Hi all,

I have been using viBoot to restore some stuff after a format and it is working fine so far, although i do experience some lockups (a topic for another thread).

My question is: Is there a way to convert the viBoot image which is created based on incremental backups mainly to a standalone VM that I can use for example on another machine? Without referencing the actual mrimg file.

Thanks!

Hi AngelicCore,

I understand that you would like to use the VM, with the changes made, in another machine without using .mrimg.

This can be done in two ways.

1. The VM can be exported via Hyper-V manager and then imported on the other machine. or



2. VHDX files associated with the VM can be copied manually to a different PC and then a new VM can be created pointing to the to the VHDX files.
To do this, please go to the VM settings in Hyper-V manager. Select the Hard Disk and click Browse. This will open-up the folder showing VHDX files for that HDD.
Please copy this files to the new machine. And create a new VM pointing to the VHDX files




I hope this will work for you but please let us know if you need any further help.

Kind Regards
Balaji

Kind Regards

Balaji

Macrium Development

See our reviews on

Hi Balaji,

Thanks for your answer - I've already tried step#1 on my own but it always failed to export the VM.
I'll try both again and let you know.

Thanks!

Another option might be to simply create a VHDX file, mount it, restore a Reflect backup onto that mounted virtual disk, and then attach that disk to your VM.You might then need to boot that VM into Rescue Media to run ReDeploy if the image didn’t originally come from a VM, but it should work.

hmmm, I think my issue/question is very similar, so I'm going to ask it here.

I am using "Incremental Forever" to backup my boot nvme drive.  recently, I had erroneously deleted some IMAP emails, and knew they'd be trapped in my image, inside an OST file.  Restoring the OST file didn't work, because before I notice my email deletion error, I had recreated the outlook account (forcing some IMAP folder remapping)... so the existing account on my PC was "different" (even though it connected to the same email account) from that within the Macrium image... it's OST was now incompatible.

Needless to say, Macrium viBoot saved my bacon... this experience kicking off viBoot and Hyper-V education... still so much more to learn.

But when I created my viBoot image, it was based on an incremental further back in the chain... #298 in a weekly chain ending at #300... because I knew that incremental had the OST file I needed to access to export MSG/PST files out of.  Booting to it worked like a charm, opened outlook, exported the MSG files I needed, exported the OST as PST just in case.

But this made me think... what happens when #298 gets merged in and disappears during the regular "incremental forever" strategy?  I checked my ViBoot folder, it only contained 16Gb of files... a far cry from the 650GB of data of the source image chain, so it must still be referencing the time-bombed image file.

I then thought I'd try the "Backup" option in viBoot... and that triggered my "incremental forever" job... which I promptly aborted... not expecting or wanting the WM to influence my "real" backup chain.

Is the suggestion that the Hyper-V export will somehow bring all the data together (what's in Hyper-V and the incremental macrium chain)? If not, then is there a way to:
1) keep my incremental forever chain going, and
2) somehow export a "Full Macrium backup" based on the incremental #298 point in time?

Because I think a "static" image will make a much better mounting choice for the viBoot/Hyper-V VM... not an incremental (in my case) part of a changing daily chain that will only last a week before it gets merged into the baseline full.  Creating a VM off an incremental is a perfect strategy for the quick "grab the files and go" recovery like I originally wanted... but once I started thinking about keeping the VM for a bit longer "just in case"... I started seeing the hole.

@jphughan... I think your idea may be a successful route so long as it shows up in Macrium's drive list during a restore operation... but I'm hoping there's a simpler and/or more "official Macrium" way to do accomplish creating a "full backup" from an "incremental forever" with less steps. Hoping, but not holding my breath

EDIT: Wow... so you have to go to disk management after creating the VHDX to initialize it... but when you get there, you find you could have just created the VHDX in disk management too!  And of course once initialized, Macrium sees it too (source/destination).

Yes, you can create VHDX files directly within Windows Disk Management.  From there you don't even have to initialize them for Reflect to see them.  Once they're created and mounted, Reflect can see them -- although if you already had Reflect open, you might need to click Refresh on its "Create a backup" tab to trigger a disk rescan.  But restoring a Reflect image into a VHDX file does seem to be a fairly straightforward way to get a "native" Hyper-V VM -- although if you had never viBooted the image you're restoring before (as opposed to having run in viBoot for a while and then exporting that to a new Reflect backup), you may then have to boot your restored VHDX file into Rescue Media to ReDeploy it so that it starts in Hyper-V.  I haven't looked into that in detail, though.

Following Step #1...

I can't seem to copy the small .VHDX file ....

I have 2 files listed - the larger "gigabytes-sized" file has a "DIFF" at the end.  That copies fine, but the small "megabytes-sized" file won't copy.  It just sits and hangs up the file copy process.

When I try to use the DIFF file as my virtual hard disk, it gives me an error that it's a differential file and is missing the main file - which is probably that small file that won't copy.  How do you copy that smaller file?

I found a workaround on TenForums:

Posted by GalaxyGE:
I have found a workaround (of sorts). Open the Settings for the viBoot VM. Edit the hard drive, Merge it to make a new .vhxd, then in Hyper-V Manager create a new VM using that new .vhdx as the virtual disk. This VM can be exported.

+x

 

Your.IT.Guy - 24 March 2022 8:11 PM

I found a workaround on TenForums:

Posted by GalaxyGE:
I have found a workaround (of sorts). Open the Settings for the viBoot VM. Edit the hard drive, Merge it to make a new .vhxd, then in Hyper-V Manager create a new VM using that new .vhdx as the virtual disk. This VM can be exported.

This is not a workaround but the correct way to do it. 

Viboot uses differencing vhds, and they cannot be copied to a different location, as the parent file must never be altered in any way (including location) or child vhdx files no longer work.  That is why parent file should be made read only ifsetting up differencing vhdx files manually.

Once a new vhdx file is made, it can be attached to existing or new vms. 

I believe there are powershell commands that will do the same thing but never investigated.