Convert MS-DOS Disk to VM

[jnnewton]

I have virtualbox 4.1.8 running on windows 7. I have a 20 year old dos system that i would like to use in a VM. I pulled the disk out, mounted it in windows 7 and through cygwin:

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dd if=/dev/sdb of=dos.dd

Then i opened a cmd prompt in the Virtualbox directory:

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VboxManage convertfromraw dos.dd dos.vdi --format VDI

and

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VboxManage.exe convertfromraw dos.dd dos.vhd --format VHD

I then created a virtualbox machine using each of those, and was greeted with the "No operating system found" error. I can't find anything on the interwebs that mention a solution to this error other than people using cd-roms and other media where the media is not bootable. My media should be bootable, so I don't know the issue.

[mpack]

You don't say much about the source drive, e.g. have you checked that it's readable? is it bootable? what size it is, etc.

Also, I don't use cygwin so I'm assuming that "dd" is bundled with it, and that "/dev/sdb" maps to windows "\\.\PhysicalDrive2", so is that the correct drive number? Also, should you not set a sector count with dd?

[jnnewton]

It is readable, it was the sole disk in the old system, so it is bootable. it is 272.2 MB

dd with cygwin is the same as with *nix , and there shouldn't be a need to set a sector count, unless you wish to limit, the default is "all of it". you can set the count if for instance you want to pull only the mbr.

[mpack]

Well, I have no experience with your cygwin tool, so I can't be sure what it does or what it defaults to.

You could instead try cloning the original physical disk on the host using CloneVDI. It isn't exactly designed for this, so it won't be as user friendly as as it could be, but at least I know it works. CloneVDI will prompt you for source and dest names. The source name would be "\\.\PhysicalDriveN" (N is likely to be 1 or 2, but you should check in the host disk manager what drive number has been assigned). You should ignore the useless default dest name that CloneVDI offers and provide a full path and name for the VDI file it will create. I suggest ticking the "Compact" option as well.