Converting a physical disk into a VMWare virtual disk

To convert a physical disk into a VMWare virtual disk first use the dd command to copy the whole of the physical disk to a file:

dd if=/dev/hdc of=raw.img bs=1024

Then install qemu as it includes the qemu-img application.

Next convert the raw disk file as follows:

qemu-img convert -f raw raw.img -O vmdk disk.vmdk

The resulting vmdk file will be smaller as only the used space is copied.

Then just add the new vmdk file to the guest as normal.

Last updated: 12/08/2009