Hello, we wish to create several virtual machines using some old PQI files, however VMware doesn't support PQI. When looking around I've seen several mentions of people using norton ghost 15 in order to convert PQI to VHD, but Norton ghost is no longer available.
According to several sources Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery should be able to read PQI files and I was hoping I could use that or some similar tool to convert the files but couldn't figure it out on my own.
Ghost 9 upward and SSR were based on PowerQuest drive image 6. They still support .PQI image files.
They can covert them to both .VHD or .vmdk virtual hard drives.
I don't think they will do it in trial mode, I think you need to purchase the product first.
That said, if whatever virtual pc software your using can match the original systems hal and hard drive controller you may not need to convery anything.
I have old .PQI images of an XP system that had IDE drives and a single core CPU and I can simply restore the images onto a new VPC and have them boot.
I 'think' vmware lets you choose a virtual sata drive but I'm not to familiar with that product.
What you are saying matches what I've been able to figure out earlier, but the real issue is that ghost is discontinued and we didn't get a copy in time.
You are saying SSR should be able to convert PQI files, I take it SSR is Symantec backup exec System Recovery? We do have a full version of this managing backups on our test systems, but the only conversion option I can find is from v2i to vmdk or vhd.
I downloaded a trialversion of Symantec System Recovery 2013, this did indeed have an option for converting PQI to other formats, thanks alot DaveH this was just what I was looking for :)
Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR) was renamed to Symantec System Recovery (SSR) a few years ago.
BESR should also have the same conversion function. Just be aware that Bacup Exec System Recovery is different than Backup Exec.
I mention this because BESR 2010-2011 has a recovery disk based on Vista PE and SSR 2013 has a recovery disk based on windows 8 PE.
A windows 8 PE disk requires the system BIOS to support the "NX" or "no execute" bit for the CPU.
Older systems and some Virtual PC's do not support this. I cannot boot a SSR 2013 on Microsoft Virtual PC or Windows Virtual PC (XP Mode).
So keep that in mind for later, I find it a lot more convienient to backup my working VM's by booting to a recovery ISO and making an image onto a second attached VHD. If your VM can't boot a recovery disk your only other option is to backup the entire virtual hard drive file and that takes a huge amont of space and take extra steps to roll back or recover a VM.
So after you convery some you may want to think about how your going to back them up and try test booting them with the SSR 2013 recovery disk or ISO.