How to convert a ShadowProtect Backup to a VHD

I use a number of different backup products in my SBSfaq.com office environment, one of those is ShadowProtect.  My Terminal Server is Windows Server 2008 R2 and it’s been running on top of a Windows 8 Hyper-V server as I test it out.  I’ve had ShadowProtect running inside the Guest Virtual Machine so as to ensure I got a solid backup of my data should something go wrong.  Well this week something went wrong.  I had a hardware failure of the server and just my luck, it’s not covered under warranty and I’m not sure if I will get it repaired or not.  My solution is quite simple.  Take the backups and convert them to a VHD and get them running on hardware platform.  Not many people know that you can convert a ShadowProtect backup directly into a VHD.  This is how you do it.

Note – you can also use this process to convert a ShadowProtect backup to a VMDK or a SPF (ShadowProtect Full Backup) file as well.

1. Install ShadowProtect onto a machine – it does not have to be licensed as you are only using the conversion tool.  Reboot as needed.

2. Open ShadowProtect

3. Select Image Conversion Tool from the Tools menu on the left hand pane

4. Select Next to continue

5. Select Network Locations

6. Fill out the form listing the network location where the images are stored

7. It will now list the volumes that it has found here

8. Select the volume you wish to convert and then select Next to continue.  If you have password protected the images, you will now be prompted for the password.  Enter it and select Ok to continue

9. You will see the a list of all the backup points that you can restore this system from.  Select the one you want and then select Next to continue

10. Specify the destination location where you want the VHD file created. Also specify that you want it to create a VHD and select Next to continue

11. It will display a summary screen for you to review.  Select Finish for it to start the image creation process.

12. ShadowProtect will now run the job and you can see the status below.

13. The time it takes to complete the job is a direct relationship to the number of files in the image chain.  The more files in the chain, the longer it will take. 

14. Once the conversion is complete, you will need to do a couple of things.  Boot into the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment.

15. Set the partition to be Active as below

16. Select the Boot Configuration Utility from the Tools menu

17. You will see that the BCD Store is broken on this VHD – you can select Auto Repair to fix it

18.  This is it fixed!

19. Now boot the Virtual Machine and you should be good… for the most part anyway

A couple of things to be aware of here too…

1. The image you’ve just created does not have the same disk signature as the disk – therefore if you try to run any backups using ShadowProtect from within this newly created machine, they WILL FAIL.  The error message will be something like the screenshot below.  The only way to resolve this is to edit the backup job and reselect the volumes you wish to backup and start again with a new full backup image.

2. Given you need to create a new base image, you will also need to prune/delete the older images in the destination folder.  This might well affect your archival requirements.  Therefore assess if this method is the best way for you before you start!