Windows Vista Complete PC Backup
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Using Windows Vista Complete PC Backup
Windows Vista Complete PC Backup only ships with Windows Vista Business, Ultimate & Enterprise editions. Home & Home Premium do not have the full 'Complete PC Backup' as described in this article for more information on backing up Windows Home or Home Premium please see....
Background Scenario
Some background on this Step-by-Step guide is that the backup and restore process outlined here is a V2V scenario meaning Virtual to Virtual. In this case both the source and destination virtual machines are configured identically though on physically different Hyper-V Servers. This would be the equivalent of having two identical physical computers with the same identical hardware components installed. I am using Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V as the virtualisation platform.
Background Scenario Configuration
For this migration configuration I used a virtual machine with a single CPU, 512Mb RAM, 1 x 127 Gb IDE HDD and 1 x IDE CD/DVD ROM. To perform the backup I wanted to emulate having an external USB HDD attached to the virtual machine so I created a fresh virtual hard disk also of the default 127Gb size and attached this to the above virtual machine which I have been using for testing for a few months now for another project, so it has some 'real world' use to me and was not just a freshly created virtual machine for this process.
Once the backup had completed I shut down the source virtual machine and powered it off, I then copied my 'emulated' external USB HDD VHD file to my second Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V over the LAN and created a new virtual machine matching the configuration above. The difference in creating this virtual machine was that I wanted to emulate a failed HDD so the first drive attached to the virtual machine was a newly created 127Gb HDD that had not been formatted nor partitioned in any way. Then I added my new 'emulated external USB HDD' as the second drive to this virtual machine. I now needed the Windows Vista DVD applicable to the architecture (x86 or x64) I was using to boot the recovery virtual machine as each Windows Vista DVD includes the WinPE 2.0 recovery environment and tools to restore a bare metal machine from an external sourced backup, in this case my 'simulated' External 1127Gb USB HDD.
NOTE: I have mentioned USB many times in this article and I am NOT using any form of USB at all in this configuration, I am using the term as if you had one physical PC with one externally attached USB External drive for backups to try to convey the scenario of what a 'typical' user with a single computer at home may have setup.
Source
C: - Windows Vista Ultimate x86 Install.
D: - CD/DVD Rom
E: - 'Simulated' Blank 127Gb External USB HDD
BOOT - Booted from the VM C: Drive
Destination
C: - Blank 127Gb VHD
D: - CD/DVD Rom with Windows Vista Ultimate x86 DVD inserted
E: - 'Simulated' 127 Gb External USB HDD with backup from above source
BOOT - Booted from the VM D: Windows Vista x86 DVD
Extra Info
- If performing this operation with 32-Bit (x86) Windows you must use the 32-Bit (x86) Windows DVD media and the same case if using 64-Bit (x64) Windows you must use the 64-Bit (x64) Windows media to boot the recovery environment or it will fail.
- Add more info on V2V, P2V, V2P & P2P somewhere
- Note the difference between visualisation platforms have different emulated hardware VMWare/Xen/Microsoft/VirtualBox/Parallels etc
Performing the Backup Process
Step-by-Step - Windows Vista Complete PC Backup Process
Performing the Restore Process
Step-by-Step - Windows Vista Complete PC Restore Process
Results
The image on the left is the original virtual machine and the image on the right is after the restore process has completed.
Vista Complete PC Backup | Vista Complete PC Restored
Waving to AB - This image thing is a problem isn't it <grin> Stephen 17:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
