How to convert your existing physical workstation to a virtual machine quickly and easily

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Microsoft has a free application named Disk2vhd, which can create a virtual hard drive (VHD) of your existing operating system. A couple of cool things you should know about Disk2VHD:

 

* It can convert the chosen hard drive into a VHD file, even if it is in use.

* It's portable – no installation is required

 

Why would you do this?

 

* Working on another machine - This could come in handy in a couple of situations, such as if you are going to be working on another system, but you still want access to your PC. Just take the VHD with you on a portable drive or flash drive.

* For Apps with Compatibility Issues – If you're going to Windows 7, this is a great last step before upgrade. That way if some of your apps don't work due to compatibility issues, you have your old system in virtual form for occasional use.

 

Steps to Create the VHD

 

Here are the steps to create the virtual machine of the existing Windows OS on your physical computer:

 

1. Download the Zip file and extract to a local drive, portable or flash drive. The just double-click Disktovhd. exe.

 

2. Disk2VHD will show you the available drives in your computer.

 

3. Select the drive you want to migrate as a virtual machine. If your OS and apps are installed on C:, select that drive from the interface.

 

 

4. Specify the path where you want to save the VHD file. As you can see, the drive is going to be pretty large.

 

5. Click the Create button. It will take a few minutes to create the vhd file, so you'll have some time to get a cup of coffee whilst it runs.

 

The software will clone a virtual hard disk of the drive selected and save it in specified location. After the vhd file has been created, you can use any virtualization software to mount the virtual hard disk and run the operating system as a virtual machine.

 

Where to get Disk2VHD

 

Download Disk2VHD at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

 

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