Virtualize a physical PC to VMware Workstation Pro (P2V) using Acronis True Image (Cyber ​​Protect Home Office) and Acronis Universal Restore

3. Restore physical PC disk to your VM on VMware Workstation via Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (True Image)

3.1. Initialize your VM's virtual hard disk before restoring via Acronis

Press Enter when you see the message "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD" appear.

The Windows PE logo will appear.

Then, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (True Image) will appear.

Go to the "Tools and Utilities" section and click "Add New Disk".

In the "Add Disk Wizard" window that appears, select the "Uninitialized" disk whose model is "VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive" and click "Next".

For the disk initialization method to use, again, you will need to choose:

• Initialize disk in MBR structure: if you installed Windows in Legacy BIOS mode on the physical PC backed up via Acronis and you created this VM with "BIOS" type firmware previously.
• Initialize disk in GPT structure: if you installed Windows in UEFI mode on the physical PC backed up via Acronis and you created this VM with "UEFI" type firmware previously.

For partition creation, skip this step and just click "Next".

Note: when restoring partitions from your Acronis backup, you will be able to select this unallocated space as a destination every time.

At the bottom of the window, you will see that the new disk will be partitioned using the GPT structure (or MBR, depending on your choice at the beginning of this wizard).
Click the "Run" button.

Once the disk is initialized (which is very quick), the message "Add new disk operation successful" will appear.
Click OK.

3.2. Restore physical PC partitions from your Acronis backup

Now that your virtual hard disk is initialized, you can restore partitions from your backup to it via Acronis.
To do this, go to the "Home" section of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (True Image) and click the "My Disks" link in the "Restore" option.

If your backup is automatically detected, select it and click "Next".
Otherwise, click "Browse" to manually select your ".tibx" backup file.

Select your USB external hard drive (left), then select your backup file ".tibx" (right) and click OK.
In our case, our backup file "INFORMATIWEB-MSI.tibx" on our USB external hard drive "My Passport".

Select your backup that appears, then click "Next".

Select "Restore entire disks and partitions".

Select the date/time to restore data from your backup.

Select only the partitions to restore, as well as "Track 0" (which corresponds to the MBR of this disk and is necessary to boot Windows).

Warning : do not check the "Disk 1" box, but only check the boxes of the partitions to restore, as well as the "Track 0" box (to restore the MBR of the disk).
The goal is to be able to manually specify the size of the partitions on the destination disk (the virtual hard disk of your VM).
Otherwise, you could end up with full partitions with 0 bytes of free space, as you can see in step "12. Bonus: Problem encountered if you try to restore the entire disk instead of its partitions" of our tutorial about P2V via Acronis on VirtualBox.

For Partition 1-1 restore settings, click the "New Location" link (top right), then select the unallocated space of Disk 1 and click "Accept".

Important : for each partition to restore, you will need to click the "New Location" link each time and select the "Unallocated" space of Disk 1.

As expected, it will be restored to the "Unallocated" space of Disk 1.
As you can see, this "Partition 1-1" corresponds to the small 100MB partition of Windows.

Click "Next".

For restoring "Partition C", click "New Location" again.

Please wait a little while Acronis scans the "C" partition.

Again, select the "Unallocated" space of your disk 1 and click "Accept".

The destination of "Partition C" becomes "Unallocated".

Warning : as you can see, Acronis is trying to restore your "Partition C" using its original size.
Which may take up all the remaining space on your virtual hard disk. Which would prevent you from restoring the remaining partitions from your Acronis backup.

Click the "Change default" link (located to the right of this partition size).

Change the partition size to fit the size of the virtual hard disk.
Then, click "Accept".

In our case, this "Partition C" will have a size of 80 GB on our virtual hard disk.
Which will leave about 40 GB free on it in our case.

As expected, the size has been changed.
Which will leave free space after restoring this partition.

Click "Next".

For "Partition 1-4", click the "New Location" link again, select the "Unallocated" space of your Disk 1 again and click "Accept".

As you can see, it is a small partition (536 MB in our case).
Which will leave enough free space on your virtual hard drive.

So you can simply click on "Next".

Note: this small partition corresponds to the Windows 10 recovery partition in our case (as you can verify thanks to a previous image of this tutorial).

For our "Partition D" containing data, we click "New Location" again, select the "Unallocated" space of disk 1 again and click "Accept".

The "Partition D" is again a large partition.
However, since this is the last partition to be restored, Acronis will simply use all the remaining space on your virtual hard disk.
So you don't need to change the size of this partition.

Just click "Next".

To restore "Track 0" (= MBR of the disk), select your disk 1 (of which you have selected each time the "Unallocated" space for the restoration of your partitions) whose model is also "VMware Virtual SATA Hard Drive" and check the "Disk Signature Restore" box.

When you plan to restore a backup containing a Windows installation, Acronis recommends selecting the "Disk Signature Restore" option. This step is essential for several reasons:

• Acronis Task Recovery: this allows Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (True Image), installed on the physical PC being backed up, to automatically recover its tasks, as the disk signature is used to identify your disk.
• Application Licenses: some applications may have their license tied to your disk signature, making this restore necessary.
• Windows Restore Points: this also allows using Windows restore points, if available.
• VSS Snapshots: this makes it easier to use VSS snapshot restore, especially in the context of the "Previous Versions" feature present in Windows 7 and Vista.

Source : Selecting target disk for MBR recovery - Acronis True Image 2016.

A summary of the recovery operations appears.
You can see that Acronis will recover your partitions by changing the size of some of your partitions (as you configured) and will also recover "Track 0" (which is the MBR of the virtual hard disk, which is needed for Windows to boot).

Click "Run".

Please wait while your partitions and "Track 0" are restored from your Acronis backup.

Once the restore is complete, the message "Restore operation successful" will appear.

Turn off your virtual machine using the "Power Off" option.

Note: Windows is safe, because you are running Windows PE and it runs only in your computer's RAM.

Confirm the abrupt shutdown of your virtual machine.