Physical to VM conversion Windows drive letters

[alaw005]

I am a problem where I have converted a physical Windows 10 machine, with a C drive and a D drive to a virtual machine. The immediate problem is that the original D drive has been assigned to the E drive (with the virtio iso as cd on D drive) and I cannot open Disk Management or DISKPART within the new Windows VM to change back. They start opening but never finish loading. The VM disks are configured as follows:

 

    <disk type='file' device='cdrom'>

      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>

      <source file='/mnt/user/isos/virtio-win-0.1.118-2.iso'/>

      <target dev='hdb' bus='ide'/>

      <readonly/>

      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='1'/>

    </disk>

    <disk type='file' device='disk'>

      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>

      <source file='/mnt/user/domains/Monsterblack/vdisk1.img'/>

      <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/>

      <boot order='1'/>

      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='1' target='0' unit='0'/>

    </disk>

    <disk type='file' device='disk'>

      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>

      <source file='/mnt/user/vdisks/monsterblack/vdisk2.img'/>

      <target dev='hdd' bus='ide'/>

      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='1' target='0' unit='1'/>

    </disk>

 

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am a newbie to unRAID and still trialing before committing ... if I can't get to work or get good enough performance I'll just have to go back to using Windows as I need this for work and games.

 

I followed the process set out in

https://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Manual_6#Physical_to_Virtual_Machine_Conversion_Process. This was a straight forward process and worked straight away although performance is not very good, even with what I consider a reasonable rig. For example the VM uses up all the allocated memory (24GB) straight away and is very sluggish even with teh C drive on the SSD cache.

 

M/B: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. - B85M-D3H-A

CPU: Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1246 v3 @ 3.50GHz

HVM: Enabled

IOMMU: Enabled

Cache: 256 kB, 1024 kB, 8192 kB

Memory: 32 GB (max. installable capacity 32 GB)

GPU: Geforce GTX 750ti

 

 

 

 

[BobPhoenix]

Try changing your XML to be like this:

 

   <disk type='file' device='cdrom'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/isos/virtio-win-0.1.118-2.iso'/>
      <target dev='hdd' bus='ide'/>
      <readonly/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='1' target='0' unit='1'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/domains/Monsterblack/vdisk1.img'/>
      <target dev='hdb' bus='ide'/>
      <boot order='1'/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/vdisks/monsterblack/vdisk2.img'/>
      <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='1'/>
    </disk>

What I changed was the "bus='?'" values if that isn't obvious to you.

 

Edit: realized you may nee to change "target dev as well so updated above.

[alaw005]

Great thank you. I've popped out but will try that when get back. Is the idea that the disks on bus 0 get loaded first then bus 1 etc?

 

[BobPhoenix]

Great thank you. I've popped out but will try that when get back. Is the idea that the disks on bus 0 get loaded first then bus 1 etc?

They should show up in Device manager before those on bus 1 but I believe the target dev is like setting a bios setting.  So even if a drive would be listed in Device Manager first - Windows would BOOT from a later device.

[alaw005]

No luck unfortunately. I've tried: 1) just changing the bus numbers, 2) also changing the target dev, and 3) also changing the order in which devices listed. The following is the config tested. I even tried removing the cdrom device altogether but the second disk was still E rather than D.

 

    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/domains/Monsterblack/vdisk1.img'/>
      <target dev='hda' bus='ide'/>
      <boot order='1'/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='writeback'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/vdisks/monsterblack/vdisk2.img'/>
      <target dev='hdb' bus='ide'/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='0' target='0' unit='1'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='cdrom'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source file='/mnt/user/isos/virtio-win-0.1.118-2.iso'/>
      <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/>
      <readonly/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='1' target='0' unit='0'/>
    </disk>

 

I suspect that windows may have already decided the order when I first created the VM? And maybe diskpart doesn't run on virtual drives?  I'm going to see if there is a windows registry hack to change the drive letter ... will post back shortly.

[alaw005]

I found a page on changing Windows drive letters using the registry at https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=54362.0. I didn't have to do the Security menu bit but swapped the D and E drives around as per instructions then saved and restarted the VM ... and guess what ... IT WORKED!!!! Thank you BobPhoenix for your help.

[BobPhoenix]

I found a page on changing Windows drive letters using the registry at https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=54362.0. I didn't have to do the Security menu bit but swapped the D and E drives around as per instructions then saved and restarted the VM ... and guess what ... IT WORKED!!!! Thank you BobPhoenix for your help.

Glad you got it sorted out.