Microsoft has updated the Sysinternals Suite of applications with a new component designed to streamline the process associated with creating VHD versions of physical disks. Developed by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, Disk2vhd v1.0 was made available for download on October 7th, 2009, having been included into the Sysinternals Suite. The utility, which can take physical disks and build Virtual Hard Disk (Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) images, can essentially virtualize a physical installation of Windows into an image that will work with Virtual PC or Hyper-V.

“We’re excited to announce a new Sysinternals tool, Disk2vhd, that simplifies the migration of physical systems into virtual machines (p2v). Just run Disk2vhd on the system you want to migrate and specify the volumes for which you want data included, and Disk2vhd creates a consistent point-in-time volume snapshot followed by an export of the selected volumes into one or more VHDs that you can add to a new or existing Hyper-V or Virtual PC virtual machine,” noted Curtis Metz, program manager, Microsoft Sysinternals.

Disk2vhd 1.0 comes with support for both Windows client and server operating systems starting with Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. Earlier Windows releases are not supported because the utility makes use of the Windows Volume Snapshot capability, which is only featured in XP and later Windows platforms. According to Ben Armstrong, a program manager on the core virtualization team at Microsoft, users will be able to leverage Disk2vhd 1.0 in order to move a “physical installation of Windows 7 to a “boot from VHD” configuration.”

“This is a tool that you run on a running Windows computer to create virtual hard disks copies of the physical disks that are attached. Under the covers this tool works by taking a Windows Volume Snapshot (VSS) image of the physical hard disk – and then pouring that into a virtual hard disk,” Armstrong added. “There are a number of cool uses for this – with a “poor man's P2V” leading the charge. One thing that you should be aware of is that this tool does not change the drivers / HAL that is used in a system drive – so you may need to take manual steps to make the VHD actually boot in a virtual machine.”

The latest release of the Sysinternals Suite, including Disk2vhd 1.0, is available for download here.