Converting a linux installation on an external HDD to a VM
Posted: 21. Feb 2013, 04:28
I am a rank amateur. I dabble, and one of the areas I am dabbling with these days is Virtual Machines. And I thought they might be able to solve a problem I am facing.
I have an old (and I mean OLD) Ubuntu Linux installation on an old PATA HDD. The computer it ran on died quite a while ago but the HDD was still good so I kept it. On said installation was a web server with a few web-sites I was playing around with and I would like to get at that information again, if only to move/copy it to another, newer web-server. My problem is that I do not remember which version of (a) Linux, (b) apache, (c) Joomla and (d) MySQL I was using, so simply copying the data files across would be a pain in the backside. And I do not have a spare piece of kit to boot the HDD from (PATA-SATA converter or no), so no "live" conversions.
What I would like to do is plug the PATA HDD into an external USB enclosure, plug it to my laptop, and somehow either convert it to a VM or use it as the boot HDD for a VM. The first solution would be ideal as it would allow me to spin-up VM images and try to upgrade the various software prior to moving the data to its new location - if anything goes wrong, simply spin-up a new VM and try again.
So... how would I go about converting my old external HDD into a VM?
EDIT: In my searching around this forum, I came across this: forums dot virtualbox dot org/viewtopic.php?t=46882 - is this still the recommended way, or is there a way of doing it without rebooting my laptop with a live linux distro (or rebooting at all, in fact)? Sorry about the malformed address, but apparently I'm not yet allowed to post actual ones.
I have an old (and I mean OLD) Ubuntu Linux installation on an old PATA HDD. The computer it ran on died quite a while ago but the HDD was still good so I kept it. On said installation was a web server with a few web-sites I was playing around with and I would like to get at that information again, if only to move/copy it to another, newer web-server. My problem is that I do not remember which version of (a) Linux, (b) apache, (c) Joomla and (d) MySQL I was using, so simply copying the data files across would be a pain in the backside. And I do not have a spare piece of kit to boot the HDD from (PATA-SATA converter or no), so no "live" conversions.
What I would like to do is plug the PATA HDD into an external USB enclosure, plug it to my laptop, and somehow either convert it to a VM or use it as the boot HDD for a VM. The first solution would be ideal as it would allow me to spin-up VM images and try to upgrade the various software prior to moving the data to its new location - if anything goes wrong, simply spin-up a new VM and try again.
So... how would I go about converting my old external HDD into a VM?
EDIT: In my searching around this forum, I came across this: forums dot virtualbox dot org/viewtopic.php?t=46882 - is this still the recommended way, or is there a way of doing it without rebooting my laptop with a live linux distro (or rebooting at all, in fact)? Sorry about the malformed address, but apparently I'm not yet allowed to post actual ones.