Converting a .TIB file to a VMware Virtual Machine
I have been scouring the internet trying to find out if it is possible to convert a .TIB file to a virtual disk, and I have had no luck. It appears that older versions of Acronis had a convertor built in, but the later versions of True Image do not.
Can anyone verify this? Is there really no way to do the conversion?
Thanks.
Joe
Thank you for the response Steve, I will take a look at that article and see if I can get it to work.
I have another question, which seems obvious, but I cannot figure it out... how do i restore the TIB file to the VHD? There doesn't seem to be any place in True Image to select TIB file and restore it to the VHD that I created. It looks like it is only giving me the option to Backup, not restore...
Joe, as I said in my earlier post, you would need to boot the Virtual Machine from the Acronis Rescue Media ISO file and then assuming the VM can see the .TIB image file, and you have allocated sufficient disk space to the VM, then Restore the OS data from the .TIB to the VM disk.
That will work. Boot to the ISO in the version, navigate to the tib and restore it to the virtual hard disk.
Ah yes, sorry I was looking at the other thread. Thanks.
Do I create the ISO file from the TIB file, or are you talking about just using a generic one? Also, I should have clarified that I am doing this on a Mac. I was working in a Windows VM, but that kinda falls apart now because I need to go into the boot menu. Is this still doable on a mac?
Joe, the ISO file is not the .TIB that you are wanting to restore to the Virtual Machine, it is the Acronis Rescue Media ISO file that you need to boot the Virtual Machine from. Akin to booting from a CD on a regular system.
Thanks Steve,
Ok so I think I understand now (sorry, this is literally my first experience with Acronis):
1. Create the bootable ISO file
2. Create a new VM and boot into it from the ISO that I created
3. Restore the TIB file to the new vm through Acronis
Is that a propoer summary?
Ditto to Steve again. An .iso is a "virtual" CD/DVD image. You can actually mount a .iso as virtual disk drive directly in Windows 10 and 8.1 (can't remeber if Win 7 does it or not too). Prior to that, you would have to use a third party tool like alcohol120 or virtualclonedisk (which also work well).
In a VM environment, you can automatically "mount" .iso's as if you were putting a physical disk into a CD/DVD tray and use your boot override menu, one time boot menu, or manually change the boot order in the bios so that the virtual CDROM is used to boot the .iso. This would then boot the Acronis bootable recovery environment and you could the "restore" an existing .tib backup to your virtual hard drive (.vhd) from there.
Ok cool, got it. Need to get my hands on a windows machine and I'll give that a try. Thanks for the help.
So the problem I am running into now is how do I access the TIB file once I have booted into the recovery image? I have tried mapping a host location, but it doesn't work since I am not actually in an operating system and just in the recovery menu. Do I actually need to create the recovery iso from the tib file that I have?
Joe, the way in which you access the TIB file from within the VM will depend on what software you are using and how you configure this to give it access to the drive where the TIB file is stored. This is normally configured in the VM configuration before you power it on / run it.
Where are your backup .tib files stored? Assuming an Active Directory environment on a network share...
In the Acronis bootable recovery environment, click on restore. When it asks you to locate a backup file, You can put in the full unc path of your share in the path, like:
\\192.168.1.100\tibs
when prompted for credentials enter them as
domain\username
password
assuming you're doing this in an AD environment, you'd need to put the domain in front of the username.
I'm actually not in an AD environment, I was just trying to do it from a USB drive. (in the future when this is done, there may not necessarily be access to a network for my application)
I finally got the USB drive to mount and I can navigate to it when searching for the backups, but for some reason the folders that hold the backups are not visible in the browser... I have it formatted as ExFAT--does it need to be something else in order for the files to be recognized? (like NTFS)
So it turns out that it does need to be formatted as NTFS in order to browse it in True Image. I'm able to go through the process of restoring, but i'm getting a generic failure message now, with no more information... "Recover Operation Failed".
Does anyone have any idea what would cause that message?
It's hard to tell with just that message on it's own. A couple of things to be aware of though...
1) What was the install type of your original OS image taken of - a UEFI/GPT OS install or a Legacy/CSM/Bios OS intall?
2) How is your VM bios setup for - UEFI/GPT or Legacy/CSM/Bios?
3) How was your Acronis .iso booted - UEFI/GPT or Legacy/CSM/Bios?
Essentially, all 3 need to be the same for a successful recovery.
4) How much memory have you allocated for the VM - others have had problems if allocating less than 2GB
5) How much space have you given your VM hard drive - shoot for at least the same amount as the original disk - at least for gettig it up and running. You can try to lower it down the road, once you know the process and are able to successfully get it to boot.
6) Are you deploying the new image to a VM hosted on different hardware, or the same hardware that the OS image was originally created from? If this is a VM hosted on different hardware, be advised that the VM uses the local system hardware as the baseline for the VM environment. Once you have successfully deployed your image without an error, it's not likely to boot on it's own. Give it a try, but I suspect you'll be greeted with a BSOD due to driver incompatibility from the drivers embedded in your OS backup and the VM drivers needed to be compatible with the hardware that the VM is hosted on. If that is the case, you'll need to go back and run univresal restore agains the successfully deployed image (once you've gotten there ... and if you get a BSOD after deployment).