Can an Acronis XP image from another computer be installed

Thanks to the generous help of members of this forum, I now have XP SP3 running under Hyper-V with an Internet connection and access to USB on the Windows 8.1 host (using remote access). Now the BIG question/goal: I want to clone my XP development system that resides on a different computer and has been backed up via Acronis to an image file.

Over the years, I have had occasion to restore from an image, sometimes to the same computer and at least once to a different one (working through different drivers). However, this situation is foreign for me: how should I start Acronis restore; is it best to move the USB external drive image to the host hard drive; can my virtual XP access the image? Lots of questions, so it would be easier to listen to someone that has done it.

Todd

Hi there
In theory YES -- especially if you have the acronis universal restore feature enabled -- usually this is on the stand alone boot system - create an image and boot your VM from the image (create an EMPTY VM first with the disks already allocated).


1) Create VM with the wizard but DON'T install the OS. Just run configuration and allocate disk space for the VM. The VM should be able to access a USB external device.
2) create bootable acronis recovery image on HOST's HDD. (the PROGRAM not the image backup itself)
3) in the VM settings set the VM to boot from the acronis recovery image -- you might find in the VM settings under DVD device - use physical device or iso image. Select ISO image
4) boot (power on the VM) -- the acronis will restore your image - ensure the image is accessible from within the VM
5) boot the restored XP VM.

However you might get a re-activation request if the VM's virtual hardware is significantly different from the previous one -- however XP clones might be OK and in any case you'll get 30 days before you have to re-activate with XP.

If the VM fails on boot you can also go into recovery mode which will fix the system too when restoring images to different hardware (virtual or real).

(I've got several clones running XP SP3 -- but remember the EULA -- you can only run ONE of them at a time - a VM counts as a Physical machine for XP activations).

Cheers
jimbo

How do I connect the Hosts HD to my Virtual Machine? Use the Remote access? Or is there a better way?

Todd

Can an Acronis XP image from another computer be installed?

Click to expand...

In a VM: yes I also think Acronis will work (already done that with Macrium Reflect and Win7 Backup).

rtcary said:

How do I connect the Hosts HD to my Virtual Machine? Use the Remote access? Or is there a better way?

Todd

Click to expand...

Connecting a host HDD to a VM:
There is a possibility to do that in VMware Player/WS, by the VM storage options: something like use 'use physical disk'...
I just know the basics in Hyper-V but you should try something like this:
Connect a Physical Hard Disk to a Virtual Machine

However, you can keep it simple and just convert the host HDD to a virtual HDD using Disk2VHD.
Since the entire disk, or selected partitions will be cloned to a VHD, then it's just a matter of assigning the created VHD to your VM.
This way is also safer because you work on a copy of the host disk and if something goes (really) wrong in the VM, you'll still be able to create another VHD from the original HDD data.

Good luck.