Convert Windows 7 Physical drive to VDI

[carlo1973]

I have an issue right now where an older laptop of mine that I was using daily has died (no power, no boot, new battery and new power adapter were purchased).

The hard drive is still good and readable. I have a Vantec IDE/Sata to USB 3.0 adapter and if I hook it to my old Linksys NAS, it shows up and I can view the contents.

As there is software that I require that is installed on that unit (some software I have no way of retrieving or getting anymore as their companies have since gone out of business) I was hoping to convert the drive to a Virtualbox VDI that I can access on my home server.

The old laptop had Windows 7 Enterprise - 32bit installed on it.
Drive type is Pata/IDE

Connected to my Server (Ubuntu Server 14.04) with the IDE/SATA to USB 3.0 cable, and doing sudo fdisk -l /dev/sde gives me the following output:

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/sde: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders, total 195371568 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000775cf

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sde2          206848   195368959    97581056    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Hind sight is 20/20.
I had been thinking about performing a Physical to Virtual conversion about 2 weeks ago. Infact I had performed a full microsoft backup in preperation, and created a recovery disk just to be safe. However running the recovery disk at this point, I do not think will restore my software that I need, but it may be useful for repairing later.

I have other laptops on hand, in various states of (dis)repair, and in theory I could use one of them to boot into windows from this hard drive. My fear is as it's going to be completly different hardware, it will kill the HAL. I have tried something similar on Windows XP machines in the past, and the HAL always seemed to eat itself when the boot drive was swapped into totally different hardware. As its Windows 7 Enterprise (32bit) I fear it will do the same exact thing, in which converting to VDI will probably be impossible at that point.

I am hoping someone can give me some insight or tips I can try to repair recover/convert this drive into a VDI so that I can access it in a VirtualBox environment.

Cheers and thank you all very much in advance!

[mpack]

Google "Disk2VHD site:forums.virtualbox.org".

[socratis]

My fear is as it's going to be completly different hardware, it will kill the HAL. I have tried something similar on Windows XP machines in the past, and the HAL always seemed to eat itself when the boot drive was swapped into totally different hardware. As its Windows 7 Enterprise (32bit) I fear it will do the same exact thing, in which converting to VDI will probably be impossible at that point.

Windows7 is way more forgiving compared to Windows XP. It will definitely not eat itself (*) and if it does, it will "fix" itself most probably when you plug it into different hardware. Except the &%#*!@ Windows license activation of course, which will be an issue of itself when you convert your HD to a virtual machine as well.

(*) It may require although that you sacrifice a goat to the gods of SCSI; older folks might get this...

[loukingjr]

Except the &%#*!@ Windows license activation of course, which will be an issue of itself when you convert your HD to a virtual machine as well.

Just curious about your statement. Why is it a "&%#*!@ Windows license activation" but it's not a "&%#*!@ Apple license" not to run OSX on non-Apple hardware?

Personally I think Microsoft and Apple have the right to license their products in any way they see fit.

[mpack]

I see no reason to fear "killing the HAL". You will survive the experience, and if you're sensible you'll still have a backup to return to. Anyway, VirtualBox is capable of supporting all Win7 HALs as far as I'm aware, provided the host CPU provides the necessary features.

[socratis]

Just curious about your statement. Why is it a "&%#*!@ Windows license activation" but it's not a "&%#*!@ Apple license" not to run OSX on non-Apple hardware?

Because this discussion was about a Windows client (see board title and topic). Please don't start with the licenses. Again...

[loukingjr]

Just curious about your statement. Why is it a "&%#*!@ Windows license activation" but it's not a "&%#*!@ Apple license" not to run OSX on non-Apple hardware?

Because this discussion was about a Windows client (see board title and topic). Please don't start with the licenses. Again...

doesn't answer the question but so be it.