Disk2VHD is developed by Sys-internals and is a really interesting program. In this article we will show you how to use it to make a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) of your computer and then using VirtualBox to run that VHD in a virtual state. I know it sounds a bit techy but let’s break it down and show you how it’s done.

First off lets download Disk2VHD from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

You can view all the pictures associated with this article here: http://picasaweb.google.com/114792742437548127807/Disk2VHD#5503481336745660370

Ok so you have downloaded Disk2VHD and when you run it you will see a screen like this:

If you plan to use this VHD in a virtual environment such as VirtualBox, be sure to check the option for “Fix up HAL for VirtualPC”.

What else would you use it for? Well you can use it as a backup tool and mount it in Win7 as explained in our article here: http://lucas719.info/security/how-to-create-a-virtual-hard-drive-in-windows-7

You can also run Disk2VHD from command line and incorporate it into a batch file such as I did here:

Be sure to select a destination drive that has enough free space as stated in the “Space Required” column.

Now your VHD is created:

Lets go ahead and download VirtualBox: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Once it’s installed, be sure to restart your computer.

Now let’s go through with the steps to add the VHD we made into Virtual Box.

Select the Operating System you made the VHD of.

Adjust the RAM to how you want, this can be changed later also.

Select “Use existing hard disk”, and click on the folder next to it to open the Media Manager.

As you can see, we have no media listed yet. Let’s click on Add and browse to our VHD.

Now that we have our media listed just click select on the bottom.

and we can see it is now listed as a hard disk to choose and boot from.

Now we see our virtual machine, let’s go ahead and click start to boot the machine.

And we can see the machine is booting just as it normally would, just virtualized now.

and if you only have 1 network card set the adapter to bridged mode to allow your virtual machine access to the internet also.

That’s all there is to it. Be sure to leave any suggestions or tips in the comments below.