Disk to vhd windows 2003 server

Do not attach to VHDs on the same system on which you created them if you plan on booting from them. Windows references disks in the boot configuration database BCD by disk signature, so when that happens Windows booted in a VM will fail to locate the boot disk.

Disk2vhd does not support the conversion of volumes with Bitlocker enabled. If you wish to create a VHD for such a volume, turn off Bitlocker and wait for the volume to be fully decrypted first. Here's a screenshot of a copy of a Windows Server R2 Hyper-V system running in a virtual machine on top of the system it was made from:.

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. Physical-to-virtual hard drive migration of a Windows installation is a valid function for customers with Software Assurance and full retail copies of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Software Assurance provides users valuable benefits—please contact Microsoft Corporation for further information. Download Disk2vhd KB. The output file in the example will have the same name as the device name, as you can see below. You will now select the volumes you want to virtualize. Be sure to reserve at least as much space free on the destination drive as the Space Required column specifies.

Related: MBR vs. With everything in place, you are ready to start the conversion process! Beware that due to the load Disk2vhd puts on a running system, it is not advisable to run it on systems already known for high loads. Click Create to start the conversion and wait until the process is complete. After waiting for the completion of the process, you should now have a VHD file in the folder you specified, as seen in the screenshot below.

Be sure not to mount the resulting VHD directly on the physical machine. Windows uses a signature to identify each connected disk. To avoid a disk signature collision, Windows will change the signature of the virtual disk when you mount it on the same machine as the physical disk. If you create a new VM with the disk, as is in this tutorial, the new VM may be rendered unbootable. For those who need it for automation or remote usage, Disk2vhd has also a command-line option.

The syntax follows:. The output filename will incorporate the backup creation date in the file name with the Get-Date PowerShell cmdlet. Give the file a specific name, to run this code in a non-PowerShell session.

The command will create a file akin to the one in the screenshot below upon successful conversion. You can couple the command line with a scheduling solution, such as a scheduled task in PowerShell to create a barebones automated backup system. Now that you have a virtual replica of the physical, you will attach the resulting virtual hard disk to check your action results. After booting up the virtual system, you will find it virtually replicates your previous system pun intended.

Open VirtualBox to follow along and then select New under the Machine menu. Give the machine a name, select a folder to store the files, select the OS Type and Version accordingly, and click Next. Select the memory the system will consume. Now comes the most crucial part, the Hard disk selection. There is a new drive listed on the top center window and a new disk listed in the bottom center window. You have already mounted Windows system image backup, and it can now be used as if it were an actual hard drive on your computer.

In this VHD drive, you can browse files, copy files, drag and drop files, recover single or multiple files from your system image. But how to unmount Windows system image VHD? It will execute the task immediately. However, you may have problems when mount Windows image backup VHD file. After that, they saw the drive mounted in the Disk Management, but they can not explore it or open it. For this situation, you may need to manually assign a drive letter to the VHD.

Or you can try to use another tool to mount a Windows image backup as a VHD. Here will introduce you a much easier way to mount Windows system image to VHD. It is very simple to use this software to create Windows system image, and mount Windows image to VHD for browsing or recovering individual file.

Step 1. To mount Windows system image to VHD, here you need to create Windows system image backup before that. Select System Backup under Backup tab. Step 2. Then, choose another local partition as destination place to restore system backup image.