virtualbox.org

Hello, A multi-partition disk is given. Formatted in MBR, three primary partitions, one extended with one logical disk.
All partitions are formatted to NTFS. One of the primaries is a system partition: Windows XP SP3.
The goal is to virtualize that Windows XP installation. All other aspects out of scope of this enquiry have been clarified.
All other partitions are simply data-only partitions and do not have to be covered by the p2v process.
They can be attached to complete virtualized installation in other much less cumbersome ways.
So the goal is to virtualize only that system partition with Win XP on it.

The physical partition was converted to VDI using VBoxManage convertfromraw.
The problem is that the after conversion it does not boot under Virt Box. Sure all the MBR and boot-related stuff
was not covered by conversion. However if to try to convert the whole disk and subsequently to strip it down
to the only partition being in focus it results in same probs.

How is the proper approach of virtualizing only one system partition from a multi-partition disk?

I thought Disk2vhd allowed one to image only the partitions one wants.
from their page…

It will create one VHD for each disk on which selected volumes reside. It preserves the partitioning information of the disk, but only copies the data contents for volumes on the disk that are selected. This enables you to capture just system volumes and exclude data volumes, for example.

Winxp-on-Macos wrote:The goal is to virtualize that Windows XP installation.

In that case, referring to this in the topic title as a V2P project is really confusing. I suggest that you edit your first post to correct this.

Winxp-on-Macos wrote: The physical partition was converted to VDI using VBoxManage convertfromraw.

That won't work. "convertfromraw" is really dumb, but assumes you aren't. If you give it a PDF of "War and Peace", it will dutifully treat that as a disk image and wrap it in a VDI container... but that doesn't mean that the VDI now contains a bootable OS. In your case, a bare partition is not a bootable OS either.

I'm pretty sure that current versions of Disk2VHD do allow you to select partitions. So, as Louis suggests, image the disk using Disk2VHD, and deselect unwanted partitions. However, VHD isn't really trustworthy, so I would convert VHD to VDI prior to use.

Thanks for hints! I consider trying disk2vhd. Anyhow, how about following option?
First to clone the disk to physical one, then to remove all unneeded partitions in the clone, then convertfromraw the clone to vdi
stripped down regarding number of partitions this way?

Why do it the hardest possible way? Forget raw dumps, and forget "convertfromraw". Those are simply the wrong tools for the job.

The method I would use is :-

1. Clone the entire original disk to VHD using Disk2VHD.
2. Build a VM around the VHD, then boot with any partition tool and delete unwanted partitions, then shut down the VM.
3. Clone the VHD to VDI using the CloneVDI tool, with the Compact option enabled.
4. Build a new VM around the VDI, or simply replace the VHD in the VM you created in step 2.