risks of cloning with P2V

[rkleemann]

Hi,

I was reading up on P2V because I want to clone an existing windows7 into VB.

The P2V tutorial mentions the MergeIDE utility. My question is, does it actually alter the existing windows7 registry, or does it just save a different version in a different file? I don't want to risk changing anything on the existing windows7.

What are the risks involved here?

Anyway, I have a computer with dual-boot, Ubuntu + Windows7, and I have VB installed on the Ubuntu. What I'm trying to do is clone the windows7 into VB so that I can run it under VB along with Ubuntu.

Since the windows7 is a Dell computer, they don't provide an install disk so I have no way of "reinstalling" into VB, so my only option, I guess, is to clone it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
Ricardo

[vbox4me2]

Use immutable mode until you have ironed out any issue, see the manual.

[rkleemann]

Is this part of MergeIDE? I haven't installed it, is there some sort of manpage for it?

[vbox4me2]

Its in the VBox manual, its a commandline methode of attaching a VDI to a VM as immutable, so you can revert to the original state while solving p2v issues.
ea.:
VBoxManage unregisterimage disk "C:\Datafiles\VBimages\OS.vdi"
vboxmanage registerimage disk "C:\Datafiles\VBimages\OS.vdi" -type immutable

Then attach VDI to VM.

[mpack]

MergeIDE is intended to fix an XP problem. Is it required by Win7?

[rkleemann]

Sorry. I guess I'm not sure what I need to do.

I have a physical win7 installation on a dual-boot notebook (win7 + Ubuntu). I want to take the physical win7 and install it as virtual onto VB on Ubuntu.

The P2V documentation mentions MergeIDE. Do I need MergeIDE for win7?

How do I go about converting my physical win7 onto VB on Ubuntu?

Thanks
Ricardo

[mpack]

I simply don't know if you need MergeIDE to migrate a Win7 (or Vista) image. I don't know if it does any harm. I certainly wouldn't risk damaging the registry by using it blind either - though I suppose I could back up the original PC with e.g. Acronis first.

I'd search for MergeIDE on microsoft.com (where it originated), and see if that site mentions any need for it in anything other than XP.

How do I go about converting my physical win7 onto VB on Ubuntu?

Why not just run Disk2VHD, and see if you can get the image to work? Make sure you have the IO APIC setting enabled in VBox - Win7 will undoubtedly require it. Generally make the VM as similar as possible to the original PC. Expect an activation message, but don't be too quick to comply. Make sure you are happy with the P2V first.

[rkleemann]

Hi,

I just tried Disk2VHD but my main problem is that I have a dual-boot system with Ubuntu and Win7. So what I did was boot into Win7 and run Disk2VHD and generated the VHD file.

Then I attached the VHD to my VM. But when I try to boot, it drops me into grub rescue with an unknown filesystem error. The VM isn't meant to be dual boot or even use grub.

How can I use this Win7 VHD and still have a proper boot under VB?

Thanks
Ricardo

[mpack]

How can I use this Win7 VHD and still have a proper boot under VB?

I'm afraid I have no idea what Disk2VHD does if you don't image the entire drive, sorry.

[rkleemann]

How can I use this Win7 VHD and still have a proper boot under VB?

I'm afraid I have no idea what Disk2VHD does if you don't image the entire drive, sorry.

Ok, thanks.

But do you have any suggestion? How can I get an existing Win7 installation (which is in a dual-boot scenario) into VB?

Ricardo

[mpack]

I can't think of a practical way to do it. The problem is that you have a complicated boot scenario on the drive which you want to discard from the virtual image, and I don't know of any tools which can automate that. My CloneVDI tool (see sticky in Windows Hosts) has a trick it can do with XP whereby if you ask it to clone a raw dump of a partition then it will construct a complete disk image around it, i.e. including MBR and track0. Likewise if you clone the XP partition directly, ie. by entering "\\.\c:" as the source filename. But XP booting is comparatively simple, whereas Vista and Win7 have a boot manager and maybe multiple partitions too. You can try it, but I don't give it better than 50/50.

[rkleemann]

I can't think of a practical way to do it. The problem is that you have a complicated boot scenario on the drive which you want to discard from the virtual image, and I don't know of any tools which can automate that. My CloneVDI tool (see sticky in Windows Hosts) has a trick it can do with XP whereby if you ask it to clone a raw dump of a partition then it will construct a complete disk image around it, i.e. including MBR and track0. Likewise if you clone the XP partition directly, ie. by entering "\\.\c:" as the source filename. But XP booting is comparatively simple, whereas Vista and Win7 have a boot manager and maybe multiple partitions too. You can try it, but I don't give it better than 50/50.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Does anyone know if it's possible to run an MBR utility for Win7 in order to write the (broken) boot record into the existing image?