P2V from a Linux-HDD (no other Hardware!)

[FlavioB]

Hello all!

I'm looking to get a solution to be able to convert my Linux-HDD into a Virtualbox image. Is there any way to achieve this, without the need of PC hardware? I just have the HDD, nothing more, nothing less.

Any help will be very appreciated!

Thanks and regards,
F.

[mpack]

Please be more accurate. A bare drive (nothing more, nothing less) is obviously useless. You must have some notion of how you would access that drive - share your idea and we may proceed to discuss it.

[FlavioB]

Please be more accurate. A bare drive (nothing more, nothing less) is obviously useless. You must have some notion of how you would access that drive - share your idea and we may proceed to discuss it.

Hy there...
Indeed I have this bare drive, which I may connect to a Win7 or an OSX computer to read data from it. As it simply is not sufficient for me to read data (some of the data has to be exported from the application which it belongs to), I am wondering if there's a way to have the disk converted into a VM.

If you need other infos, just ask...

Thanks for your reply so far.

Regards,
F.

[mpack]

If the disk can be connected to a PC (e.g. using a USB or eSATA enclosure), then it will be possible to copy (image) the drive using CloneZilla, then convert the raw image to VDI using (ideally) CloneVDI with the "Compact" option enabled, or less ideally, use "VBoxManage convertfromraw", though the latter will require a lot more disk space.

[FlavioB]

Hy!

Thanks for your suggestions, I'll be trying this on my Windows PC as soon as I get some time for it.

I'll report back then.

Thanks and regards,
F.

[mpack]

Hmph. That is the first mention of a Windows PC. I assumed it would be a Linux host, since that was the only OS mentioned.

In the case of a Windows host PC, CloneZilla is a poor choice. You still need to connect the drive to the PC using a USB or eSATA carriage, but from there I would image it with CloneVDI, with Compact option enabled, directly to VDI format. CloneVDI is not very user friendly for this task, but I don't know of another non-dumb Windows disk imaging tool that will be happy to see a Linux filesystem. You need to specify "\\?\PhysicalDriveN" as the source filename (where N is a placeholder for the actual drive number - Disk Manager will tell you this), and you'll need to specify some place else as the dest filename. CloneVDI is not really built for this, and will offer up a silly default dest filename, so just be careful to override with a more sensible choice.

[FlavioB]

Hmph. That is the first mention of a Windows PC. I assumed it would be a Linux host, since that was the only OS mentioned.

I've been telling this in my second post:

Indeed I have this bare drive, which I may connect to a Win7 or an OSX computer to read data from it.

Nevertheless, I'll still be trying it out...

Thanks so far!
F.