Windows physical to Linux/VMware virtual, was Re: [BBLISA] RHEL and Windows simultaneously?

[Paul Beltrani]

FWIW, it's a fairly simple matter to copy your physical partition to a
VMware virtual disk.  Your favorite search engine should be able to
find you some procedures.

The basic idea is:
1) Create a temporary Linux virtual machine that includes your windows
physical partition and a virtual disk of the same size.

2) Boot the VM using a RAM based Linux, e.g.  Fedora in "rescue" mode
or KNOPPIX.

3) "dd" the physical partition to the virtual drive

4) Power down the VM

5) Create a Windows VM using the VMware virtual disk.

6) You can now delete the temporary Linux VM.

Note:

The last time I did this I had a problem getting the Windows boot
loader onto the VM disk. As I didn't have time to deal with it, I
simply made a Windows boot floppy image and had the VM boot from this
file.

Info on creating a Windows boot floppy is here:
http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/  You can simply dd this over to a
boot floppy image using Linux.

  - Paul Beltrani