Virtual Disk Conversions

I recently wanted to retry the idea of using virtual development environments instead of developing locally on my PC so that I can have several pre-built development and test environments that are tailored to each deployment target.   Having dabbled at this a couple times before, I already had some images available to use.

In the past, I was mostly using VMWare Workstation and the, now free, VMWare GSK Server.  However, now that the equally free Virtual PC 2007 has RTM'd, I wanted to give it a try again.  The only problem is that I dread the time required to install the OS, Sql Server 2005, VisualStudio.NET 2005, and various other dev tools again.  So, I started looking for a way to convert my old VMWare images to Virtual PC images.

It seems that I'm not the only one to run into this problem.  Solutions are now available via the VMDK to VHD Converter at vmToolkit.com, and an article by RoudyBob.NET on how to "Convert VMWare Images to VirtualPC 2004" that shows several methods of conversion mostly involving installing one virtualization technology within another virtual instance, or using a PC imaging software like Ghost from within the virtual instance.  

Also, for going the opposite direction, VMWare Workstation 5(+) offers a VPW Image converter, or you can download the free VMWare Converter to convert any "real" PC to a VMWare image.