Restoring a VM saved as a VMDK to phsyical machine

Discussions related to using VirtualBox on Windows hosts.
Post Reply
Briandr
Posts: 1
Joined: 23. Aug 2013, 18:31

Restoring a VM saved as a VMDK to phsyical machine

Post by Briandr »

Hi,

What options (if any) are available for restoring a VM saved as a VMDK to a physical machine? Can Ghost restore a VMDK? Sorry I am not providing alot more detail. I figure start this thread with a short post and I'll answer responders questions if they reply to this thread. Thanks.
mpack
Site Moderator
Posts: 39134
Joined: 4. Sep 2008, 17:09
Primary OS: MS Windows 10
VBox Version: VirtualBox+Oracle ExtPack
Guest OSses: Mostly XP

Re: Restoring a VM saved as a VMDK to phsyical machine

Post by mpack »

To be picky: a VM can't be saved as a VMDK, because a VMDK is just a disk image. A PC consists of more than a hard disk.

You can however create a new VM and mount the VMDK in it instead of creating a new virtual disk. VirtualBox supports the VMDK virtual disk format, so creating the VM should be no problem. Whether the VM runs immediately will depend on how close you get the VM recipe to what it used to be. I'm assuming the VMDK is stand alone and not part of a difference chain. Also some guest OS are more tolerant of hardware changes than others, and of course a Windows VM (XP or later) will usually need to be activated, which may invalidate any previous activations.
Post Reply