Basically, I had a complete working Windows installation on a disk Volume and I just wanted to copy all files to another disk Volume...
Actually, I had created a new 16GB NTFS .imgPTN file and installed WindowsToGo onto it.
The .imgPTN file booted to Windows nicely.
However, I wanted to convert the partition to a .VHD fixed-size (not dynamic) file so I could add it to my E2B drive and boot directly to it without having to 'switch' partitions - this would allow me to directly access all of the files on the E2B drive after I had booted from the VHD.
Since the WinToGo partition was located on a 500GB USB drive, I did not want to use a DisktoVHD conversion tool because I would end up with a 500GB .VHD file!
I could not find a way to simply copy the files from the USB drive to an empty VHD virtual drive. I kept running into permission issues, symbolic link issues, locked files and other access problems caused by Windows thinking the files were important OS files!
Even upgrading my Windows Home OS to Pro and using VSS didn't help.
After asking the good guys on reboot.pro, it was suggested I use Olof's strarc utility and it worked a treat!
Here is what I did:
Actually, I had created a new 16GB NTFS .imgPTN file and installed WindowsToGo onto it.
The .imgPTN file booted to Windows nicely.
However, I wanted to convert the partition to a .VHD fixed-size (not dynamic) file so I could add it to my E2B drive and boot directly to it without having to 'switch' partitions - this would allow me to directly access all of the files on the E2B drive after I had booted from the VHD.
Since the WinToGo partition was located on a 500GB USB drive, I did not want to use a DisktoVHD conversion tool because I would end up with a 500GB .VHD file!
I could not find a way to simply copy the files from the USB drive to an empty VHD virtual drive. I kept running into permission issues, symbolic link issues, locked files and other access problems caused by Windows thinking the files were important OS files!
Even upgrading my Windows Home OS to Pro and using VSS didn't help.
After asking the good guys on reboot.pro, it was suggested I use Olof's strarc utility and it worked a treat!
Here is what I did: