Error creating .vmdk file: File I/O error (4)

[wageningen]

I’m getting the following error while converting the VHD file to an ESX .vmdk file: File I/O error (4)

The source is from a Windows 2008 R2 physical server.
The VHD file created by disk2vhd.exe, from sysinternals.
The target format is: .vmdk VMware ESX server
The disk is 136 GB, but I only selected the C (system) partition to be converted.
The VHD file is 12 GB, but when I convert it to .vmdk format it wants to make the file 136 GB.

[anton (staff)]

You have an error I would not expect OS to throw...

//
// MessageId: ERROR_TOO_MANY_OPEN_FILES
//
// MessageText:
//
// The system cannot open the file.
//
#define ERROR_TOO_MANY_OPEN_FILES 4L

And V2V wants to create full 136GB file b/c VMDK (generic form) does not support sparse images. But we'd take a look at the software you list, will try to reproduce the issue here to see what could be dome to avoid it. We'll keep you updated. Thanks!

[wageningen]

Oke thanx.

I also executed another method: Online backup of the Windows 2008 R2 server with the standard backup tool.
This is also creating an .VDH file. I've converted this to a .vmdk file and it succesfully created an 40 GB file (instead of 136 GB). Created a virtual machine and attached the .vmdk file. After I configured 8 CPU's it stared up, but no OS, only reguesting an IP adres of DHCP.

[anton (staff)]

You need to configure other emulated hardware. VMware and Microsoft emuate very different hardware so 99% the OS is not going to boot unless you'll do proper hardware migration.