Windows SysInternals virtual hard disk utility

[half12]

Hi,

Checking out System Internals site (owned by Microsoft) I found that Mark Russinovich had released an updated Disk2vhd utility (now v1.21).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... 56415.aspx

Are these virtual drives compatible with VirtualBox?
If not, is it possible to convert them to a VirtualBox format?

[Perryg]

Not sure. The last user I helped with this could not get it to work in MS VPC which is what it was designed for, and of course not in VBox as well.
If you do get it to work it would be great to post your results for others to see.

[BillG]

The disk2vhd utility will create a bootable .vhd file. Whether it is actually usable depends on a lot of other factors.

The .vhd I created from a laptop running a retail version of Win 7 worked without problems and activated successfully. One created from an older Dell desktop running an OEM version of XP would not even boot under VPC or VBox. Paragon Virtualization Manager produced a bootable .vhd which works with either VPC or VBox.

Even Acronis with Universal Restore, which is the most reliable P2V I know of, doesn't have a 100% success rate. Sometimes a repair install of the OS will get the system running. There is always the problem of activation, discussed elsewhere in the forum.

P2V is still a bit of a hit or miss operation.

[mpack]

AFAIK, all the Disk2VHD utility does is image a drive, rather as CloneZilla, Ghost, Acronis etc do, except that direction is only one way, and the file format is VHD. The VHDs as disk images should be immediately readable in VirtualBox and convertible using my CloneVDI tool. However, imaging a drive is only one step in a P2V migration. If you prepare the original PC properly prior to imaging (for example, run MergeIDE), and perhaps take certain precautions such as installing recovery console (also before imaging) so that troublesome services (agp440, processor) can be disabled in the VM then it should be easy enough to get it to boot, at which point you can install the VBox guest additions to make life a bit easier. Activation may or may not be an issue, depending on the exact flavor of Windows involved.