R-drive Image Vs Acronis

[Carlos Beirise]

As described in another post, I was looking for ways to install and run Windows 7, and various Windows programs, in a virtual machine (VM). Of course, creating a VM from scratch, and then installing and configuring a bunch of Windows programs in it, could take a substantial amount of time. Thus, it seemed that the most convenient method for creating a usable Windows system in a VM might be to simply restore one of those ATI 2011 TIBs into a new VM, or convert the TIB to some format that VM software could use.

It appeared that VMware, VirtualBox, and other VM software could use a file in VHD format. VHD also appeared to be the format that ATI 2011 and other tools would most readily convert drive image files into. (Apparently it was possible to create VMs from images created by AOMEI Backupper, by EaseUS Todo Backup, or by Macrium Reflect. Note also that, just as Acronis included a tool to mount and view the contents of its TIB images without restoring them, there were multiple tools to mount, read, and write to VHD files without actually running the VM contained in those files.)

The question at hand, then, was whether and how I could convert an ATI 2011 TIB into a working VM, probably using VHD format. This post explores that question. I was using VirtualBox, so I focused particularly on converting TIBs into working VirtualBox VMs.

In this relatively brief exploration, I found that it was possible to use ATI 2011 to convert a half-dozen TIB drive images of old Windows 7 installations to VHD, and to use those VHDs as the basis for VMs in VirtualBox.

I found, unfortunately, that the resulting VMs had problems. These VMs came from three different computers. The VMs from two of the three computers had Windows-related problems: they either failed to start at all, or they started but did not seem to be running software effectively. Perhaps some or all of those problems could have been resolved with sufficient troubleshooting effort. (I did not realize that the Hyper-V virtualization option built into Windows 10 used VHD format. When I added this later note, it seemed that Hyper-V might thus avoid the second conversion step, from VHD to a format compatible with VirtualBox, and might therefore be able to do a better job with these VHDs.)

While those two Lenovo-based VMs seemed to be running Windows successfully, VirtualBox did not allow them (and the other VMs that I was able to run) to run in properly sized windows. It would still have been possible to use them for some purposes, but plainly the little windows were not helpful. It was not clear when or if VirtualBox would be revised so as to eliminate that problem and make those VMs useful.

Since those Lenovo-based VMs did run successfully, without driver issues, it was possible that the TIBs from which they were created would also be most likely to succeed if I were to use restoration approach with them. That is, I might have been able to restore those TIBs into a previously created VM, and that might have avoided the problem of small windows. I did not explore that possibility.

Finally, the VMs that ran successfully indicated that their copies of Windows 7 needed to be reactivated, and so did the copies of Microsoft Office 2010 installed in those VMs. If phone-based activation worked, this would not necessarily pose a problem to the goal of having VMs that were not connected to the Internet and thus, hopefully, would be insulated from corruption by future Windows updates or other invasive Microsoft activities.

The last of the methods explored in this section did not require ATI to be installed: it would be sufficient to use ATI on a USB or other bootable disk to restore a TIB or other image to the computer, and then use VMware vCenter to virtualize that restored installation. My own needs did not call for further exploration of that method.

For my purposes, the TIB conversion options required ATI to be installed. To install ATI on a Windows 7 system, older versions like my ATI 2011 were good enough; for Windows 10 compatibility, ATI 2015 or later would be needed. At this point, I did not explore the question of whether ATI 2011 running in a Win7 VM on Win10 would provide the desired functionality, allowing me to convert TIBs even if I did not have ATI 2015+ or a physical Windows 7 system.

I was able to install ATI 2011 on my Windows 7 machine, so I could run ATI on that machine, and thus was able to follow all of the steps just described. But ATI 2011 was not compatible with Windows 10, so I could not install it on my Windows 10 machine. I was able to repeat the first several steps that I had taken on the Win7 machine; but when it came time to run ATI 2011, my only hope was to reboot the Win10 system from a bootable USB, CD, or DVD drive. (My preferred way of creating a bootable USB drive involved YUMI.)

When I booted the YUMI drive, I started by trying the option of running ATI 2011 Build 6942. I had just added that option to the YUMI drive. Unfortunately, it seemed this build was not able to recognize a USB mouse. I did have a PS/2 mouse, and the Win10 desktop computer did have a PS/2 jack, so I could have pursued that. But I doubted there would be any significant difference in functionality between two builds of the same Acronis product. Instead, I decided to try the older Build 5519, installed on the YUMI drive previously. That worked. In ATI 2011, I chose Recover My Disks > browse to and select the TIB > Next > select the drive C image > specify recover location. Unfortunately, that was the end of the line. There was no option to select any recovery destination other than the physical hard drive partition presently used as drive C by this system. I stepped back and looked in Tools & Utilities. Here, again, ATI 2011, booted from the USB drive, offered nothing of relevance.

I looked briefly at the Acronis WinPE ISO Builder option that was available to me as a Start Menu item on the Windows 7 machine. My impression was that this option was available to me only because I had bought and installed the ATI 2011 Plus Pack. Creating WinPE bootable media could be something of a hassle. Acronis said this media would offer various functions. It did not specify whether it would do TIB to VHD conversions.

On the Windows 7 computer, installation of ATI 2011 had created an option to convert an Acronis TIB to a Windows backup in VHD format. This option apparently existed in ATI 2010 as well. Subsequent versions of Acronis, right up to 2017, removed the conversion capability altogether. But then Acronis announced that ATI 2018 ($50 for perpetual use, free trial) was able, once again, to convert an Acronis image to VHD format. But Ghosh said the new ATI 2018 would only do this with full partitions. A search on that led to an Acronis explanation involving Microsoft Hyper-V, not VirtualBox, and a discussion suggesting that the resulting VHD might not be VirtualBox-compatible. (A later post discusses ATI 2019 on Win10.)

At this point, I proceeded to create VMs, as described below. I would soon learn that this step was a bit premature. I should have gone, first, into VirtualBox > File Preferences > General tab > change Default Machine Folder to the desired drive or partition, so that VMs would be saved on a partition that had room for them. Instead, I had to fool with them later (below). Changing the Default Machine Folder would take care of the later option to modify Settings > General > Advanced tab > Snapshot Folder.

I did not intend to use either of these machines at this point, so I did not revise their Settings in VirtualBox. Later, I would decide that that, too, was a mistake: for each VM, I should have gone into Settings > Network > Adapter 1 > check Enable Network Adapter > set it to Not Attached > uncheck Enable Network Adapter (and likewise for Adapter 2 et seq.). I made that change because I did not yet want these VMs to connect with the Internet. They were old; I had no idea what updates (e.g., Windows, antivirus, other programs) should be installed, or might install themselves, or whether any of those updates (especially but not only from Microsoft) would alter the VM in ways that would make it less functional or more problematic. Once the VMs were created, to improve performance, on a system with spare resources, I also changed Settings > System > Processor tab > 2 CPUs (out of eight available) and Settings > Display > Screen > Video Memory > 128MB. In addition, I increased the RAM allocation to 8192MB.

The VMs that were at least somewhat functional wanted me to go online to install or update antivirus, install Windows updates, reactivate Windows, and so forth. But I was interested in running a Windows 7 installation that was not in touch with the Internet precisely because, as described in the other post, over the past several years, I and others had observed that system problems seemed to increase when Microsoft felt it was time for us to spend more money or give Microsoft more control over our systems. I wanted to keep the VM offline. If there was no way to do that, then I would want to know that.

Two well-developed VMs would not start at all. They would very rapidly flash a blue screen of death (BSOD) with STOP code 0x0000007B. (I was able to capture that information only by making the mouse active outside of the VM and then using PrintScreen when the BSOD appeared for only about one second.) Lifewire said that device driver issues would be one possible explanation for that error. Driver issues would be no surprise; after all, this was entirely different hardware, requiring entirely different drivers. It may have been possible to troubleshoot and resolve that issue. I was not presently inclined to do that; as just noted, I was more inclined to spend that time building a fresh, new VM.

It appeared (according to 1 2 sources) that this failure to install might be due to a bug in Guest Additions. I tried several suggestions to obtain at least the ability to resize the VM window, so that it would be large enough to use for practical purposes. Those suggestions:

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