Disk2vhd - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn

Summary — Disk2vhd (v2.02) by Mark Russinovich (Oct 12, 2021)

• What it does

  • Disk2vhd creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) images of physical disks for use with Microsoft Virtual PC or Hyper-V.

  • It can be run on a live (online) Windows system by using the Volume Snapshot service to produce point-in-time consistent snapshots.

• How it works / behavior

  • The UI lists system volumes; Disk2vhd produces one VHD per physical disk that contains selected volumes.

  • It preserves partition information but only copies the data for volumes you select (so you can capture system volumes without copying large data volumes).

  • You can create VHD files on local drives (including drives being converted), though writing the VHD to a different disk than the source improves performance.

• Important notes & limitations

  • Virtual PC supports VHDs up to 127 GB; larger VHDs won’t be accessible from a Virtual PC VM.

  • Do not attach VHDs on the same physical system you created them on if you plan to boot from them — Windows may assign a new disk signature to avoid collisions and a VM booting from that VHD may fail to find its boot disk.

  • BitLocker-encrypted volumes are not supported. Disable BitLocker and wait for full decryption before converting.

  • Runs on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and later (including x64).

• Usage

  • GUI or command line. Command-line syntax:

    • disk2vhd <[drive:[drive:]...]|[*]>

    • Example: disk2vhd * c:\vhd\snapshot.vhd

• Licensing remark

  • Physical-to-virtual migration of a Windows installation is subject to Microsoft licensing (Software Assurance / retail vs OEM rules).

• Where to get it

  • Download: https://download.sysinternals.com/files/Disk2vhd.zip (564 KB)

  • Run from Sysinternals Live: https://live.sysinternals.com/disk2vhd.exe

(Last updated: 10/12/2021)