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Disk Director hangs at loading acronis on ESX Guest OS

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I am new to ESX/ESXI. I created a Windows 2008 Server Guest OS and I can boot into windows and access it using the vSphere Client. I wanted to change some partitions sizes so I turned to disk director which I have been able to use in Virtual Box as Well as VMware. However when I boot my Guest OS in ESX/ESXI the guest OS starts to boot from the CD and I see the message Loading Acronis and then it just hangs and never loads. The bootable CD does work as I tested it on another machines. The virtual settings seem to be right since it starts to boot up.

So I am wondering if someone could tell me what is causing this issue or what the fix is?

I am also wondering if it is possible that it hangs because it cannot see he hard drive and if this is the case does anyone know of a fix?

Thank you very much.

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ZimBoy:

You didn't mention the version of Disk Director that you're using; I'm assuming version 11, correct? The issue you describe is generally caused by the lack of Linux drivers on the Linux-based Acronis boot CD for your hardware, or in your case, virtual hardware.

You may have better luck if you create a WindowsPE version of the boot CD instead of the Linux version, especially if you base the WinPE build on the latest (Windows 7) version of the Windows AIK, which contains the most up-to-date driver set. Consult section 7 of the DD 11 User Guide for detailed instructions on creating a WinPE boot ISO.

Like you, I've never had any problems with the Linux-based boot CD on Virtual PC or VMWare, but I don't have a copy of ESX to try it with.

Another thing you could try is to change the setting for your virtual disk drive in the virtual BIOS setup to IDE mode, if such a setting is available. The Linux boot CD is more likely to see IDE disks than SCSI or SATA or other interface types. However, if DD can't see any disk drives then you'll generally get an explicit error message saying this. If you do this, don't forget to change the setting back before rebooting to your 2008 server guest OS.

Mark:

Thanks for the advice. I will give that a try. Actually I am using DD 10 so maybe I should upgrade to DD 11 first?

I tried what you said about going into the virtual BIOS to change the setting and it showed the CD rom but did not show any hard drive. How can that be? The Guest OS boots up just fine. Did I miss something?

ZimBoy:

If you are going to modify the partitions of a Windows Server 2008 disk then you shouldn't use DD 10, since it creates and modifies partitions to the old partitioning standard. If your partitions were created by Server 08 then they should only be modified by newer partitioning tools like DD 11 or Vista, Win 7, or Server 08 compatible tools.

I'm not that familiar with Server 2008; does it include Disk Management console? If so, you might be able to do your repartitioning with Disk Management or you can use the command-line tool DiskPart. Both of these tools can do a limited amount of partition shrinking and growing but they aren't as powerful as DD 11.

I don't know why there aren't any disk settings in the virtual BIOS, but from my limited understanding of ESX/ESXI, the underlying architecture is very different from other VM products. You may want to search the VMware forums for articles explaining how to repartition host and guest disks in ESX before doing anything else.