Virtualizing from a physical disk connected to the host

[Krischu]

I have that 1:1 copy of a notebook that is physically no longer in reach but I have a harddisk I can connect via USB3.0 to my Windows 10 host.

What would be the method of choice to virtualize this system?

[scottgus1]

Is this question still needing an answer considering your later posts?

[Krischu]

Yes, if you mean the macOS VB problem, that’s another roadworks

[scottgus1]

OK, I haven't seen the MacOS VB post yet. Can you please clarify just what is getting virtualized, considering we're in Windows Hosts and OSX guests on non-Apple hardware?

[Krischu]

OK, I haven't seen the MacOS VB post yet. Can you please clarify just what is getting virtualized, considering we're in Windows Hosts and OSX guests on non-Apple hardware?

Host is a Windows 10.

I had to virtualize a physical notebook, an HP11 Pavilion with Windows 8.1/64. It has UEFI boot.

I did two things (or actually three):

1. ran disk2vhd.exe sitting on the physical notebook and wrote a VHD file to an external hard disk (connected via USB3.0)
2. ran again in same scenario and wrote a VHDX file to same external disk.
3. Booted an Ubuntu USB-Stick and did an dd if=/dev/sdb | ssh user@remotehost "dd of=kw1.dmp"

Now I have three choices, using the VHD, VHDX or raw dump kw1.dmp.

Space and time considerations should also be respected. One attempt using VBoxManage to convert the raw file from an the external USB3.0
drive to another external USB 3.0 drive failed inmidst the operation due to some I/O-error that occured on the USB-bus.

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>vboxmanage convertdd h:\kw.dmp i:\kw.vhd --format VDI
Converting from raw image file="h:\kw.dmp" to file="i:\kw.vhd"...
Creating dynamic image with size 500107862016 bytes (476941MB)...
VBoxManage.exe: error: Failed to write to disk image "i:\kw.vhd": VERR_TIMEOUT
^C
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox>

NB: as said the macOS related post is a different VM. That one had been solved by disabling audio.
This thread here is just Windows on Windows.

[scottgus1]

Use CloneVDI to make a VDI of the VHD or VHDX. Then build a new Windows 8.1 guest using the VDI.

Web-search "Windows 8.1 P2V site:forums.virtualbox.org" for things that might come up.

[Krischu]

Use CloneVDI to make a VDI of the VHD or VHDX. Then build a new Windows 8.1 guest using the VDI.

Web-search "Windows 8.1 P2V site:forums.virtualbox.org" for things that might come up.

In the CloneVDITool disussion there is said that VirtualBox from 4.1 on support cloning in the GUI. Is CloneVDI obsolete in this light?

I found some information in the CloneVDI-Release Notes. There is one paragraph that attracted my attention:

Using CloneVDI to do a P2V ("Physical To Virtual" Disk Conversion)CloneVDI now recognizes when you have used a Windows disk device nameas the source filename(for example, "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" identifies the boot drive on most Windows hosts), andslightly modifies

Is this "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" a valid notation under Windows? Trying this just out of curiosity in a Windows 10 CMD Prompt doesn't seem to work.

[fth0]

Is this "\\.\PhysicalDrive0" a valid notation under Windows?

Yes, this is a so-called device path, see Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces.

[scottgus1]

"\\.\PhysicalDrive0" refers to the first enumerated drive in Drive Management or Diskpart. In a computer with only one drive in it there will only be a "\\.\PhysicalDrive0". If that computer is running you might not be able to clone it.

Yes, Virtualbox also has a drive cloning feature too, in the command line. CloneVDI is GUI-controlled and makes cloning easier.

How did CloneVDI-ing the VHD or VHDX go?

[Krischu]

Thanks. I was busy shuffling around large dumps before I had a medium with enough space. At the moment the CloneVDI program is running from the GUI. I decided to keep UUID to give Microsoft least reason to complain about its OS having been moved around.

I'll be back in 5 mins.

EDIT: CloneVDI seems stalled. Progress bar has stopped at 53 %. Activity LED on external USB3.0 HD (source drive) has stopped flickering also. It's 53GB that are to be cloned.
It stopped at around 32GB. I had to kill the process using Taskmanager.
Starting over again...
Data rate 94Mb/s, that is MB/s hopefully
60% still running, showing typical time dilatation (after Microsofts Theory of Relitivity: 1 second = 5 seconds in reality
EDIT: now at 79% CloneVDI is taking larger pauses before continuing.

Just a question while waiting and keeping fingers crossed: once I would have the VM running from that VDI file under VB and Windows, would it be possible to transfer the VM to my MacbookPro (macOS Catalina 15.5.7) and run it there? This would be actually my final goal.

[Krischu]

OK, the process of building the VDI file finished and I was able to use it as the virtual disk in a newly created Windows 8.1 VM.

Starting the VM gives
FATAL: No booatable medium found! System halted.

Now, what I must say is that the original system is a Windows 8.1/64 with UEFI boot.

[scottgus1]

Good, CloneVDI is a solid program that will work if the source disk file is good.

Also you should have copied the entire disk, not just the C:\ partition. Modern Windows 7 & later have boot partitions that must be part of the VHD copy made by the disk ripper program you used.

If the original OS was EFI, the guest should probably be set to EFI too..

For further problems and possible solutions,

Web-search "Windows 8.1 P2V site:forums.virtualbox.org" for things that might come up.

[Krischu]

Thanks. Will go there although that thread seems to be quite old if I'm not wrong. Anyway, switching to UEFI at least ressorted into the UEFI shell which probably didn't mean much.

I created the VHD resp. VHDX using disk2vhd while sitting on the original machine and I chose partitions
WinRE, C: and D:.

Above search that is leading into this VirtualBox Forum leads into a dead end. No solution.

When I cloned the machine the first time I saw at least the Windows 8.1 logo and the Windows UEFI head line.

[scottgus1]

Please use "Post Reply" not "quote".

[scottgus1]

I chose partitions
WinRE, C: and D:.

FATAL: No booatable medium found! System halted.

You probably missed something. Choose all partitions.

Also, if this was a big-manufacturer PC, like Dell or HP et al, the OS may be tied to the physical computer's BIOS and therefore not bootable in a Virtualbox guest. If you bought the OS and installed it yourself, it might survive the P2V, if all the partitions were copied.