VMware vCenter Converter is unable to see the disks when converting Windows operating systems

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When converting a Windows operating system from a physical to a virtual machine or a virtual to virtual machine, you see these symptoms:

• The VMware vCenter Converter wizard does not display all of the data disks.
• When changing the parameters of a scheduled conversion job and previously missing data drives are seen with an arbitrary size.
• The converter logs ( located at: C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\logs) contains an error similar to:
  
  The source computer has EFI firmware.Conversion of live computers with EFI firmware is not supported

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3.x
VMware Converter 3.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.2.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Converter 4.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs if your Windows operating system is using GUID Partition table (GPT) disks. VMware Converter 5.0.x and prior versions do not support conversion of GPT disks.

Resolution

Verify if your Windows Server 2008 machine has GPT disks.

To verify if your Windows Server 2008 machine has GPT disks:

1. Log in to the Windows operating system as an Administrator.
2. Click Start > Run, type diskpart, then click OK.
3. When the command prompt appears, run the command:
   
   list disk
   
   
4. Verify if the disks use the GPT standard.
   
   Note: Review the output of the list disk command. When the GPT column contains information, you know it is a GPT disk.

To convert the Windows operating system that uses GPT disks, the data on the GPT based drives must be relocated using third party tools. This issue is resolved in VMware Converter 5.1.x.

This issue is resolved in VMware Converter 5.1.x, available at VMware Downloads. For more information, see the VMware Converter 5.1.x Release Notes.

For more information, see Windows and GPT FAQ section in the Windows Dev Center - Hardware.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 20, 2013. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

To work around this issue, when you do not want to upgrade. Perform one of these options:

• Back up the data residing in the GPT drives. Create new Master Boot Record (MBR) based drives, then restore the data to the MBR drive after the conversion.
• Back up the data residing in the GPT drives, then restore the data to a new virtual disk in the virtual environment.
• Add the GPT partitioned disks as Raw Device Mappings (RDMs) to the virtual machines after conversion.

Additional Information

VMware vCenter Converter 在转换 Windows 操作系统时无法查看磁盘
Windows オペレーティング システムの変換中に VMware vCenter Converter がディスクを認識できない