Re: Using partimage and virtualbox

John Bowling wrote:

Darrell Stec wrote:

I have a dual boot computer (HP) that has one of those Recovery
Partitions
on logical drive D, running WinXP and openSuse 10.3. I read several
posts on the Internet that claim that if one uses partimage to make
images of the C drive, then those images can be installed in a virtual
machine under virtualbox.

I've used the RescueCD bootable disk with partimage on it to make the
images
on to multiple DVDs. However no matter what options I use I cannot get
partimage to write to any disk after the first. The program wants me to
change the directory because it is full.

sda2 is my WinXP partition. I made a directory for the DVDrom and
mounted
it as /dev/sr0 which is the correct device. I noticed that partimage
does not like plain old DVD +R disks and insists on DVD +RW, and further
requires them to be formatted (even though they are preformatted) and
having the udf file system designation and label with the mkudffs
command.

My question is -- should I be breaking the WinXP partition up into DVD
sized (about 4000 MB) chunks and mounting my opensuse /home partition and
saving them there, and then burning the separate chunks to DVDs?

It seems that virtualboxOSE will only install an OS from either a DVD, CD
or
floppy unless I am doing something wrong. What compresion should I use
partimage (if any) to burn to the DVDs so that virtualbox will recognize
them?

Has anyone tried this technique?

I made the prerequisite DVD backup disks for the Recovery partition as my
first step after buying my computer a few years ago. Is it possible to
use these (made with the HP/Compaq applet) DVDs to install WinXP under
virtualbox? I would prefer to capture my present WinXP installation
because it runs with everything I want it to, the very few times I need
to use it (mainly to simulate a proceedure when I am walking a customer
though it, because they don't always convey what they are seeing or
should be seeing).

Is there a better way to accomplish what I want? Or is this another one
of those things doomed from the beginning?


Why would you ever use huge partitions for an OS? Yea, I know that PC
manufacturers have a habit of using one gigantic partition for Windows (up
to the limit the OS can handle) and no data partitions (other than their
hidden recovery partition). That's why I never buy pre made systems for
the major vendors. It forces your image to be huge, expecially if you have
installed lots of software and have lots of data. Also, when Win corrupts,
and it WILL, you then have to format and loose all additions. On another
partition, you won't lose it. Most PC vendors are dumb about that,
including HP.

I would always partition a drive to limit Windows to about 10G, and put
all add ons and data on other partitions, so the image files are often 2G
or less (compressed).


When I bought this computer, it was an emergency. My old computer died and
I was in the middle of a project. So I ran to the computer stores and
bought a computer that gave me the best bang for the buck. Unfortunately,
it was an HP with the Recovery Partition. Some time after that I installed
SuSE and the installation was easy.

I just got done installing PCLinxusOS on an old Compact Amanda M300 notebook
with 128 MB, 10GB HD, and a 333 MZh Pentium II. What a royal pain. It was
the only distribution LiveCD that I could get to even boot up. Just
formatting the HD took hours and hours.

I have not tried to go from an image file for VirtualBox, but had no
problem going from the install CD for XP.

If you have a lot of HD space somewhere, try doing the image to the HD and
using that to install to VirtualBox. You should even be able to go from
the origonal HD with XP on it, if it's somewhere accessable.


Virtualbox only gives me the options of loading from floppy or CD/DVD. So
just putting the image on one of my Linux partitions won't work. Unless I
am missing something.

Thanks for the reply.

John

--
Later,
Darrell
.

Relevant Pages

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    ... does not like plain old DVD +R disks and insists on DVD +RW, ... My question is -- should I be breaking the WinXP partition up into DVD ... It seems that virtualboxOSE will only install an OS from either a DVD, ... two drives or a bootable Win on it's own partition and later SP levels of ...
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