Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone could advise from their experience with virtualization? What would be the best software and method to image a 120gb hdd pulled from a laptop, Then copy the 120gb image to a 2tb hdd(c:\) in a desktop pc, Then boot the 120gb image from a virtual machine software to run the laptop's OS inside a VM window on the desktop pc. Both the laptop and desktop are running Windows 7. I have read there are problems booting Windows images from different hardware(ahci setting, motherboard/gpu drivers) so sysprep is required to generalize the image before booting in a VM? Is that the correct method or is there something better? Will VMWare be the best software for this or Hyper-V, other? Any advice would be very appreciated.
There are specialized tools to do that But you can just create a 128GB vhd(x) on your 2TB drivers, mount it than use acronis, paragon, easus to clone the HDD, just like you would do with a real HDD. In most cases the vhd will boot w/o any further intervention in hyper v (vhd or vhdx) or virtualbox (vhd only). If you want to use vmware you have to convert it in the vmware format. .