Is it possible for the VM created via "Boot Image" (viBoot) to have access to all the drives in the PC? I want to update an old image with OS and app patches, many of which I've downloaded and archived, but I can't get to them from inside the VM.
Thanks.

When you create a viBoot VM, you can attach other Reflect images as additional disks.  After the VM is created, it's a Hyper-V VM, so at that point you can use Hyper-V Manager to add even more disks.  The options there depend on whether you're using a Hyper-V Gen 1 VM (Legacy BIOS) or Gen 2 VM (UEFI).  Note that this is based on how the guest OS is designed to boot, not the host OS.  Reflect chooses the VM generation based on the layout of the disk you chose to use as the boot disk, but Hyper-V itself has some differences in terms of what's supported on Gen 1 vs. Gen 2 VMs.  Only Gen 1 VMs support virtual disks that are mapped to physical disks on the host, and when you have a physical disk attached to a VM, it's not available within the host OS.

But if you just want to get files from your host to your guest VM, you can just enable file sharing on your host system and make sure your VM has a network interface active, and then your guest will be able to access your host just like any other real system on your network.  Or even easier than that, if your guest is running a Pro or better version of Windows 8 or newer, you can enable "Enhanced Session Mode" in the Virtual Machine Connection application that you use to view your VM, and at that point you can copy paste content, including files, between your host and guest.  Just use keyboard shortcuts or use the "right-click, select Ctrl, right-click, select Paste" method.

Excellent info, thanks for the detailed reply.

I have one more question. When I first played around with viBoot I ran into Windows activation issues. I suspect it was because I was running a virtual 8.1 machine inside my regular Windows 8.1 OS. If I use Windows 10 to configure my 8.1 VM instead (I have a dual boot system), will that avoid the activation snafu?

+x

 

Ho72 - 29 June 2020 12:55 PM

I have one more question. When I first played around with viBoot I ran into Windows activation issues. I suspect it was because I was running a virtual 8.1 machine inside my regular Windows 8.1 OS. If I use Windows 10 to configure my 8.1 VM instead (I have a dual boot system), will that avoid the activation snafu?

Not sure how I missed this earlier, but activation issues are likely the result of your Windows environment noticing that it's now running on completely separate hardware, i.e. inside a VM rather than on your physical laptop.  The VM would have no way of knowing that the underlying VM host is the original system it was installed on.  This isn't technically a Reflect/viBoot issue since it's the nature of Windows activation and therefore isn't something within Macrium's control.  In an enterprise scenario there are licensing models that would allow this, but if you're dealing with a retail or OEM license, then I don't know if there's a way around this that would allow you to run the VM long term as opposed to spinning it up quickly to "spot test" your backup or quickly grab some data out of it.  And in fairness, I suspect Microsoft's position would be that if you only have one Windows license, then you shouldn't be using it to run both your actual laptop and a separate VM simultaneously on an ongoing basis.  They would want you to have separate licenses for each Windows installation you'll be using.