Disk2vhd is a lightweight and handy system utility that lets you create a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) version of physical disks that you can use in a Microsoft Virtual PC or a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine. A product of Sysinternals, Disk2vhd is a bit different from other physical-to-virtual tools and lets you run the program on a system that’s connected online. Using the Disk2vhd program is pretty convenient since it employs Windows' Volume Snapshot capability that creates volume snapshots. It also lets you choose exactly which system volumes and data volumes you would like to include in the VHD you’re going to make.

From Physical to Virtual

A VHD or Virtual Hard Disk is a file format that virtually represents a hard disk drive or HDD. It can contain what you can find on a physical HDD, like disk partitions, file systems, files, and folders. VHDs are typically used as the hard disk of a virtual machine. The VHD format was created by Connectix for their Virtual PC product, known as Microsoft Virtual PC. VHDs allow multiple operating systems to reside and run on a single host machine. This then enables developers to test software on different operating systems without having to install or even buy a second hard disk or even partition a single hard disk into multiple volumes. There are many benefits to making VHDs, such as access to backup and recovery applications. This is why Disk2vhd aims to be easy to use and convenient for anyone in need of VHDs. This program will create one VHD for each disk on which the selected volumes can be found—so this way, you can control what data goes on the VHD. It also has a Volume Snapshot feature that creates point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. Additionally, Disk2vhd also makes use of command-line input, enabling you to personally script the creation of your VHDs if you’re more comfortable using command-line.