old SSD (with Catalina)VM to new SSD with Ventura

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Mac OS X hosts.
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BBoyMaster
Posts: 2
Joined: 22. Feb 2023, 14:19

old SSD (with Catalina)VM to new SSD with Ventura

Post by BBoyMaster »

Hello everyone

I'm new here and also a beginner when it comes to VBox.
My English is not that good sorry for that.

My hardware is a MacBook Pro from 2012 with a new 2TB SSD running Ventura (fresh and clean) and I installed VBox 7 on it.
I haven't done anything else with the VBox.
So now I would like to run the old SSD (but runs a lot of garbage on it) as a VM on the new SSD
So I can still access it if I need something, etc. PWs or something else.

Unfortunately I have no idea how I can bind the old record there.

Who could help me Thank you very much in advance.
mpack
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Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: old SSD (with Catalina)VM to new SSD with Ventura

Post by mpack »

BBoyMaster wrote: My English is not that good sorry for that.
We don't require English. Feel free in future to ask in your favorite language. Those that do not understand your language can use online translation to read it. However we do insist that questions are not cross posted, so I locked your copy of this question in the German language forum.

It would be better if you could image the old SSD to a virtual image format that VirtualBox supports, as trying to use raw disk access on a buttoned down OS like a Mac... I don't imagine would be a pleasant experience.

Unfortunately I can't offer suggestions for whole disk imagers that support MacOS filesystems. It would be good to avoid the dumb sector level imagers like dd.


I guess it should be mentioned that VirtualBox does not officially support MacOS guests, the main impact of which is very poor Guest Additions coverage.
multiOS
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Joined: 14. Sep 2019, 16:51
Primary OS: Mac OS X other
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: WIN11,10, 7, Linux (various)
Location: United Kingdom

Re: old SSD (with Catalina)VM to new SSD with Ventura

Post by multiOS »

As a follow on to mpack's comments:

The macOS 'Disk Utility' app can be used to create to create/restore Disk Images: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/d ... l11888/mac

If you used the macOS 'Time Machine' to maintain full system backups from the 'old' SSD, you could also try to 'restore' from the Time Machine backup drive to a prepared macOS Virtual Machine (VM) using the Migration Assistant: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203981 but you might also be able to use the Migration Assistant for a direct migration from the old SSD to a prepared VM.
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