MrThanks

Thank you yes, you are absolutely right. The only reason I would love to have this as an ISO image that I could boot through VirtualBox is that ISO is such a universal format that can be read by a lot of things. VHD... not so much. In case I just want to pull a file out or something without having to use VB ISO would probably make it easier. WOOPS! I stand corrected at least partially! I forgot that Windows 7 can natively mount a VHD image! 8? I assume it can too. So in that sense it is an excellent format for this (until MS comes out with a new OS that drops that feature!) And the only reason I would want to exclude folders is because there is a ton of old stuff on the drive I want to image that would make the image huge. Probably half of it is useless, but who has the patience to go through it all! So I just want to keep it "in case." (I probably have hording tendencies!) It would be really nice to be able to exclude those folders from the image before I make the image, but of the P2V solutions I have seen, I don't think any do it (hopefully that feature will be added in the next generation). I guess I could also offload those files to an external device first before I make the image and then just add back the ones I want. That would also work. The bottom line is that both of these are minor issues and that you pointed me to some fabulous information that will work perfectly! Thank you! ... A little later... heehee ... I found a sneaky way to exclude the folders. But it's not free like the other solutions. Acronis TrueImage makes TIB format images. Apparently you can also use it to convert its own TIB to VHD. http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#8503.html I also think you can exclude folders when you make your images with TrueImage. So you could make a TIB image without the folders and convert it to VHD using TrueImage. Not all that pretty and not free, but one way maybe it could be done. However, with my budget... free is the key word .... so the previous solution is great for me! And Check this out! You can boot a physical machine (I think you have to have Windows 7 or higher though as a host to do it... not sure if the OS in the VHD can be lower or not) from a VHD file!!!!!!! So you are absolutely right. Looks like something like VHD is the best type of format for this kind of thing. I will leave it at this because I don't want to post off topic in your forum. Thank you again! I will be making ImgBurn my go to program for burning images of that type not only because you helped me out because it is spectacular! Thanks so much. :D

Wow! That Sysinternals utility looks amazing! I am going to have to try it out! It can even image a disk that is in use AND write the image to the same disk! ... so that's perfect. It seems like mind boggling technology to me. I'm sure you have an idea of what is going on there but to me it's just magic! Only thing I think it lacks is being able to exclude folders. But I'll have to try it to see. Even if it can't it's pretty darn close to perfect! Thank you very much for that link. It looks like it should do the job. Maybe there is even a way to convert it to an ISO. But I don't want to get greedy. This sounds like it will be excellent if it works! Holy Cow! Just found some references to another free tool called VMWare vCenter Convertor. Apparently this can also make VirtualBox compatible images. It looks like it is unbelivably powerful... maybe too powerful for my needs! The only additional feature I really need is to exclude folders. Don't know if it can do that, but I saw the video here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepgExB_39E What an astounding piece of work! Thanks for all the help. You have really put me on to some great solutions! Just out of curiosity, can ImgBurn image files that are in use?

Thank you. I have no doubt you are right. I'm just trying to increase my understanding of the technical aspects of this as a lot of it is still a mystery to me. I appreciate your comments. I'm not really clear on what to google at this point. I think that most of the imaging software out there won't create an image that boots from an optical disk, you have to use their propreitary program disk first and then point it to the image.... at least I think! I'm looking for something that can boot either directly from an optical disk with an ISO image or from the ISO file located on a drive.... at least I think that's what I mean! It's still a little fuzzy to me. I know you have a far deeper understanding of these concepts then I do. I'm confident it is possible to create this as I have heard of it being done, but I still am not sure where to look for a solution. In any event, knowing that ImgBurn is not the right tool is very helpful and I thank you for that information. At this point I may just use some recovery disk imaging package to make a full recovery disk and leave it at that. It's an interesting learning experience, but not a high priority enough to spend this much time on for me. I am planning to go from XP to a higher Windows version and just want to have a copy of my old system for reference, nostalgia and just in case. I think a regular image from one of these programs is good enough. Thanks again for your help!

Thanks... makes sense. But how about this, which is what I actually wanted to do in the first place. VirtualBox is able to create a virtual drive from an iso image. So I think, if you have a bootable ISO image of a drive, it can boot it and run the OS like a virtualmachine. (don't know if the ISO can be on an optical drive... may have to be on a writeable drive... not sure ... but somehow it works because you can use an ISO image) Could an ISO created as I described above be used to boot in VirtualBox? What I ultimately want to do is to create an ISO of my entire system drive that can be booted up in VirtualBox to keep as an archive when I update to a new OS. I think I have seen things that can do this with proprietary image formats but not with ISO format. I like the idea of storing an entire boot drive in ISO format instead of one of the proprietary imaging formats. But I have not yet figured out how to accomplish this.

A couple of related questions please... 1. If you use Create image file from files/folders then make the root of the system disk (say it's c:\) the root of the image, then I think you can make an ISO image of every file on the drive? If you then select "Make Image Bootable" in Advanced options, you don't get a bootale ISO image of the entire drive? If not, what do you get? 2. Is there any way to exclude files and folders from the tree so that they are not included in the image? I couldn't find any. Thanks again for your help! This is an awesome program even if it can't do this! ('course it'd be even more awesome if it could!)

Thank you. Are you aware of any programs that can do this and can you tell me what they are? Thanks again for your help!

I have Windows XP Pro on my laptop. I would like to create a bootable ISO image of the entire drive including everything on it. I have two questions: 1. Can ImgBurn do this, and if so how? 2. Can I exclude folders from the image? Thanks for the program, this forum and any help!