Whilst Virtualbox can access virtual disks in .vdi, .vhd and .vmdk format, VMware player or workstation supports only .vhd- and .vmdk file format. From time to time people asking me, how to convert a Virtualbox .vdi file to a .vhd or VMware .vmdk.

I do have a generic caution though. It seems to me that the various drivers implemented may have to be changed when you change HOST OSes or even between VBOX updates. I've seen some flaky stuff over time. Try a bridged adapter first. If it does you know that the guest supports the driver being emulated by vbox. Download Lg flatron l227wtg monitor drivers. Sculptures downswing everything i VMLite laudable The worst nightmare is. Canon dr 3060 scsi scanner driver. Windows 10 Ethernet and SCSI Controller Drivers Problem with VMware Player 6.0.3 Build I just Deployed Windows 10 on VMware Player 6.0.3 with the following specs: Memory 1 GB. Make a floppy image of the contents of symmpi. The SCSI ID should read SCSI 0: 0. Power on the virtual machine. Follow the Found New Hardware wizard or in the Windows device manager inside the Windows guest and select the unknown device. Right- click Update Driver and select the LSILogic SCSI controller driver downloaded earlier.

There are a couple of web sites describing how to use Virtualbox VBoxManage.exe to convert a .vdi file to a .vhd disk. It requires invoking a command prompt window, navigate to Virtualbox install folder and enter a command like this:

vboxmanage clonehd d:androidandroid4.vdi d:androidandroid4.vhd --format VHD

The two lines above are one command. The resulting file android.vhd can be used in VMware Player/Workstation.

Note: This approach comes with two problems. First of all, it’s complicated to fiddle with command prompt window and spelling the right paths. And second I prefer to use Virtualbox portable beside my VMware Workstation installation. If Virtualbox portable is used, VBoxManage.exe won’t work – some Class isn’t recognized. Therefore I was looking for an alternative way, and I found the approach drawn below.

A smarter way to convert .vdi files

In this Q&A somebody mentioned, that Virtualbox comes with a tool that works well under Windows. And someone else mentioned a graphical tool will do the conversion. After a bit of experimenting, I found out, how to convert Virtualbox .vdi files in a comfortable manner. It requires Virtualbox or VMLite workstation.

Launch Oracle VM Virtualbox Manager (or VMLite workstation – also Virtualbox portable fits).
Press Ctrl+D or open the Machine menu and select Manager for virtual media (see above in background).
In virtual media manager select the .vdi file to be converted. After selecting a file, press Ctrl+C or click the Copy button.
In the conversion wizard’s dialog box confirm the media to copy and click Next.
Select the target disk output format and click Next.
If you selected .vmdk for a virtual machine file, the next dialog box allows you to set the parameter for the target file.
After confirming the disk type using the Next button, select the target folder and adjust the target file name.
Click the Next button and confirm the Copy button in the next dialog box.

Virtualbox copy wizard creates a new target disk and convert the source content to the required target disk format.

Afterward, the target folder contains the converted virtual disk, that may be associated to a VMware Workstation or Virtual PC VM (depending on output format).

Attention: Converting .vdi disks containing VMs with Linux or Android should be no major problem. Only Android may causes trouble, because the Linux kernel just supports IDE disk controller. A Windows guest OS in a converted VM raises serious trouble, because booting in the new environment forces Windows to install other drivers for the hardware environment found in the VM. Windows XP fails with blue screens, if the disk controller changes. Whilst Virtualbox uses SATA- or IDE-controller, VMware connects always a virtual disk via SCSI controller.

Change the disk controller type in VMware

In some cases it’s sufficient to change the type of disk controller for VMware player or workstation. This change must be done manually, editing VMware .vmx configuration file with a text editor. In most cases something like this will be present in the .vmx config file:

scsi0.present = „TRUE“
scsi0.virtualDev = „lsilogic“
scsi0:0.fileName = „I:VMsAndroid3.2Android-v4.vhd“

The command lines shown above must be changed to something like the commands below:

ide0:0.present = „TRUE“
ide0:0.fileName = „I:VMsAndroid3.2Android-v4.vhd“

After modifying the configuration settings, the VM can bee bootet, to see, if it went well.

Note: For Windows I prefer tools like VMLite`s MyOldPC or Paragon Go Virtual. These tools not only converting the disk formats. Both tools supporting driver injection in Windows guests, so booting the converted VM should be not a painful job – only Windows activation can be a “pain in the as” – if Microsoft decides to block the license key.

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A question from Matt Vogt prompted this, where he wants to go from the BusLogic SCSI controller to the LSI Logic SAS controller. It’s actually a straightforward conversion if you have the right steps. This is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5, but the principle should be the same for everything. It’s basically: snapshot, change config files, change hardware.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, in contrast, appears to have all the LSI Logic, parallel & SAS, drivers, as well as the paravirtual SCSI drivers, so all you need to do is shut the VM down and change the type of SCSI controller you’re using.

I always recommend trying this on a test VM before you try it on something big and important. :) As always, while I strive for 100% accuracy I assume no responsibility for this b0rking your whole setup. There are parts to this that require you to find your own information and substitute it for the example I’ve given. Please do that, don’t copy the commands by themselves. Some of them will look like they work fine… until you reboot.

Step 1: Take a snapshot of the VM in question. Did you know that VMware snapshots archive the VM hardware configuration, too?

Step 2: Copy /etc/modules.conf (for RHEL AS 3) or /etc/modprobe.conf (for RHEL 4 or 5) to /tmp, just in case.

On RHEL hosts that have tmpwatch installed files that haven’t been accessed in 10 days will be removed from /tmp. In this case that’s my desired behavior, as you won’t need the original after the conversion operation, and I always discourage people from leaving cruft sitting around on hosts, cluttering them up. Besides, if you do need the original file after 10 days just pull it out of your file-level backups.

Step 3: Open the original file in an editor. If you’re new to Linux try to use the ‘nano’ or ‘pico’ editor, it’s more straightforward than vi. Remember to use sudo or do this as root, which will be true of all of the rest of the directions here.

Step 4: Find the line or lines that say “alias scsi_hostadapter.” There may be more than one of them, they may have numbers, and they may not all pertain to the controller you want to replace (there may be lines for ata_piix, for example). Remove the lines pertaining to your old SCSI adapter. In Matt’s case there would be a line saying “alias scsi_hostadapter BusLogic”

Step 5: Add the correct lines to /etc/modules.conf or /etc/modprobe.conf:

RHEL AS 3, /etc/modules.conf for LSI Logic SAS:

RHEL 4, /etc/modprobe.conf for LSI Logic SAS:

RHEL 5, /etc/modprobe.conf for LSI Logic SAS:

Step 6: Fix the numbering so that it’s consistent. This is p

Drivers Vmlite SCSI & RAID Devices