Recover a Drive Image from Host machine USB drive to VM guest m.

Bree said:

I understand that you currently have the image on an external USB HDD. I found the simplest way to access the image was to plug the USB drive into the host machine and share it on the network. Then when the VM was booted from the recovery ISO it could see the network share and restore the image from it. I showed how I did that in the tutorial.

The USB drive is pugged in ( it always has). It is now detected iunder Network, in the Host machine, but it disappears from both the Host machine and the guest machine when I open the VBox. If I cannot have it detected by the VBox one way or another, I won't be able to do what I intended to do with the VBox.

Ittiandro

- - - Updated - - -

ittiandro said:

The USB drive is pugged in ( it always has). It is now detected iunder Network, in the Host machine, but it disappears from both the Host machine and the guest machine when I open the VBox. If I cannot have it detected by the VBox one way or another, I won't be able to do what I intended to do with the VBox.

Ittiandro

I have copied the USB Drv Img file to my HDD so may be I can access it from there if the USB drive is not accessibele from the VBox machine. However, when I tried to make an ISO Img of this file with IMGBurn, it won'
t let me do it because the file is too large ( 40 GB!). Besides it is a .ADI file ( AomeI) I don't
know if this is a prblem.

Ittiandro

Hopachi said:

Some programs have a limit on the ISO creation following disk size standards / presets. Others can create ISO of unlimited size.

Use Folder2Iso. It will create an ISO out of any folder; place your ADI file in a folder and use this for the ISO creation.

Thanks for your hints
I can’t download your software , for some reasons. The d/load doesn’t even kick in after clicking on the button. Kind of unusual.

Anyway I am making no progress on the central issue.
I converted ( or so I thought) my wife’s Drive IMG file to bootable ISO, with an app called Virtual Clone Drive App, because neither WinCDEMU nor IMGBurn would work.
I was hoping that it would work because it produced a 40 GB file with an ISO ending.

I then created a VBox machine , but I got a message that no bootable media could be found.
I played with the STORAGE tab settings, but it didn’t work.

I don’t know if it can work with another app, or it is the wrong VBox setting, or perhas this Windows 7 Drive image is incompatible with Windows 10 . Perhaps I should have created this Vbox machine not for Wibdows 7, but as a Windows 10 OS. I’ll try to run again my wife’s Drive Image , this time with Macrium Reflect instead of Aomei Backupper. as soon my wife’s PC is available. Should it make a difference? I am really in the dark.

Ittiandro

cereberus said:

Here is the easiest way to run wife's pc in a virtual machine on your pc.

1) make image backup of wife's pc using Macrium Reflect

2) copy image to your pc

3) install Macrium Reflect on your pc INCLUDING Viboot option

4) Click on Viboot, select Macrium Reflect Image (you need Hyper-V or Virtualbox installed)

5) follow instructions and a virtual machine will be created of the Reflect Image.

Thanks



Regarding me not being able to boot my wife’s Drive Imag file into VBox, I’ll try to clarify what I mean by rephrasing the issue more in details.
The VBox starts running . Usually, if it is a Windows OS to be installed to the VBox, the process kicks in like regular booting operation on the Host machine. Instead, in this case I get a message on the black booting screen that " a boot media could not be found.
There might be some incorrect setting on the Storage setting.
Here is a description of these settings:
There are 2 entries under “ Controller: SATA” on the Storage settings tab.
1. My wife DrIv Imge as a VHD file
Host drive : F . It shows attached to VBox named “Danh Windows 7”

There are 3 possible Host drives to be selected by clicking on the disk CD icon on the ATTRIBUTES panel top right:

Host drive F: attached to VBox named “Danh Windows 7”
Host drive E: attached to none
Host drive H: CD Rom drive
The explorer of my Host Machine shows the drives as follows :
Drive F : a BD Rom drive , asking to insert disk
Drive E : 94 GB. 0 space free, UDF , right click ,a long series of options I am not clear about.

I am also exploring other possibilities.
May be the reason why my wife’s DrImg file ( either from Aomei or Macrium Reflect ) can’t be booted into the VBox machine is that it is a compressed file and I must first decompress or extract it with software like 7-zip or similar ( some of these a softwares have size limits or registration requirement, like Power ISO.
So far I tried 7-zip, but it didn’t work because of a “Data Error “in the extraction process.
I ‘ll try Magic ISo.I was hoping that once I have the extracted file, I could convert it into ISO and then make it bootable.

Hopachi said:

If I got this correctly from another thread, OP uses 32bit Win10 build 10240 and Vbox v5.2.
In that case I see no chance for viBoot to run; 64bit OS needed.

- - - Updated - - -



Weird.
I got that file directly, even for another OS, if I click.
If you're on 32bit Win10, try to get the 32bit link from OneDrive there:
OneDrive

I don't use ImgBurn (since ages ago) but there should be a BlueRay or double-layer disk template somewhere to allow you to have more space for the image. There are many burning programs that can create ISO, another example is AnyBurn.



Not sure I follow. But I did restored backup images in VMs before, so it should work, one way or another.
If you placed the backup image in a large ISO, this is usually not bootable.
You'll have to add another dvd-drive to the VM to boot from, be it Macrium / Aomei bootable rescue disk and select your image from the other (large ISO) dvd-drive in the restore process.
Example:
VM
- dvd-drive1: Macrium or Aomei cd.
- dvd-drive2: The large ISO with the backup image
- HDD-drive: where the image should be restored to
--> then boot from dvd-drive1.

Hopachi,

Thanks for your hints
Regarding adding dvd drive 1 and 2 . a few questions:
1. first, I suppose they have to be on the same VBox machine and I don’t have to create a 2nd one, right?.
2. Ref. Your -dvd-drive 1: is this the boot CD ( Aomei or Reflect) from which we boot to do a Back or a Restore? If so, does this boot CD have to be physically in the CD-ROM drive? If not, how is it virtualized so that I can point to it in the Storage settings?
3. Ref. your -disk-drive 2: this would be the full Aomei or Macrium Drive Image ( 90 GB), the problem .
To wrap it up: basically, I would have to create only one more virtual drive ( your drive #1 for the boot disc) ), because the other drive( your drive #1, for the DRv Image full recovery) already exists in my VBOX . This is the drive that the Vbox can’t see because it says it cannot find a bootable medium .
4. Regarding the steps to do all this:
4a. I assume I have to use the option “ create a new disk” in the Storage settings. Right?
4b. VDI or VHD?
4c. Virtual VDI file connected to disk drive #2 would have to be my wife’s DrImg file ( on Aomei or Macrium, I have both) This file is 90 GB!. Currently, this file is already in the Storage settings.

I can see now why I cannot download the Folder2ISO: you provide no direct link and we are supposed to download through the CLOUD /Google Drive. I am not familiar neither with the Cloud topology nor with the Google Drive. I simply don’t use it.

THanks

Ittiandro

- - - Updated - - -

cereberus said:

I have no idea what you are doing. Are you running Viboot (only works with reflect image?)

Here is a tutorial - a little out of date as it refers to HyperV but works with virtualbox as well.

Macrium viBoot - Create Virtual Machine using Macrium Image

Thanks for your patience, Cereberus, but I begin to think that perhaps this is beyond a solution.
Admittedly my answer was a bit longish, but the solution of problems often requires more words than we are prepared or willing to read or hear. .I think that in the circumstances I have been as clear as I could and should be, hence the details.
There are two possible reasons for the problem I raised in this thread: either I am doing something wrong in the VBox settings or what I am trying to do cannot be done because of the system’s constraints. I haven’t heard anybody bringing in the latter possibility, so I think more of the 1st possibility: wrong settings, particularly the Storage settings. . This is why I described them.

Concerning the Macrium tutorial, I don’t have Macrium ViBoot. I’ll see if I can get it. May be it will help, but definitely, there must be a reason why my Vbox cannot boot from my wife’s DriVe IMG file.

Thanks for your help.

Ittiandro