How to Image Windows 10 Partition as a Virtual Disk (VHD)

Whether you want to sell off the old computer but would like to keep the Windows installation, or like me, if you love to explore new software without letting it hamper Windows 10 system files, there can be multiple reasons why someone might want to create a virtual disk from Windows 10 partition.

Whatever the reason might be, in this tutorial we will show you how to create an image from Windows 10 partition as a virtual disk using various utilities so that if one of them doesn’t work for you, you can try your hands on the next tool to solve the problem. But first, a brief overview of what a virtual disk is, the different types of virtual disks available, and what advantage each has over the other.

What is a Virtual Disk?

A virtual disk, also known as a virtual drive, is an image file that can be used with certain designated programs like Hyper-V, Parallels, or VMWare to create a virtual computer within another computer. This virtual computer contains the same operating system, settings, and programs that were part of the original system from which the image was created.

Working with this virtual computer does not affect the underlying operating system. So, if you are working with a harmful program, you can work on it on this virtual computer without having to worry about whether the rogue program will harm the original computer.

Types of Virtual Disks

There are 2 types of virtual disks; fixed and dynamic. Fixed images, appears as a normal hard drive which is physically connected to the system. It has a fixed size and reserves a fixed storage space on the host machine. It is also much faster compared to its counterpart.

A dynamic image, has a varying size and can increase its size depending on whether more data is added to it. This Virtual Disk type includes features such as support for larger disk sizes, disk resizing etc.

Advantages of VHD

There are multiple image formats for a virtual disk including VHD and VHDX. So which image type should you use? That depends on what your requirement is.

However, despite all the advantages VHDX has over VHD, the VHD image has one big advantage. It is compatible with more operating systems and their versions compared to VHDX. So, if you are planning to run Windows 10 image on a Mac, you can easily do that with VHD.

How to image Windows 10 OS as Virtual Disk

Now we will start discussing about how to create a Virtual Disk of your Windows 10 partition using 3 different software.

VMWare

First, we will check how to create an image of your Windows 10 partition using VMWare. This is an industry standard virtualization software. Here’s how to use it.

1. VMWare had a utility called vCenter Converter Standalone that can be used to create a Virtual Disk. It has been discontinued by VMWare, but can be downloaded from third party sites like Softpedia. Download it, install it on your Windows 10 computer, and then launch it.

2. From the main window, click on the Convert machine button located towards the top left.

3. From the Conversion window that pops up, select Powered On from the top, and This local machine from the dropdown below that. Then click Next to continue.

4. Next, for the destination type, select VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine from the dropdown and click Next.

5. That should bring up a new dropdown. From the product list, select the VMWare product on which you would like to run this image. Give the image a name, and click Browse to select the directory where you would like to save the image. Once done, click Next.

6. In the next window, you’ll see a number of errors under Current Settings. Click on Edit, then select the Windows 10 partition. Don’t click Next just yet.

7. Now click on Devices below current settings. Specify the amount of memory you want to allocate for this virtual disk from the Memory tab.

8. From the Other tab, select the total number of cores as half of the actual number of cores of the CPU of your computer and click Next.

9. In the Options window under Advanced check the option Install VMware Tools on the destination virtual machine. Then under Throttling, select CPU Throttling as Medium and click Next.

10. Finally, in the Summary window check if all the settings are looking fine and click on Finish to create the Virtual Disk.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V is a tool native to Windows operating system that can be used to create and run Virtual Disks. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open Hyper-V by pressing the Windows and R keys on your keyboard, then type virtmgmt.msc in the Run dialogue box, and click OK.

2. From the left pane select the server, then from the Actions panel on the right, click New, and click on Hard Disk.

3. This will open the Create New Virtual Machine wizard. Here, you need to click on Next to move to the next step.

4. In the next window, select VHD as the disk format, and click Next.

5. Now you will need to select the type of Disk that you would like to create; you can choose either Fixed, or Dynamic. Once done, click Next.

6. Now you need to specify where you would like to save the VHD file and give it a name. Once done, click Next to continue.

7. On the next window, select the option to copy the content of a specified physical disk and select the Windows 10 partition. Then click Next.

8. Finally, in the Summary window, check if all the selections are to your liking, and click Finish to create the image.

Parallels (For Mac)

Parallels Desktop is used to run Virtual Disk images on Mac. However, if you want to create a Virtual Disk from the image of your Windows 10 partition, you can use their Parallels Transporter Agent tool to do that.

1. Download (https://www.parallels.com/pc/), install and launch the utility. Then from the first window, select External Storage and then click on Continue.

2. On the next window, select Enable Automatic Logon and specify the Administrator’s password to automatically login to the virtual disk. Click on Continue once done.

3. On the next window, select System only and then click on Continue.

4. In the next window, give this virtual disk a name, and then specify the directory where you would like to save it. Once done, click on Continue.

5. In the next warning window, select I want to continue and click the Continue button.

6. That should begin the process of creating the virtual disk. Once finished, click on the Done button the exit the utility.

Now you know how to create a virtual disk from Windows 10 partition. Depending on whether you are creating this for working on a Mac, or another Windows computer, you can choose while utility discussed here would you like to use and follow that method accordingly.