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Free physical to virtual tool Disk2vhd

Till now, if you wanted to convert your host operating system to virtual one, you had to use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM). It is great product, but it costs some money. But thanks to guys from Sysinternals, now you can create VHD file from your host operating system for free. They have created Disk2vhd, free tool that enables you to this with very little effort.

How to use the tool?

1. Download tool from here.

2. Unzip it and run it on physical computer you would like to transform into virtual.

3. User interface pops out in which you can check or uncheck disk which you would like to convert to VHD format.

4. After VHD creation if finished, create virtual machine (Virtual PC or Hyper-V) as you normally would and attach VHD to it.

5. Done.

Command Line Usage

Disk2vhd includes command-line options that enable you to script the creation of VHDs. Specify the volumes you want included in a snapshot by drive letter (e.g. c:) or use "*" to include all volumes.

Usage: disk2vhd <[drive: [drive:]…]|[*]> <vhdfile>
Example: disk2vhd * c:\vhd\snapshot.vhd

Thanks to Domagoj from Virtualy blog for sharing this info. I will definitely try it and I will share my experience with you.

Disk2vhd official web site

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