How to convert flat raw disk image to vmdk for virtualbox or vmplayer

Question

I have some old images of old Linux filesystems in flat file format  they can be used by Bochs  but I need to run them with Virtual Box  Virtual Box cannot use images in this format  so I need to convert these images from flat file to  vmdk file format  Is there any way to do this

User · Answer

To answer TJJ  But is it also possible to do this without copying the whole file  So  just to somehow create an additional vmdk-metafile  that references the raw dd-image   Yes  it s possible  Here s how to use a flat disk image in VirtualBox   First you create an image with dd in the usual way   dd bs 512 count 60000 if  dev zero of usbdrv img   Then you can create a file for VirtualBox that references this image   VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename  usbdrv vmdk  -rawdisk  usbdrv img    You can use this image in VirtualBox as is  but depending on the guest OS it might not be visible immediately  For example  I experimented on using this method with a Windows guest OS and I had to do the following to give it a drive letter    Go to the Control Panel  Go to Administrative Tools  Go to Computer Management  Go to Storage Disk Management in the left side panel  You ll see your disk here  Create a partition on it and format it  Use FAT for small volumes  FAT32 or NTFS for large volumes    You might want to access your files on Linux  First dismount it from the guest OS to be sure and remove it from the virtual machine  Now we need to create a virtual device that references the partition   sfdisk -d usbdrv img   Response   label  dos label-id  0xd367a714 device  usbdrv img unit  sectors  usbdrv img1   start           63  size        48132  type 4   Take note of the start position of the partition  63  In the command below I used loop4 because it was the first available loop device in my case   sudo losetup -o    63 512   loop4 usbdrv img mkdir usbdrv sudo mount  dev loop4 usbdrv ls usbdrv -l   Response   total 0 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 0 Apr  5 17 13  Test file txt    Yay

User · Answer

First  install QEMU  On Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu  run    apt-get install qemu  Then run the following command    qemu-img convert -O vmdk imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk  I   m assuming a flat disk image is a dd-style image  The convert operation also handles numerous other formats  For more information about the qemu-img command  see the output of   qemu-img -h

User · Answer

Maybe you should try using Starwind V2V Converter  you can get it from here - http   www starwindsoftware com converter  It also supports IMG disk format and performs sector-by sector conversion between IMG  VMDK or VHD into and from any of them without making any changes to source image  This tool is free

User · Answer

Since the question mentions VirtualBox  this one works currently   VBoxManage convertfromraw imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk --format VMDK   Run it without arguments for a few interesting details  notably the --variant flag    VBoxManage convertfromraw

User · Answer

Just to give you an another option  you could use https   sourceforge net projects dd2vmdk  as well  dd2vmdk is a  nix-based program that allows you to mount raw disk images  created by dd  dcfldd  dc3dd  ftk imager  etc  by taking the raw image  analyzing the master boot record  physical sector 0   and getting specific information that is need to create a vmdk file      Personally  imo Qemu and the Zapotek s raw2vmdk tools are the best overall options to convert dd to vmdks   Disclosure  I am the author of this project

User · Answer

To answer TJJ  But is it also possible to do this without copying the whole file  So  just to somehow create an additional vmdk-metafile  that references the raw dd-image   Yes  it s possible  Here s how to use a flat disk image in VirtualBox   First you create an image with dd in the usual way   dd bs 512 count 60000 if  dev zero of usbdrv img   Then you can create a file for VirtualBox that references this image   VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename  usbdrv vmdk  -rawdisk  usbdrv img    You can use this image in VirtualBox as is  but depending on the guest OS it might not be visible immediately  For example  I experimented on using this method with a Windows guest OS and I had to do the following to give it a drive letter    Go to the Control Panel  Go to Administrative Tools  Go to Computer Management  Go to Storage Disk Management in the left side panel  You ll see your disk here  Create a partition on it and format it  Use FAT for small volumes  FAT32 or NTFS for large volumes    You might want to access your files on Linux  First dismount it from the guest OS to be sure and remove it from the virtual machine  Now we need to create a virtual device that references the partition   sfdisk -d usbdrv img   Response   label  dos label-id  0xd367a714 device  usbdrv img unit  sectors  usbdrv img1   start           63  size        48132  type 4   Take note of the start position of the partition  63  In the command below I used loop4 because it was the first available loop device in my case   sudo losetup -o    63 512   loop4 usbdrv img mkdir usbdrv sudo mount  dev loop4 usbdrv ls usbdrv -l   Response   total 0 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 0 Apr  5 17 13  Test file txt    Yay

User · Answer

On windows  use https   github com Zapotek raw2vmdk to convert raw files created by dd or winhex to vmdk  raw2vmdk v0 1 3 2 has a bug - once the vmdk file is created  edit the vmdk file and fix the path to the raw file  in my case instead of D  Temp flash 16gb raw  created by winhex  the generated path was D Tempflash 16gb raw   Then  open it in a vmware virtual machine version 6 5-7  5 1 was refusing to attach the vmdk harddrive   howgh

User · Answer

First  install QEMU  On Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu  run    apt-get install qemu  Then run the following command    qemu-img convert -O vmdk imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk  I   m assuming a flat disk image is a dd-style image  The convert operation also handles numerous other formats  For more information about the qemu-img command  see the output of   qemu-img -h

User · Answer

Maybe you should try using Starwind V2V Converter  you can get it from here - http   www starwindsoftware com converter  It also supports IMG disk format and performs sector-by sector conversion between IMG  VMDK or VHD into and from any of them without making any changes to source image  This tool is free

User · Answer

krosenvold s answer inspired the following script which does the following    get the dd dump via ssh from a remote server  as gz file  unzip the dump convert it to vmware   the script is restartable and checks the existence of the intermediate files  It also uses pv and qemu-img -p to show the progress of each step    In my environment 2 x Ubuntu 12 04 LTS the steps took    3 hours to get a 47 GByte disk dump of a 60 GByte partition  20 minutes to unpack to a 60 GByte dd file 45 minutes to create the vmware file      bin bash   get a dd disk dump and convert it to vmware    see http   stackoverflow com questions 454899 how-to-convert-flat-raw-disk-image-to-vmdk-for-virtualbox-or-vmplayer    Author  wf  2014-10-1919      get a dd dump from the given host s given disk and create a compressed     image at the given target       1  host e g  somehost somedomain    2  disk e g  sda    3  target e g  image gz     http   unix stackexchange com questions 132797 how-to-use-ssh-to-make-a-dd-copy-of-disk-a-from-host-b-and-save-on-disk-b getdump       local l host   1    local l disk   2    local l target   3    echo  getting disk dump of  l disk from  l host    ssh  l host sudo fdisk -l    egrep    dev  l disk    if      -ne 0     then     echo  device  l disk does not exist on host  l host  1 gt  amp 2     exit 1   else     if     -f  l target       then       ssh  l host  sudo dd if  dev  disk bs 1M   gzip -1 -    pv   dd of  l target     else       echo   l target already exists      fi   fi        optionally install command from package if it is not available yet   1  command   2  package   opt install       l command   1    l package   2    echo  checking that  l command from package  l package  is installed        which  l command   if      -ne 0     then     echo  installing  l package to make  l command available          sudo apt-get install  l package    fi        convert the given image to vmware    1  the dd dump image    2  the vmware image file to convert to   vmware convert       local l ddimage   1    local l vmwareimage   2    echo  converting dd image  l image to vmware  l vmwareimage       convert to VMware disk format showing progess     see http   manpages ubuntu com manpages precise man1 qemu-img 1 html   qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk   l ddimage    l vmwareimage         show usage   usage       echo  usage   0 host device    echo        host  the host to get the disk dump from e g  frodo lotr org      echo              you need ssh and sudo privileges on that host    echo     echo      device  the disk to dump from e g  sda    echo      echo    examples    echo          0 frodo lotr org sda    echo          0 gandalf lotr org sdb    echo      echo    the needed packages pv and qemu-utils will be installed if not available    echo    you need local sudo rights for this to work    exit 1      check arguments if      -lt 2   then   usage fi    get the command line parameters host   1  disk   2     calculate the names of the image files ts  date    Y- m- d     prefix of all images      gz the zipped dd      dd the disk dump file      vmware - the vmware disk file image    host    disk  image  ts   echo   0  host  disk - gt    image     first check install necessary packages opt install qemu-img qemu-utils opt install pv pv    check if dd files was already loaded    we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image gz   then   getdump  host  disk  image gz else   echo   image gz already downloaded  fi    check if the dd file was already uncompressed   we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image dd   then   echo  uncompressing  image gz    zcat  image gz   pv -cN zcat  gt   image dd else   echo  image  image dd already uncompressed  fi   check if the vmdk file was already converted   we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image vmdk   then   vmware convert  image dd  image vmdk else   echo  vmware image  image vmdk already converted  fi

User · Answer

krosenvold s answer inspired the following script which does the following    get the dd dump via ssh from a remote server  as gz file  unzip the dump convert it to vmware   the script is restartable and checks the existence of the intermediate files  It also uses pv and qemu-img -p to show the progress of each step    In my environment 2 x Ubuntu 12 04 LTS the steps took    3 hours to get a 47 GByte disk dump of a 60 GByte partition  20 minutes to unpack to a 60 GByte dd file 45 minutes to create the vmware file      bin bash   get a dd disk dump and convert it to vmware    see http   stackoverflow com questions 454899 how-to-convert-flat-raw-disk-image-to-vmdk-for-virtualbox-or-vmplayer    Author  wf  2014-10-1919      get a dd dump from the given host s given disk and create a compressed     image at the given target       1  host e g  somehost somedomain    2  disk e g  sda    3  target e g  image gz     http   unix stackexchange com questions 132797 how-to-use-ssh-to-make-a-dd-copy-of-disk-a-from-host-b-and-save-on-disk-b getdump       local l host   1    local l disk   2    local l target   3    echo  getting disk dump of  l disk from  l host    ssh  l host sudo fdisk -l    egrep    dev  l disk    if      -ne 0     then     echo  device  l disk does not exist on host  l host  1 gt  amp 2     exit 1   else     if     -f  l target       then       ssh  l host  sudo dd if  dev  disk bs 1M   gzip -1 -    pv   dd of  l target     else       echo   l target already exists      fi   fi        optionally install command from package if it is not available yet   1  command   2  package   opt install       l command   1    l package   2    echo  checking that  l command from package  l package  is installed        which  l command   if      -ne 0     then     echo  installing  l package to make  l command available          sudo apt-get install  l package    fi        convert the given image to vmware    1  the dd dump image    2  the vmware image file to convert to   vmware convert       local l ddimage   1    local l vmwareimage   2    echo  converting dd image  l image to vmware  l vmwareimage       convert to VMware disk format showing progess     see http   manpages ubuntu com manpages precise man1 qemu-img 1 html   qemu-img convert -p -O vmdk   l ddimage    l vmwareimage         show usage   usage       echo  usage   0 host device    echo        host  the host to get the disk dump from e g  frodo lotr org      echo              you need ssh and sudo privileges on that host    echo     echo      device  the disk to dump from e g  sda    echo      echo    examples    echo          0 frodo lotr org sda    echo          0 gandalf lotr org sdb    echo      echo    the needed packages pv and qemu-utils will be installed if not available    echo    you need local sudo rights for this to work    exit 1      check arguments if      -lt 2   then   usage fi    get the command line parameters host   1  disk   2     calculate the names of the image files ts  date    Y- m- d     prefix of all images      gz the zipped dd      dd the disk dump file      vmware - the vmware disk file image    host    disk  image  ts   echo   0  host  disk - gt    image     first check install necessary packages opt install qemu-img qemu-utils opt install pv pv    check if dd files was already loaded    we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image gz   then   getdump  host  disk  image gz else   echo   image gz already downloaded  fi    check if the dd file was already uncompressed   we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image dd   then   echo  uncompressing  image gz    zcat  image gz   pv -cN zcat  gt   image dd else   echo  image  image dd already uncompressed  fi   check if the vmdk file was already converted   we don t want to start this tedious process twice if avoidable if     -f  image vmdk   then   vmware convert  image dd  image vmdk else   echo  vmware image  image vmdk already converted  fi

User · Answer

First  install QEMU  On Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu  run    apt-get install qemu  Then run the following command    qemu-img convert -O vmdk imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk  I   m assuming a flat disk image is a dd-style image  The convert operation also handles numerous other formats  For more information about the qemu-img command  see the output of   qemu-img -h

User · Answer

On windows  use https   github com Zapotek raw2vmdk to convert raw files created by dd or winhex to vmdk  raw2vmdk v0 1 3 2 has a bug - once the vmdk file is created  edit the vmdk file and fix the path to the raw file  in my case instead of D  Temp flash 16gb raw  created by winhex  the generated path was D Tempflash 16gb raw   Then  open it in a vmware virtual machine version 6 5-7  5 1 was refusing to attach the vmdk harddrive   howgh

User · Answer

Just to give you an another option  you could use https   sourceforge net projects dd2vmdk  as well  dd2vmdk is a  nix-based program that allows you to mount raw disk images  created by dd  dcfldd  dc3dd  ftk imager  etc  by taking the raw image  analyzing the master boot record  physical sector 0   and getting specific information that is need to create a vmdk file      Personally  imo Qemu and the Zapotek s raw2vmdk tools are the best overall options to convert dd to vmdks   Disclosure  I am the author of this project

User · Answer

Since the question mentions VirtualBox  this one works currently   VBoxManage convertfromraw imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk --format VMDK   Run it without arguments for a few interesting details  notably the --variant flag    VBoxManage convertfromraw

User · Answer

First  install QEMU  On Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu  run    apt-get install qemu  Then run the following command    qemu-img convert -O vmdk imagefile dd vmdkname vmdk  I   m assuming a flat disk image is a dd-style image  The convert operation also handles numerous other formats  For more information about the qemu-img command  see the output of   qemu-img -h

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