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migration posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

Sysinternals Disk2vhd helps migrate physical desktops to virtual machines


One day, Sysinternals will probably run out of ideas and stop releasing incredibly useful free apps for Windows administrators and technicians. That day isn't today, though.

Just released on TechNet is Disk2vhd, which is designed to create .vhd image files from physical hard drives. Like many other Sysinternals apps, Disk2vhd is tiny, free, and fully portable. It's also available on live.sysinternals.com so you can run it right over the internet should you forget your trusty flash drive at an inopportune time.

The tool is dead simple to use: launch the executable, browse for a destination, choose which physical drive you want to image, and click create. Disk2vhd creates a snapshot that you can then mount in Virtual PC or HyperV, or as a virtual hard drive on a Windows 7 system.

Disk2vhd is compatible with Windows XP SP2 or newer. One word of warning: images over 127GB are not bootable in Virtual PC, so keep under the limit if that happens to be in your plans.

Filed under: Business, Utilities, Office, Google, IBM

Google makes it easier to ditch Lotus Notes


If your company uses Lotus Notes, and has been considering switching to Google Apps, you're in luck. Google has just launched an easy migration tool that allows you to bring all of your Notes data over to the equivalent Google Apps. In a blog post, Google explains that the migration tool is simple and complete enough for enterprise use, and that a 30,000-person company has already used it to switch over.

The tool is a Lotus Notes database, which means IT pros who are used to notes shouldn't have much trouble with it. It migrates everything from Notes to Google Apps: email, calendars, and contacts. This is welcome news to folks who are still stuck with the quirky interface and sometimes-frustrating incompatibility of Notes, but will it get companies to switch? The success of Google Apps in the enterprise market might not be about how easy it is to switch, but about how comfortable businesses are with moving their data to the cloud.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Microsoft, Freeware

Can't get Migwiz to run? Fab's Autobackup to the rescue!

I love Windows XP's file and settings transfer tool. It makes backing up customer data prior to a reformat a painless procedure, and I've never had any problems with the app itself. I've forgotten it doesn't automatically grab .pst files, but that's my own damn fault.

But what can you do when Windows won't boot? Running a repair isn't a great option: the setup could run into trouble, and then you're right back where you started.

Fab's Autobackup is a slick, free utility that I wish I'd come across a long, long time ago. It's available as a PE Builder plugin or as portable application.

The portable version is a nice alternative to FST, and it's intelligent enough to gray out options that you don't need to back up - either because the program in question isn't installed or the user's profile doesn't contain any pertinent application data.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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