convert .vhd (VirtualPc) files into .vdi (VirtualBox) files

ref: http://www.qc4blog.com/?p=84

[UPDATE]: now virtualbox natively support .vhd files => you might be interested in reading this post: convert .vhd (virtualpc) file to .vdi (virtualbox) format

.vhd files works with VirtualPc (Windows) whereas .vdi files works with VirtualBox (Linux, GPL in “ose” version) => we need to convert them in order to use .vhd files.

I wanted to load VirtualPc (.vhd) files to load windows XP vhd files made available on microsoft.com

1. I downloaded requested .vhd files
2. Problem is .vhd format is for VirtualPc, whereas VirtualBox has its own format (.vdi) therefore we need to transform them. Doing this is a 4-step process:
   1. download qemu-img fromhttp://www.nongnu.org/qemu/download.html or directly download .rpm file (http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=qemu-img)
   2. transform .rpm into .deb and install it: fakeroot alien -d –scripts qemu-img*.rpm; sudo dpkg -i qemu-img*.deb
   3. transform .vhd file into raw file: qemu-img convert -O raw XP_SP2_with_IE6.vhd XP_SP2_with_IE6.bin
   4. then transform .bin file into .vid format using vboxmanage (included into virtualbox-ose package): vboxmanage convertdd XP_SP2_with_IE6.bin XP_SP2_with_IE6.vdi
3. you can run virtualbox-ose and mount your newly created .vdi file (it worked for me at least!). Very great solution (except it takes 16Gb per .dvi file), thanks microsoft, I hope it will go beyond Sept, 9th, 2008 (.vhd expiration date)

sources

• http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=4511
• http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/download.html qemu official website
• http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=qemu-imgquemu-img rpm file
• http://blog.linuxconfig.org/convert-virtual-machine-from-vmwarevmdk-to-virtualboxvdi/ .vmdk to .vdi file converter
• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en microsoft .vhd files
• http://blog.mozmonkey.com/2008/vpc-ie6-ie7-ie8-on-mac-os-x/virtualization guide for mac
• http://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/vditool vditolol webpage
• http://www.debianadmin.com/create-virtual-machines-using-virtualbox-in-debian.html other virtualbox tutorial for debian
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=338931&page=11 one more tutorial

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