How to convert a Physical Disk to a VMware VMDK image

I was recently wanting to convert all of my old hard drives from old computers to VMDKs so that I could run the drive virtually in VMware, but I couldn’t find a way to do it so that’s why I’m writing this now. Most other guides would use Disk2vhd and use Hyper-V but most people don’t have a pro version of Windows to use that or some guides would say to use VMware vCenter Converter but the physical machine has to be running and I only have the hard drive so I can’t use that. Then I found StarWind V2V Converter which can convert a VHD (and VHDX) file from Disk2vhd and that’s what this guide is going to use.


Stuff to get beforehand


Steps

UPDATE

(12/05/2018): I’ve recently found Vmdk2Phys which is still in beta (and doesn’t look the best) but is more straightforward then following the guide below. Vmdk2Phys also supports converting VMDKs to physical drives.

  1. Open Disk2vhd and untick all volumes except the one you want to virtualize and pick a location to output the file to, then click the ‘Create’ button. It will take a while to finish depending on the size and speed of your drive.Disk2vhd
  2. Once Disk2vhd finishes open StarWind V2V Converter select ‘Local file’ and click ‘Next >’ when it asks for the ‘Source image location’StarWind V2V Converter - Image location
  3. Select the ‘Source image’ then click ‘Next >’StarWind V2V Converter - Source image
  4. Select the format you want to convert to (the 1st and 3rd option are probably the most compatible option with VMware Workstation Player)StarWind V2V Converter - Destination image format
  5. Select the ‘Virtual disk type’ (Select the one most compatible with the windows installation eg. IDE for Windows XP)StarWind V2V Converter - VMDK Options
  6. Set your destination file location then click ‘Next >’StarWind V2V Converter - Destination file
  7. Run the converted file in VMware Workstation PlayerStarWind V2V Converter - Converting Finished

Thanks for reading!
Steve.


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