Hi,

Is it possible to run a partition image (created with partimage or ghost) inside a virtual tool like qemu, vmware or the like?

The reason I ask is that I have remove the installed vista and installed ubuntu on it. Before doing so I have crated an partition image of the vista install. When I run this image in qemu I get a message like 'Not a bootable disk'.

Cheers, Ronald

I think ghost adds extra headers. I'm not sure about partimage. You might be able to use the QEMU disk conversion utility to help with that.

Ghost and partimage will only copy parts of the filesystem that contain data, so it isn't a binary clone of the filesystem that you can mount using a loop device such as you would get using dd (without compression).

Thus, if I use dd to copy the partition it would work?

You may be able to use the ntfsclone program as well (for backups, not loopback devices).
One danger is if the filesystem on the image becomes corrupt. I don't know how you would repair an ntfs image file. Be sure to create and save an image backup before you use vmware.

You can have bootable iso cdrom containing ghost exe, and you can release your image
(no ?)

Vista does not produce valid boot sector information, so partition and format the image, vista.img, with XP or Linux. See:

"QEMU (The Kernel Virtual Machine) and Windows Vista." at:

http://linuxhelp.150m.com/win/qemu-vista.htm

Since you already have an image, you will have to make adjustments to the boot sector. So you need to know what you are doing.

Anyone have more info on this?

Awesome i really like it

Hi all,

Just to let you know: I have taken another approach.

I've installed the converter tool from vmware (free, runs on windows only) . This converter can create a 'hot clone', e.g create an vmware-image from a running (!) os.

This image-clone can then be started with either vmware OR virtualbox.

But take care:
1. when using virtualbox to run the image you'll see that windows will fail to boot, due to ide-checls that it performs. See the document 'migrating windows' on the vb-website
2. When cloning an oem-licensed your validation will fail. You'll need to call m$ to set you license.

Cheers, Ronald

vmware runs on linux. You mean that the converter tool only runs on windows?

Yes. .

Can you compile it to run on Linux?
Is there source code?

It might be possible.