I bought Norton Ghost some months ago and now I have tried to backup a real hard disk computer to clone it on a virtual machine and I am running into a few issues
Apparently VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone accepts Ghost format, but only *.sv2i files. While the Norton Recovery disc (or the Norton Ghost 15 CD itself) is creating *.v2i files that vCenter Standalone won't accept.
When the restore is about to end using a self recovery CD or the Norton Ghost 15 CD it shows a message asking me to put the Recovery disc when it's already inside, if I click Accept it will show the message again, if I click cancel it will show "error ea730002: cannot find the driver database directory"
However, it seems the restoration process goes fine since the virtual machine will start up and show the "Starting Windows" message, but a few seconds later it shows a blue screen (I think this has something to do with the hard drive AHCI mode but I am not sure).
My Norton Ghost CD seems to be already updated since it doesn't download anything using Live Update and my build number is 15.0.1.36526
I am guessing you used the Cold Backup feature. This triggers a bug in the Ghost 15 SRD when the hardware has changed. It automatically checks the Restore Anywhere box that you cannot uncheck. Ghost is looking for a folder of drivers that is present on it's cousin's SRD - Symantec System Recovery. You can use the Ghost 14 SRD that I think customer service will give you a link to download if you explain the problem.
This doesn't happen when restoring a backup that was made from Ghost running in Windows.
You only get a .sv2i file when you use Ghost in windows (not a cold image from the recovery disk).
That said, the VMware converter really doesn't support Ghost regardless of what they claim.
When you are choosing the import it clearly says "Symantec Live State Images" thats an older product that predates both Ghost and Symantec System Recovery.
I could never get it to work but I only tried it a few times, I don't really like VMware and prefere Virtual PC.
Ghost 15 can convert an image into a .vhd and I 'thought' VMware can import an image from that format.
When Ghost is used to convert the image, it syspreps the system so it runs a minisetup on first boot and that may get you around your hard drive controller problem.
Option 2 would be to make a hot image from inside of windows. Then you can either try the converter that never worked for me, or restore that image into your VM. Images made inside of Windows totally disable the "restore anywhere" function and you won't get prompted for the "driver disk". But you would still need to deal with the had drive controller issue.
Brian here uses a free tool from Terrabyte that can add IDE drivers into an offline system or VM.
It's Windows 7 the one I am trying to clone and I seem to have solved the issue by editing the .vmx file or changing some keys to enable or disable AHCI mode
The blue screen error I've got was the 0x0000007b STOP error caused by AHCI/RAID/IDE controllers
Seems the only thing left to solve is the SRD bug when restoring to other machines. User redk9258 has suggested to contact Symantec to get the Norton Ghost 14 SRD. However, shouldn't Symantec fix this?
With the SRD from Symantec System Recovery, it would have put the correct drivers when Restore Anywhere ran. At least that is what is supposed to happen. The Ghost 14 SRD would not have triggered Restore Anywhere.