Running 3rd party backup program

Discussion in 'Windows Virtual Machine' started by bmwmcrider, Dec 10, 2007.

  1. bmwmcrider

    bmwmcrider Member

    Messages:
    37
    Hello,

    Is it possible to a 3rd party backup program such as Acronis True Image on a VM with WinXP as the guest OS? If so can the drive image be saved to an external drive and be used to faithfully restore a corrupted VM drive?

    Thanks
     
  2. Alicia

    Alicia Parallels Team

    Messages:
    683
    Hello,

    yes, you can use a 3rd party software (Acronis True Image for example) for backing up a VM and then use the created copy. But you can just backup an .hdd file and store it somewhere yourself.

    Best regards,
    Alicia.
     
  3. bmwmcrider

    bmwmcrider Member

    Messages:
    37
    Alicia,

    Thanks - by your statement "But you can just backup an .hdd file ..." I assume you mean don't expect to back up the entire Mac HD which I understand to be the case. Furthermore, I assume when a saved .hdd image is restored it just overwrites the existing .hdd contents on the Mac HD.

    I ask these questions because I don't want to inadvertantly clobber my VM installation and have to start from scratch and reinstall everything.

    Regards,

    Mike
     
  4. Alicia

    Alicia Parallels Team

    Messages:
    683
    I meant that you can copy the .hdd file (which is a file of a virtual hard drive of your VM) and then you can create a new VM using the existing .hdd which contains all your data from the previous VM.
    Or you can backup the .pvs file (which is a configuration file of the VM) together with the .hdd.
    And with that you will be able to run the VM of that condition which it was in when you backuped it.

    Best regards,
    Alicia.
     
  5. dkaleky

    dkaleky Member

    Messages:
    77
    True Image does not backup to network drive

    I bought the premium package- and Acronis True Image will not back up to my wireless network drive, or any other Pc on network

    I keep getting error of wrong password.- it is correct.

    I was able to make an image of a file and put it on same drive- but it wont write to another drive (except once, and i could not reproduce it)

    I have tried over a dozen times, I have latest ATI.
     
  6. dkaleky

    dkaleky Member

    Messages:
    77
    here is error log

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <log build="169" product="Acronis*True*Image*Home" task="2DEEF9FB-CC99-4C31-A2AE-A8BB71EEFBC4" uuid="CD357C50-C196-4E85-BF60-BEE3F25257AC" version="1.0">
    <event code="2" id="1" level="2" message="The &quot;xp&quot; operation started" module="100" time="1197571831" />
    <event code="503" id="2" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1197571832" />
    <event code="503" id="3" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1197571833" />
    <event code="11" id="4" level="3" message="Priority changed to Low priority" module="100" time="1197571833" />
    <event code="503" id="5" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1197571833" />
    <event code="1015" id="6" level="4" message="User name or password for the remote resource J:\test.tib is incorrect. Please check user name and password and type it again." module="1" time="1197571835" />
    <event code="5" id="7" level="4" message="Operation has completed with errors." module="100" time="1197571835" />
    </log>
     
  7. dkaleky

    dkaleky Member

    Messages:
    77
    the problem is Acronis will NOT image the complete XP partition-

    not to my network drives or even to mac partiton.

    It will backup files but thats not why i bought this.

    It seems to be inherent, and I doubt you have a fix,
     
  8. Alicia

    Alicia Parallels Team

    Messages:
    683
  9. blsAUS

    blsAUS Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    Hi Alicia or dkaleky (or others who replied on this thread) -

    I would like to use Acronis to back up files only within my XP partition as these change all the time and I'm afraid of data loss. I've tried to direct Acronis to back up a set of files (ex. My Documents folder) to a real network drive as well as my Mac's internal drive (i.e. within the "Home" folder on MacOS) and I get the same "user name or password is incorrect" error message.

    I periodically back up the entire .hdd/VM file to an external drive manually, so I could use this and the config files to restore the VM if it's trashed. I don't change the programs installed on my VM that much. I've read that if you allow Time Machine to back up the VM, you will soon fill up your backup volume as the entire .hdd file changes on each run and TM will do incremental backups on that large (multi GB) file.

    By backing up only my Documents and a few other files (Outlook) to my Mac's internal HD, Time Machine will pick up on the Acronis backup files during it's normal backup but won't bloat my backup volume with new .hdd copies.

    Can someone tell me what the user name and password should be set to? Dkaleky - it sounds like you were able to get this to work for files only, but not the entire XP partition.

    I would GREATLY appreciate any help here. Thank you!

    Sincerely,
    blsAUS
     
  10. dkaleky

    dkaleky Member

    Messages:
    77
    It has been awhile since I have used this on parallels due the bad functionality.

    You use the same name and password as your XP login.


    All this info is from what I did before- I do not know if anything has changed.

    You can image the entire drive- Or choose files.

    The only hassle is when you need to restore- even if you did a drive image, you can not ( at least I could not and no one here or at acronis knew either) restore the image itself. I had to restore parts of the image-- ie whatever directory or files I needed to-

    So if I needed to reinstall XP- I would restore the windows directory and whatever else is needed for XP like the hidden files under root directory.

    GL
     
  11. blsAUS

    blsAUS Bit poster

    Messages:
    3
    Hi DKaleky / GL -

    Thanks a lot for your reply (and sorry for my slow reply but work has been nuts lately).

    I don't have a username/password on my Windows partition (other than the admin password) - but I thought that I tried that and it still failed. I will have to try it once again.

    Like I said, my plan if the WinXP image craps out is to restore from my "virgin" copy but what I care most about is my documents and my Outlook .pst.

    If you have any further insight, I'd appreciate it. Otherwise, I'll have to start a Parallels support case to see if they can help me figure it out.

    Thank you...
    Brian
     
  12. dkaleky

    dkaleky Member

    Messages:
    77
    try making a new user. then at the end of acronis ti when it asks for the password use the new pw from the new user
     

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