Create virtual disk from external hard drive?

My PC laptop died (bad motherboard) and I decided to go Mac. I bought
a MacBook Pro and Parallels. I took out the healthy PC laptop drive
and put it in a USB enclosure and confirmed it works properly.

I would now like to create an image of my old laptop (including all my
apps and preferences--a perfect copy) to put on my Mac. However, it
appears as if Transporter will only work if the source drive is
currently running an OS (in this case, XP Pro). Since my laptop drive
is only accessible as an external hard drive, Transporter doesn't
recognize it. Is there a way to do this? By the way, I debated putting this question on the Transporter forum, but those I've spoken to believe the solution is in PD4M.

I'm very comfortable with PCs, but a complete Mac newbie, so don't
worry about insulting my intelligence with an overly detailed or
simplistic solution.

Thanks in advance! John

 

Have you considered using Acronis True Image to image the disc, then make a new install onto your Parallels and then restore Acronis to the Parallels install?

 

Thanks for your reply. Does Acronis True Image's trial version allow you to image a disc? I'd rather avoid spending the $50 to buy it if I can.

 

I second the motion. I've relied upon Acronis TrueImage for several years for all my Windows imaging needs, virtualized or otherwise. They're a great company with great products. I image my XP VM every weekend to either an external drive or a local network share.

I'd like to see Parallels Transporter work with Acronis images one day.

@johnelstad: Sorry to hear about the dead PC mobo. I don't know if the trial is time-limited or feature-limited. They seem to omit that particular detail on their site. You could email their support folks and find out. I'm guessing it's time-limited. Otherwise how could most people properly evaluate the imaging feature if it were, say, capped at 100 MB or something?

 

Last I grabbed it for someone it was time-limited.

 

Eru, could you elaborate on the steps I have to take to do this? Here's what I've done so far.

1. Create a virtual disc using Parallels big enough for Windows XP and my external hard drive (~35GB).
2. Install XP onto the virtual disk.
3. Download and install Acronis True Image onto the virtual disc.

What's next? Please be explicit as this is new stuff for me.

Thanks!

 

Sure, no problem!

Here are the steps, convert what you have done into these terms.
What you do is image the external HD (it was a start-up disc, right?) with Acronis.
Now, restore the Acronis Image to a working XP Parallels installation and you should be good to go.

 

Thanks, Eru. I still don't understand where I image the external hard drive to. There's not enough space to put it on the same external drive. My options are: put it on another external drive, put it on the current XP image (from which I'll be running Acronis), or somehow put it on a new disc image I create on the Mac.

As I mentioned before, I'm new to all this, so don't worry about giving me too much information.

Thanks again!

P.S. Yes, it is a fully-functioning drive with XP installed on it. I pulled it directly from my old PC laptop and put it in a USB enclosure.

 

The goal is to just put it on an external as a back-up.
So, yes, another external would work. It is preferable. Sorry I was unclear.