How do I backup up a virtual machine to a wim file

[clivebuckwheat]

Hi

I have setup up a virtual machine of Windows 7 just the way I like it, with a few specific applications we use in our organization. How can I backup this Virtual machine to a wim file?, ultimately this wim file is going to booted from a pxe server on a bare metal machine with no hdd. But first I have to back it up and have no idea how to.

[cluberti]

You run sysprep /generalize to generalize the machine, and then use imagex to capture it to a WIM file from a Windows PE environment. WDS allows creation of a capture image that can be used to boot to the network and capture the machine to a separate partition or remote share, but if you don't have WDS you can use a USB key or CD to boot WinPE and capture it to another partition or disk locally - we have a thread here in the WinPE section specifically for doing this.

[nice_guy75]

I was also thinking to do so but we need another drive in the virtual machine to save the wim file, gimagex we can integrate in the winpe.

Can it be possible to create two hard drives in virtual machine??????????

[cluberti]

I honestly can't think of a VM software package that can't do that - you'd just need to create a new virtual drive, attach it to the VM (shut down, of course), and then bring up the VM and format the new virtual drive.

[nice_guy75]

I honestly can't think of a VM software package that can't do that - you'd just need to create a new virtual drive, attach it to the VM (shut down, of course), and then bring up the VM and format the new virtual drive.

can you please elaborate this, as I am not good with virtual machines and virtual drives. You can consider me a newbie.