[ubuntu-uk] Image Windows Drive into a VM

[Neil Greenwood]

2009/5/20 Tim Dobson <lists at tdobson.net>:
> Michael Holloway wrote:
>> Recently, I spent a lot of time trying to find a decent (easy) way to do
>> it, and VMWare's P2V (free) is by far the easiest.
>
> I'll take a look at it.
>
>> Other ways are painfully slow(er) and complicated.
>
> hmmm.
>
>> It worked fine fir Vista64, but for use in VMWare server/workstation.
>> You can probably use qemu to convert the disk to Virtualbox.
>
> That's what I was thinking. I have a feeling virtualbox supports the
> vmware HD format :-/ I'm fairly sure qemu does.

IIRC, yes to both feelings. qemu definitely does.


>> Bad news, windows needs reactivation. Good luck with that.
>
> Ah yes, this did occur to me. Sounds like a complete nightmare. :-/
>
> Still probably the best solution. My boss's laptop is blue screening on
> average twice a day, which obviously, isn't good.
>
> Really, if I can get him off Vista on a day to day basis, I  suspect
> that the whole angle the business will take will start to change.
>
> Thanks for the advice everyone!
>

Clonezilla should also do this, for a free & libre solution.

Take a backup of the physical partition, and restore it into a VM.


Cofion/Regards,
Neil.