I was under the assumption that the Restore Anyware feature was disabled for trial versions. The policy could have changed in the latest release, but I'm unaware of this happening.   Are the images actually specifying that they are Restore Anyware licensed?  Supposedly even after you license the product, the images made with the trial version are not Restore Anyware compatible, so you have to make new images.

With my disimilar restores, I often find that I have to restore one drive at a time.  The sv2i files are only to be used for disimilar hardware.  I find it better to specify the v2i files and restore them one at a time.  I usually start of with a blank drive and then restore one partition to it first, resizing if needed.   Then any other partitions can be individually restored and resized on the fly as well.

Are your images located on an External USB hard drive?  If your target system has USB 1.0 ports instead of USB 2.0 ports, restores can be deathly slow.  I once had a Dell PowerEdge 2650 server that amazingly had only USB 1.0 ports.  I had to add a USB 2.0 card to the system in order to get any decent backup performance out of it.

 Thanks for the reply!  I have my image on a network drive and when I bootup the Dell server with the BESR CD, I can map the drive and browse over to the files with no problem. I have tried doing one drive at a time, but the Progress Bar indicator gets to 99% sometimes, but will not complete. I have left it run overnight, but it hangs at 99%. I have to cancel it out. There is no warning about the Restore Anywhere being disabled in my trial version, just that I have only so many days remaining on the trial.
I will keep plugging away at it though!
Steve

I still think Restore Anyware is disabled after reading this post:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/tri...

But there is some hope.  You could ask Symantec Licensing to give you a temporary license key in order to test the Restore AnyWare feature.  i think you are being allowed to go through the motions of the Restore Anyware.  The stuck at 99% completion is a way discourage people from using the trial version for a one time only disimilar hardware restore.  However if you present yourself as seriously considering purchasing this product, but you need to verify that Restore Anyware works in your environment, before making such an expensive outlay in capital, then you'll have better luck getting a temporary license key.

Restore Anyware works in trial mode in 8.5.

If you're getting to 99%, then the problem that you are having is during the actual retargeting of the OS for new hardware. You'll want to make sure that you're restoring each drive separately, without rebooting. The options to select for the C drive are as follows;

Restore Anyware
Set drive active
Restore MBR

For the other drives it should be;

Restore original disk signature

If you're resizing, remember to delete the partition that it creates automatically prior to resizing the partition.

After the restore, you should have to reboot twice before getting all the way into the OS. The first one will get you to the mini-setup wizard.

Jon_R

I always learn something new when you post or reply.  Are there any other points  in the imaging process, besides the the first 5% and 99% that the imaging process typically hangs?  If there are, could you please post these here or as a technote?  I think it would be a great reference for diagnosing "stuck at" issues with the imaging process.

Thanks,

Marco