Operating Systems

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Any tips/tricks for cloning an existing operating system (Win10) to run in a VM? (self.operating_systems)

submitted 1 year ago by Seathru to c/operating_systems

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I have a laptop with obsolete, licensed diagnostic software that I use on old equipment still in service. I've kept it alive longer than it should have been, but it's only a matter time before a disk or mobo failure puts me in a bad spot.

I'd like to make a clone of the current OS (Windows 10) as-is that could be run in VirtualBox or some other VM as a backup. Is it as simple as making a disk image with DD and then loading that up in VirtualBox? I'm sure it's not, but what am I overlooking? Or what other software would be better to use?

I'm fairly computer literate, but a mechanic by trade; So, not an expert.

Thanks for any help.

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[–] foo@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The search term you want to use is P2V or Disk2VHD which is also the name of a Microsoft tool for that purpose.

[–] Seathru 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks, I'll look into that.

[–] foo@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

You might also look into the built in tool that Windows 10 has for doing an image level backup of the system.

Here's a page that walks you through a system image backup.