The company chose VMware vSphere to deploy a virtual environment to gain better IT flexibility and scalability. To ensure the security and availability of virtual machines, backup and migration are usually required.
Creating a copy of your virtual machine on a USB drive allows for easy access to the backup in the event of system failure or data loss. It also makes it easy to transfer and access your virtual machines between different machines or locations.
If you want to copy an entire virtual machine and restore it as a fresh, ready-to-use virtual machine, then you can perform an image-level backup. You can do this by downloading the virtual machine file, or by exporting the virtual machine as an OVF file.
Way 1: Manually Download VM Files to the USB drive
First, you can manually download VM files to a USB file. Here is how to do that:
1. Launch the VMware ESXi web client, and power off the VM you want to copy.
2. Then, go to Storage > Datastore browser.
3. Find and open the folder of the VM you want to copy, select the files, and click Download.
4. Next, choose the USB drive as the destination and click Save to download.
Way 2: Export the OVF File to USB
You can copy the VMDK file to a USB drive since it contains most of the VM data. So what if you want to copy all of the VM data? The missing part of the VM data is the metadata, and if you want to export the entire VM, you need to export an OVF file. Here is the full guide.
1. Launch the VMware ESXi web client, and go to Virtual Machines. Power off the VM you want to copy.
2. Right-click the VM name and click Export.
3. Click OK to download the .ovf file and .vmdk file respectively.
4. Next, choose the USB drive as the destination, and click Save.
When using USB as a storage medium, you had better pay attention to the following points:
- Choose a high-quality external USB hard drive with enough storage capacity to hold the ESXi backups, and make sure that the drive is compatible with ESXi.
- Before using an external USB drive for backups, format it with a compatible file system that is supported by both ESXi and your backup software.
- Create a backup plan that meets the needs of your organization.
Final Words
How to copy ESXi VM to a USB drive, or how to copy ESXi VM to an external hard drive? After reading this post, you know two methods. Just choose one based on your needs. Besides, it is highly advised to back up your important data regularly so that your data can be better protected. MiniTool ShadowMaker is a free backup program that allows you to perform a scheduled backup. Click the download button and enjoy it.
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