believe it was happening in November 2009 or so.

[scerazy]

Sure you can, after all Converter does NOT do anything magical

It only simplifies the process which one can do fully manually:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/vmware-content/ultimate-p2v/

Seb

[BobAgi]

In my duplicate discussion in the Workstation group I got a tip for this P2V software:

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/go-virtual/

I downloaded it and am testing it now. It works off a physical hard disk and produces a supposedly bootable clone of the physical machine. Seems easy enaough to use but because I have a rather big source machine (320 Gb drive which is used to 210 Gb) it takes a rather long time, about 8 hours to complete.

Once it is done I will report how well it worked here.

[continuum]

I guess your disk is dying if the machine locks up after 10 minutes.

In cases like that I would put the disk into an USB enclosure and use cooling gel-pads coming right out of the fridge to cool the disk.

Then I usually copy file by file - as hoping for a complete image may not work




_________________________

VMX-parameters- WS FAQ -[ MOAcd|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VMDK-Handbook

You also find me in the support crew of PHD Virtual Backup

[BobAgi]

The disk is perfectly OK, it is NOT dying. My whole point here is that the computer itself is dying but the disk is good.

So I need to clone the PC using the good disk only.

And I have attached it to my host using a USB2 cradle....

[scerazy]

320 Gb drive which is used to 210 Gb

You never heard of partitioning?

Keeping System & data partitions separate?

Seb

[BobAgi]

The reason I have two partitions is exactly what you indicate:

1) A "small" system partition where the operating system plus all programs are instelled.

2) A "big" data partition where all the data are stored.

So I have a partition of some 70 Gb for system and another (remaining of the 320 Gb disk) for data. My problem in P2V was that I did not stop and think but went for some "auto" function tha included the data partition in the cloning process and this has made the whole process so much more time consuming....

[BobAgi]

I can report that the Paragon P2V software did its thing and the cloned PC starts up OK, but of course due to the massive hardware changes it requires reactivation....

[scerazy]

I can only say MDL oembios changer

You do the rest

Seb

[a_p_]

I think your suggestion is as follows:

1) Create a disk image using Acronis. This is done on the host itself.

2) Use Converter to convert this image to a virtual machine (as a 3rd party image source)

That's what I meant. 320GB is not less, however how did you backup your system until now? I usually use Acronis and backup my system as an image to an external HDD. This takes some time, but I cannot (don't want) afford to loose my data. And an external 1TB HDD is less than $100.

As the other poster mentioned there are other tools which can actually do a cold clone. I did not mention the VMware coldclone.iso in my previous post, because you need to have vSphere licenced to get it.

André