Booting an IBM backup from USB HDD

[jfreejay]

I saw discussion about recognizing USB drives in Parallels but not what I need to know about booting from one. Here's my problem, briefly:

- My ThinkPad was stolen, but I had backed it up using IBM Rescue & Recovery onto a USB hard drive.

- I now have a Mac (yay!) and Parallels, but I haven't installed XP Pro yet. I hope to recover XP Pro and all my other programs/data with the IBM R&R backup.

- The backup is bootable, so can I boot it up in Parallels from the USB drive without having an OS installed?

- I've installed Parallels Desktop but haven't done anything beyond the initial installation.

- I'm brand new to Mac and Parallels; and I don't really know anything about booting, partitions, VMs, or the like, so please speak slowly at first.

Thanks,
jfreejay

 

[Purplish]

A couple of thoughts...but since I haven't done this myself I hope others will jump in.

1) It is unlikely you will be able to boot from your USB hard drive. Parallels requires some special drivers in order to operate virtual machines on the Mac and your backup will not have these drivers

2) If you could find a windows PC, better yet a ThinkPad, you may be able to restore your backup. Then use the Parallels Transporter Tool to create a VM that can run on Parallels.

3) Also, it is unlikely that your XP license from the ThinkPad will be valid on Parallels. If it was an OEM license (preinstalled by IBM) then it is not portable. The Transporter function may still work, but you will have to activate it with a valid license key.

4) Maybe the most stable option, but also the most time consuming... Do a fresh install of XP in Parallels. Reinstall your programs. Now attach the USB hard drive as an additional (but not bootable) disk drive. Now it becomes easy to move over all your data.

5) One more thought...it's insane but it just might work. Find a thinkpad. Boot it using your bootable backup. Run Parallels Tranporter to create a portable VM.

Maybe others will have better ideas. Good luck.