[dba-Tech] New virtual drive

Jim L.,

I was scanning through old dba-tech messages for backup hints and tricks,
when I ran across this thread.  I have some experience with Microsoft
Virtual PC and "converting" hard disks on old PCs to virtual drives.

Were you able to get your wife's old PC "virtualized"?  I successfully
converted two of my old workstations to virtual PCs.  How did your
experience turn out?

Steve Erbach
Neenah, WI

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jim Lawrence <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> I think that is a 'feature' of all the VPC versions. Once created it can
> not
> me modified externally. The other 'feature' is of course that it will not
> allow a restore over the root drive which is what I would like to do.
>
> The next step I will try is to make an ISO of the original 60GB drive and
> install it that way... That will take a long while.
>
> Jim
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John Bartow
> Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 3:21 PM
> To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] New virtual drive
>
> With MS Virtual PC 2007 it appears that the Virtual Disk Manager allows you
> to change the type and increase the size to fixed drive - 60GB. I've never
> done it though.
>
> I just added a second virtual drive to one of my VMs (very long process).
> Problem is the VM it's assigned to didn't pick it up except in Disk
> Manager,
> where it doesn't let me do anything with it. I have yet to dig through any
> documentation to see if there is something I need to do after creating
> it...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence
> Sent: Monday, October 05, 2009 11:27 AM
> To: 'Discussion of Hardware and Software issues'
> Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] New virtual drive
>
> Hi John:
>
> Thanks for the info. I have a DriveImageXML ISO and the process of
> restoring
> it to the new VPC (VirtualBox) drive is not an issue. The only problem is
> that the restore features on DIX looks at the virtual drive it is about to
> restore to and quits saying drive is not large enough.
>
> Of course the virtual drive is variable so as data is entered it will just
> keep the drive expanding until the maximum of the real drive is reached.
>
> Now I have to figure out what to do. You can not re-set the size or
> expansion method of the virtual drive when once created. The last thing I
> would want is a fixed size drive...
>
> There may be a method of simply generating a file(s) that forces the
> expansion of the virtual drive up to 60GB... gross in concept but for now I
> can not think of a better method...
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Jim
>
>