Skip to main content

How do I migrate my Windows desktop to a VirtualBox VM?

I have VirtualBox 4.3.6 and True Image 2014 Premium with Universal Restore. I've read a lot about different methods but I'm not sure where to start, or what will suit my needs.


Directly from VirtualBox wiki:



Windows installations, unlike Linux, cannot easily be moved from one hardware to another. This is not just due to Microsoft's activation mechanism but the fact that the installed kernel and drivers depend on the actual hardware.



This is where Universal Restore could come in handy. It is a feature of True Image that allows backups to be restored to dissimilar hardware.


I want a complete disk image backup of the system disk created with True Image before I do anything. I will then reformat the system disk. And then, instead of reinstalling Windows or restoring it from backup on the host, I would like to have it restored VirtualBox.


Is it possible to go from TIB (True Image Backup) to VDI (Virtual Disk Image)? If not at all possible, can I image the system disk (with current Windows install) with another tool and have it create a VDI image?


Then there is the Sysinternals Disk2vhd v2.01 by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. But it creates a VHD image, rather than VDI image. There is also a limitation on how big the image can be.


Directly from Sysinternals website:



Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft's Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online.


...


Virtual PC supports a maximum virtual disk size of 127GB. If you create a VHD from a larger disk it will not be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.



My system disk is 190 GB. Is there an option inside this tool that would allow me to compress it to less than 127 GB? If not then I don't see how to do it, and I would rather not use VHD format anyway.


Can someone give me some pointers? How do I do this?

Comments

Popular Posts

Use Google instead of Bing with Windows 10 search

I want to use Google Chrome and Google search instead of Bing when I search in Windows 10. Google Chrome is launched when I click on web, but it's Bing search. (My default search engine on Google and Edge is http://www.google.com ) I haven't found how to configure that. Someone can help me ? Answer There is no way to change the default in Cortana itself but you can redirect it in Chrome. You said that it opens the results in the Chrome browser but it used Bing search right? There's a Chrome extension now that will redirect Bing to Google, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo , whichever you prefer. More information on that in the second link.

linux - Using an index to make grep faster?

I find myself grepping the same codebase over and over. While it works great, each command takes about 10 seconds, so I am thinking about ways to make it faster. So can grep use some sort of index? I understand an index probably won't help for complicated regexps, but I use mostly very simple patters. Does an indexer exist for this case? EDIT: I know about ctags and the like, but I would like to do full-text search. Answer what about cscope , does this match your shoes? Allows searching code for: all references to a symbol global definitions functions called by a function functions calling a function text string regular expression pattern a file files including a file

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y...

linux - CentOs 7.1 - Install Tomcat 8

I am using this tutorial as a setup reference to getting a Tomcat 8 running on CentOs 7.1 , but after typing: [root@localhost tomcat]# sudo systemctl start tomcat I get the error: Job for tomcat.service failed. See 'systemctl status tomcat.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details. systemctl status tomcat.service prints the following: [root@localhost tomcat]# systemctl status tomcat.service tomcat.service - Apache Tomcat Web Application Container Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service; disabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2015-11-25 16:54:33 CET; 1min 19s ago Process: 45873 ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh (code=exited, status=203/EXEC) Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting Apache Tomcat Web Application Container... Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: tomcat.service: control process exited, code=exited status=203 Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start Apache Tomcat Web App...