I've just started experimenting with viBoot a bit myself, and for all I know these requests are all addressed in the improved viBoot release that will arrive with Reflect 7.1, but I have a few requests right off the bat:

- It would be very helpful if viBoot supported attaching additional Reflect images to a VM.  In my use case, I capture two different image backups of my PC.  One includes only the partitions necessary for Windows to start, and the other includes my separate Data partition.  This allows me to keep my "OS" images smaller, faster to create/update, free of any confidential data, and able to be backed up on a different schedule.  However, if I ever needed to boot that image using viBoot, I would want a way to attach the image containing my Data partition to it.  Going into Hyper-V allows me to attach normal VHDX files or normal physical disks to the VM, but that doesn't work for attaching other Reflect images.
- Please offer a way to NOT have the VM immediately start upon completion of the wizard.  I can see why it makes sense for auto-start to be the default behavior, but perhaps have a "Start VM after I click Finish" checkbox at the last step of the wizard that's checked by default but can be unchecked so that VMs can be staged without immediately starting.
- The log entries in the lower area of viBoot are not localized at all.  Not only do dates display in the UK format of DD/MM/YYYY (rather than MM/DD/YYYY as they should on a US-based machine), but all entries are also in GMT rather than in the system's local time zone.

Hi JP

Thanks for posting.

You can add additional image files in the viBoot UI if you create a VM from there.

The date/time stamp localisation for the log files is fixed in 7.1. 

The option to not start a VM will be considered as an additional feature for 7.1 

Thanks again for your input. 

Kind Regards

Nick

Macrium Support

See our reviews on

Hey Nick,

Ok, I see the option to add additional disks during the VM creation wizard.  Is there no way to remove those disks after the VM has been created, or for that matter change other VM settings such as CPU, memory, and virtual networking?  I realize all of that can be done within Hyper-V, but I wasn't sure if that was Macrium's official guidance, and that still wouldn't allow adding a disk hosted in a Reflect image after it was initially created.  I guess I was just expecting a "VM settings" interface somewhere.

On a related note, on this most recent test where I chose to include my Data partition image backup on the VM (which came from a GPT source disk, if that matters), while viBoot's VM creation progress bar was being displayed, I saw a standard Windows prompt to format a disk.  I chose to cancel it, and the VM was created successfully, but that prompt did NOT appear on earlier tests when I was only mounting my "system" image.  I've seen at least one other thread here about unexpected format prompts in viBoot, but if memory serves, that thread had a reply from a Macrium staff member that it had been fixed in a viBoot version that has already been released. I would of course be happy to furnish logs if they would help troubleshoot this.  I'm on V7.0.2199.

Good to know log localization is already going to be fixed, and the option to disable auto-start is admittedly minor. Thanks as always!

Hi JP

You can change any VM setting using the Hyper-V VM settings properties except for adding or removing virtual disks backed by image files.  These disk must be set at VM creation using viBoot. 

viBoot is being changed in 7.1 to use a VHDX  disk provider rather than a virtual SCSI disk provider. This means that the Windows host PC won't prompt to format unformatted partitions when creating a VM. 

Kind Regards

Nick

Macrium Support

See our reviews on

In terms of VM settings, I just wasn't sure if users were in fact expected to use Hyper-V directly in order to make those changes as opposed to having viBoot serve as a full front-end, but I suppose the fact that the VM Settings UI is accessible from the Virtual Machine Connection console window helps there. Still, the ability to add/remove disks in the viBoot interface would be handy.  I realize that the VM can always be deleted and recreated with the desired disk config, but that's only quick and easy if one is willing to discard the changes made to the existing disk(s), otherwise the user would have to generate a new backup to capture those before recreating the VM.  And I guess I figured that if you therefore decided to add a UI for virtual disk management, then it would make sense for it to also allow configuring the CPU, memory, and virtual switch connections of any existing vNICs, i.e. all of the items that viBoot already provides a UI to configure when initially setting up the VM anyway.

Good news about the VHDX provider.  Looking forward to 7.1!