[PLUG] Need Virtualization Advice

[Russell Johnson]

On Nov 22, 2011, at 5:42 PM, Mark Phillips wrote:

> 1. Can I create a virtual version of my Windows 7 Home Premium using the
> system recovery disk and the backup on my external usb drive? 

Depending on what you have for recovery disks… maybe.

However, Windows tends to install very hardware specific. So when you move to a virtual pc, you'll end up reinstalling drivers. With vmware, this can be as easy as installing vmware tools, which mounts as a virtual disk in the virtual machine. 

There are conversion utilities for vmware to convert live machines to virtual machines. They used to have these available for download on the vmware website, but I haven't had a need to use them in some time, so I don't know if this is still the case. 

> 2. Vmware or Virtualbox?

I like vmware because, like my Mac, it just works. I use vmware fusion on my mac to run Windows, and when I was running a linux box as my main machine, I ran Windows in a vmware session. It's usually quite a while between times I need to run Windows, and when I do, vmware pops right back up.

It virtualizes all the hardware. You can choose to attach the USB/CD/etc hardware to the virtual computer, or not. 

Russell Johnson
russ at dimstar.net