Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image

Kari · 05 Nov 2016

I like the Imgburn trick, quite creative :)

cereberus · 05 Nov 2016

Kari said:

I like the Imgburn trick, quite creative :)

Thanks - only one small point, I had to set dvd image as UDF because the backup image file was greater than the size permitted for a standard disk image but hyper-v had no problem reading a UDF based dvd image.

Was very quick as well as imgburn is quite fast - only took about 6 minutes on a modest laptop to create iso.

The only thing that takes a really long time is backing up the macrium image which normally takes around 15 mins on my laptop but takes around 1.5 hours when backing up from viboot. It would have been much quicker to create a boot entry and boot to Macrium from that and backup the virtual drive that way.

Kari · 27 Jan 2017

Quoting my post in Macrium Reflect tutorial thread just now:

Kari said:

Note

This post contains several embedded tweets from Macrium. Some mobile device users are not able to see them. I will add links to tweets underneath them; if you instead of a tweet only see a link to Twitter you can check the tweet directly on Twitter from it.

OK guys, as some of you already know Macrium will release version 7 on February 26th:

Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) View on Twitter

Twitter

All v6 users who have bought Macrium Reflect Home after November 26th 2016 will get a free upgrade to v7:

Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) View on Twitter

Twitter

If you are using a paid version 5.x you will not be able to upgrade directly to v7. All v5 users who have upgraded or will upgrade to v6 between November 26th 2016 and February 26th 2017 can then upgrade to v7 for free:

Tweet
— Twitter API (@user) View on Twitter

Twitter

I am quite exited! Version 7 introduces Macrium Reflect Changed Block Tracker (MRCBT) which has been in beta since June 2016. It makes incremental and differential backups up to 60 times faster; if your typical weekly differential took 15 minutes with v6, it will take in best case scenario 15 seconds with v7! No, that's not a typo. I mean 15 seconds, one five seconds :)

Macrium Reflect Changed Block Tracker (MRCBT) reduces the amount of time it takes to perform incremental and differential images by monitoring the changes to an NTFS formatted volume in real-time. This is especially relevant when a file system contains very large files, such as virtual hard disk (VHD) files, where speed improvements are significant and can reduce the Incremental image time from hours to minutes or even seconds.

Implemented as a kernel mode filter driver, sitting below the NTFS file system driver, MRCBT is able to intercept all I/O requests to the logical volume and maintain a record of which blocks have changed.

(From Confluence Mobile - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase)

Personally the feature I am most keenly waiting and which we will get in v7 is the integration of Macrium viBoot to Macrium Reflect (viBoot tutorial). Image your system and create a VM from your image to service and maintain it, all from same UI.

Macrium will publicly announce these and other new features next week. They are also preparing a relatively quick release of v7.1 after initial release of v7. The v7.1 will bring continuous backups for home users, allowing users to create for instance an incremental backup every few minutes.

Continuous backups run separate from normal imaging. The clearest benefit is that in case of emergency you don't have to go back a day or a week or even more to your last full, differential or incremental image. Instead you can use your continuous image made automatically just a minute before crash.

All you using paid v5, now is the time to upgrade to v6 to be sure to get v7 end of next month.

Kari

DarHorse · 29 Jan 2017

Great tutorial!

Have been a BIG fan fo Micrium Reflect for quite a while and was eager to try viBoot.

Have some important legacy tools running on an old WinXP machine (Lenovo M52) so migrating that machine to a VM looked like a good place to start. Using a recent Reflex backup, had no problem getting the WinXP VM up and running but, could not save/backup (the few minor) changes I did make to VM image.

Keep getting following message:

The backup operation failed. Please see the Macrium Reflect log for more information.
Do you want to dismount of the drive anyway?
Yes No {NO}

LOG Contents-
Information 29/01/2017 21:32:03:0151 Refreshing virtual machines list.
Information 29/01/2017 21:32:03:0183 Found virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2].
Information 29/01/2017 21:32:03:0229 Refreshing drives.
Information 29/01/2017 21:32:03:0245 Mapping virtual machines to drives
Information 29/01/2017 21:52:55:0201 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Off to Starting.
Information 29/01/2017 21:52:56:0420 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Starting to Running.
Information 29/01/2017 21:53:37:0264 Connecting to virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2].
Information 29/01/2017 23:55:01:0946 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Running to Shutting Down.
Information 29/01/2017 23:55:02:0290 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Shutting Down to Off.
Information 29/01/2017 23:56:30:0114 Backing up virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] failed.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.:)

Thanks.

Kari · 30 Jan 2017

DarHorse said:

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Try this:
1.) Shut down Windows XP viBoot vm normally from Start menu of XP

2.) When XP VM has been correctly shut down, select it in viBoot Manager and click Backup (in screenshot my XP VM's name is simply viBoot):

Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image-image.png

3.) Now select what kind of backup you want and let Macrium write new imaget:

Try this and come back to tell how it went.

Kari

DarHorse · 30 Jan 2017

Kari said:

Try this:
1.) Shut down Windows XP viBoot vm normally from Start menu of XP

2.) When XP VM has been correctly shut down, select it in viBoot Manager and click Backup (in screenshot my XP VM's name is simply viBoot):

3.) Now select what kind of backup you want and let Macrium write new imaget:

Try this and come back to tell how it went.

Kari

Kari- Thank you for the quick reply.
Here are the results of my testing this morning...

Host system is : Win8.1_X64 [Ver6.3.9600]
Running viBoot from an Administrative account.

All operations using viBoot interface (not Hyper-V interface)
Used 'shut down' option from XP VM Start button as you suggested.

Tried 'Full' and "Differential' backups with identical failure results.

Annotated viBoot log-

Information 30/01/2017 15:25:51:0293 Starting virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2].
Information 30/01/2017 15:25:51:0340 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Off to Starting.
Information 30/01/2017 15:25:53:0527 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Starting to Running.
Information 30/01/2017 15:26:11:0734 Connecting to virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2].
{Used 'shut down' option from XP VM Start button}
Information 30/01/2017 15:31:47:0271 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Running to Shutting Down.
Information 30/01/2017 15:31:47:0474 Virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] state changed from Shutting Down to Off.
{Used Backup button from viBoot, requesting 'full' backup}

Information 30/01/2017 15:33:27:0703 Backing up virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] failed.
{Used Backup button from viBoot, requesting 'differential' backup}
Information 30/01/2017 15:33:46:0236 Backing up virtual machine [WinXP_x86_M52-2] failed.

{same error messages as before}

I just noticed that the error message refers to the Reflex log; here is what is in the Reflect log-

[IMG]file:///C:/ProgramData/Macrium/Reflect/Delete.bmp[/IMG]

Image ID - 2C2CF2F61F29C0EF

Imaging Summary

	Backup Definition File:	c:\users\carloper\appdata\local\temp\vbd9810.tmp
	XML Validation:	Error - '<partition>' is not a valid partition number

[IMG]file:///C:/ProgramData/Macrium/Reflect/Delete16.bmp[/IMG]	Backup aborted! - XML validation error

Macrium Reflect Free Edition for non-commercial use v6.3.1665

Regards

Kari · 30 Jan 2017

I have tested this several times today, in fact I even re-installed Windows XP today on a VM just to install Macrium Reflect on it, make an image and then use that image in viBoot.

I have none whatsoever issues in editing WIn XP on viBoot VM, then saving a new differential or full image.

I will run some more tests, can't promise I can do them today.

DarHorse · 30 Jan 2017

Kari- Thanks again for the help.
Based on your latest comments, I started over again, Building the VM from scratch but, from the same Reflex full backup.

This time I made no changes to the WinXP VM image. After a reboot to get the Legacy network adapter installed, shut down from the image 'Start Button' and tried to do a backup without any success (exactly same results as last time).
I now suspect this is a viBoot problem and not an 'operator' error.

A bit more information. Looking at the Reflect log error message, I retrieved the referenced (xml) file and have attached.

Regards

Image ID - 7105F41E885330BA

Imaging Summary

	Backup Definition File:	c:\users\carloper\appdata\local\temp\vbd560c.tmp
	XML Validation:	Error - '<partition>' is not a valid partition number

	Backup aborted! - XML validation error

Macrium Reflect Free Edition for non-commercial use v6.3.1665 -

Here is the contents of the file 'c:\users\carloper\appdata\local\temp\vbd560c.tmp':

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<backup_definition version="2.0" reflect="v6.0.533">
<image_pagefile>y</image_pagefile>
<properties>
<index_type>0</index_type>
<name>Macrium viBoot</name>
<backup_type>0</backup_type>
<method>0</method>
<compression>1</compression>
<aes>0</aes>
<maxfilesize>0</maxfilesize>
<password type="clear"></password>
<intelligent>Y</intelligent>
</properties>
<source>
<image_entry id="1">

<disk>2</disk>

<partition>1</partition>

</image_entry>

<image_entry id="1">

<disk>2</disk>

<partition>1</partition>

</image_entry>

<image_entry id="2">

<disk>2</disk>

<partition>0</partition>

</image_entry>

<append_to_id>3AD13125AB5C90EF</append_to_id>
</source>
<destination>
<directory>D:\Hyper-V\WinXP_x86_M52-2</directory>
<file_name>WinXP_x86_M52-2_2017_01_30_1739</file_name>
</destination>
</backup_definition>

Kari · 30 Jan 2017

I do not think it's a viBoot issue. As I mentioned, I have tested this now several times, existing and new XP installs, existing and new Macrium images. Works every time.

A few questions:

On what host drive do you have the XP image stored when you mount it in viBoot?
How much free space you have on that drive?
How big is the image file?
How big is the Windows XP HDD the image is made from (not the partion C: size in XP, I mean the whole HDD)?
In viBoot Options, what path is set for VM Repository?

DarHorse · 30 Jan 2017

Kari- Thanks. Per your request..
A few questions:

On what host drive do you have the XP image stored when you mount it in viBoot? [D:\Hyper-V\WinXP_x86_M52-2\3AD13125AB5C90EF-00-00.mrimg]
How much free space you have on that drive? [Total capacity: 321GB. Free space: 152GB.]
How big is the image file? [20.7 GB]
How big is the Windows XP HDD the image is made from (not the partion C: size in XP, I mean the whole HDD)? [298GB of which the WinXP partition is 47GB.]
In viBoot Options, what path is set for VM Repository? [Getting this from Hyper-V settings:

C:\ProgramData\Macrium\viBoot\{060E5B68-EF3F-4938-99BDC41581A5D7F4}
also
Physical hard disk: Disk 1 298.09 GB Bus 0 Lun 0 Target 0
all automatically configured by viBoot when it created the VM.]

Regards

Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image

Can't Backup a Win XP image.