Software to Clone a Laptop into a Virtual Machine

CliffyG · 31 Mar 2009 at 09:17

radderfire said:
All I care about is business continuity, i.e. once my laptop drive fails I don't want to have to spend the next few days reinstalling everything and faffing around. If I have to always work in a virtual machine, that would be fine, as long as I can keep a backup copy of that virtual machine somewhere and can instantly restore it to another computer if needs be. Is that possible, thoughts anyone?

Rgds

Well if working full time on a VM isnt an issue then yes that would be an OK solution. You can just copy the files to another machine to backup. Alternatively use ghost or similar to clone the disk to another location.

NeoNemesis said:
You can convert back from virtual to physical, however I have never found any free software that allows you to do it.

The best product for all of the suggestions mentioned is Platespin Powerconvert.

Yeah thats what i meant, even with the buoght version of VMWare i dont think you can.

NeoNemesis · 31 Mar 2009 at 09:24

CliffyG said:
Yeah thats what i meant, even with the buoght version of VMWare i dont think you can.

Correct.

Django x2 · 31 Mar 2009 at 09:57

I have a question. Can this work backwards?

At the mo I've just been using Acronis TI on the VM box and then spinning it back up into Prod.

NeoNemesis · 31 Mar 2009 at 10:08

What do you mean by bacwards?

Django x2 · 31 Mar 2009 at 10:27

NeoNemesis said:
What do you mean by bacwards?

As in, "if i'd read up a few posts, I would have seen the answer"

NeoNemesis · 31 Mar 2009 at 15:29

Sin_Chase · 31 Mar 2009 at 15:33

I've looked into PlateSpins enterprise products before and was very impressed.

X2X very good stuff.

theheyes · 31 Mar 2009 at 16:38

optitech-uk said:
I vote for True Acronis Echo Workstation + Universal restore. You can convert .tib files to VirtualPC/Vmware images and vice versa!!! Brilliant if you wanna customise your workstation in a virtual machine before hand.

Universal restore strips the drivers, changes the SID and even changes the HAL!!!! So it can be restored on all workstations .

Downside it costs alittle but for what it does it's nothing for technicians and enthusiasts..

Just to confirm, can I create a reference image in VMWare and then use Acronis Echo to convert the VMWare image into a .tib file once I've "resealed" Windows?

And does Universal restore only change the HAL at the point of restoring/re-imaging a machine?

Cheers.