Re: Using partimage and virtualbox
- From: Will Honea <whonea@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:04:59 -0700
Darrell Stec wrote:
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.
If you have the image in iso format on your hard drive, VirtualBox will let
you mount the image in place of the CD/DVD - that's how their extensions
are packaged. In the settings, mount the iso image then tell it to boot
from CD/DVD - it won't know the difference.
As for Win from OEM restore media, I don't think I've every gotten it to
work. First problem is that it usually checks for the make/model you're
installing on. If you get past that speed bump, you still have to deal
with the assumed hardware configuration that the image assumes which can be
a royal PITA to deal with. If you really know what you are about, it's
possible to hack the recovery media to extract the basic distribution and
write your own script to install, but the last couple of times I did that I
lost the OEM registration info and it wanted to register the copy with MS.
One method that some people have sworn works is to configure a drive with
a "legitimate" copy of Win running then mount that as a drive for VB. I
tried that once - it gets tedious to set up and requires you to have either
two drives or a bootable Win on it's own partition and later SP levels of
XP (and I suspect all versions of Vista, if you are that foolish) will fail
validation because of the hardware changes it sees and require
re-activation anyway. I've only played with these other methods since I
have access to corporate licensed media through work but they might work
for you.
--
Will Honea
.
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