

Check the Prepare for use in Virtual PC flag if you intend to make the disk compatible with the deprecated Microsoft Virtual PC.Your first task is to select the right flags for the disk you are about to create: But Disk2vhd is not limited to converting boot disks. The selected disk will be the C:\ drive on the machine used as an example.įor the sake of brevity, this article will be limited to converting a boot disk (a disk that has a working copy of Windows) to a virtual hard disk. Now that you have a working and running copy of Disk2vhd, is time to virtualize your Windows 10 boot disk. Starting Disk2vhd as administrator Converting a Physical Disk to a Virtual Disk Right-click on the most appropriate version for your device and select Run as administrator as seen below. The download will be a zip archive containing various versions of the program. At the time of writing this article, the latest version available, and the one the examples will be based on, was version 2.02. Head over to Microsoft’s Sysinternals page and download a copy of Disk2vhd. The disk you want to convert needs to be connected and online. For the tasks to come you will need a user with administrative access and physical access to the Windows device. Your first step is to install Disk2vhd if you haven’t already. Related: Getting Started Guide to Managing Hyper-V VMs with PowerShell Installing and Running Disk2vhd Related: How to Install Oracle VM VirtualBox on Windows 10

Other hypervisors, like Hyper-V, or KVM, will also serve you fine.Ī user account with administrative access. Oracle VirtualBox v6.1.22 is used in the examples. At a minimum, you will need as much space as is in use on the physical disk Disk2vhd will help you identify exactly how much space is needed. Enough free disk space to save the disk you are going to convert.If your physical disk contains a working Windows 11 installation, this tutorial will still serve you well. The examples will run on a Windows 10 device.ĭisk2vhd has been recorded to work on Windows 11. To follow along, be sure you have the following: This tutorial will be a hands-on demonstration. Eager to go virtual? Dive in! Prerequisites In this article, you will convert a physical Windows system by creating a virtualized copy of the disk.
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In this article, you will learn more about Disk2vhd by Sysinternals: a tried, tested, and free way to convert physical machines or disks to their virtual equivalents.

Do you have some physical Windows devices that you dream about virtualizing and getting rid of the clunk, but you have no idea how to best approach that? Wonder no more, dear reader.
