Looks like Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell are up to their old tricks again, with an awesome new tool called Disk2VHD.

From the web site:

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online. Disk2vhd uses Windows’ Volume Snapshot capability, introduced in Windows XP, to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion. You can even have Disk2vhd create the VHDs on local volumes, even ones being converted (though performance is better when the VHD is on a disk different than ones being converted).

Disk2VHD can run on Windows XP SP2 and higher, as well as Windows Server 2003 and higher.

Awesome work, Mark and Bryce!

Of course you do.  And in this episode of the Virtualization Nation Podcast, I’ll show you how. 

But first, a little background.

Earlier today, I posted a description of the new Native VHD integration in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 on the Windows Virtualization Team blog, along with a link to a nifty little Powershell script called Install-WindowsImage.ps1 which I’ll talk about some other time.  The main point of that post was to start getting the word out about Native VHD Boot.

So, what’s so special about this?

Well, put yourself in the shoes of a corporate network administrator (though, when I was a network admin, I didn’t wear shoes all that often).  It’s really very common for a company to have a “base” Operating System image that they can apply to a server or workstation.  This image is usually tweaked with some software and/or patches installed, or is specially configured in some other way.

If that’s the case, it’s possible that you would need to maintain two (or more) images: one for virtual machines (probably a VHD), and one for physical machines (maybe a WIM or a Ghost file).

With Native VHD Boot, you can finally have one, single base image that works everywhere.  Your VHD can be booted in virtual machines, just like it always did, and it can also be used to boot your physical servers. 

Ok, let’s get right to the heart of this thing.

To boot from a VHD, you need the following things:

• A physical machine with the Windows 7 boot loader on it.
• A VHD with a SKU of Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 (Enterprise and Ultimate only – sorry), or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.

Now, you’ve got those things ready, right?  You’re all set?  You’ve read the VHD FAQ? Cool. 

Ok.  You can find instructions on how to configure your computer on various web pages and videos, but they all seem pretty lengthy.

Want something simple?  Something easy to remember?

Of course you do.

You can watch me run through the steps in the video below, or download it here.

For those of you who don’t want to download a video for a “simple” command, here are the Cliff’s Notes:

1. Get to an elevated or WinPE command prompt.
2. Use your favorite VHD-creation method to install Windows in a VHD.
3. Use DiskPart or DiskMgmt.msc to attach your VHD as a drive on your computer, and give it a drive letter (V:\ for example).
4. Run BCDBOOT.EXE  V:\Windows
5. Sit back, relax, and reboot your computer to start booting into your new OS.

Important Notes:

1. If you’re booting to a Dynamically Expanding VHD, make sure that you have enough room on your physical disk to hold the VHD as if it were fully expanded to its maximum size.  If you don’t have enough space, you’ll get a bugcheck during boot.
2. Hibernation is disabled when booted to a VHD.
3. You can’t boot to a VHD that lives on a network share or a removable storage device.

Some of you may remember that, a long while ago, I asked what sort of things you'd like to see in a Virtualization-themed podcast.  Though it's been over a year since that post, I've still been thinking about starting a podcast and talking with other people on my team about getting one together.  The reaction has been positive so far.  There are quite a few folks who seem interested in putting something together.

However, we haven't gotten down to planning any of the solid details quite yet, so a regular podcast is still aways off.  But there's really no reason why I have to wait for everyone else... and so, I give you the first episode of The Virtualization Nation Podcast.  Episode 2.

Wait, what?

Well, since I promised all of you some more WIM2VHD videos, and since I'm nearly gotten the whole process down (I wound up buying Sony's Vegas Movie Studio Platinum, or whatever it's called... and it crashes a lot.  Like, really a lot.), I deciced to start releasing them as video podcasts.  As such, we're just going to call the first WIM2VHD video I made 'Episode 1', and go from there.

So there you have it:  We're not ready to start doing this regularly yet, and the format is likely to change around a lot, and we don't have the whole XML feed thing set up quite yet... but the next episode is ready!

Click here to download the .WMV file.

So, I know that I've been promising everyone some new videos explaining some of WIM2VHD's features.  And I really have been working on them.  I have most of them captured, but editing them... is not going so well.

I've been using Windows Movie Maker on Windows Vista to make the first few videos, but the quality turns out to be pretty low, and it's hard to read the text on the screen because the of the bad quality.

So I have a question for you guys. What's a good video editing software package that's free or inexpensive, and can make high-quality WMV files?

Every now and then, I like to visit the WIM2VHD website and see how many people have downloaded it.  Aside from the ego boost, it’s a nice little figure to pass on to my management so they can see that this project was worth the time that I’ve spent on it.  But yeah, it’s mostly the ego boost :)

Last night, I decided to check the download count before I went to bed, and I saw something that made me very, very happy:  at around 10:30 PM PDT last night, there were about 1030 downloads.

That’s right – over 1000 downloads in about 45 days.  Now, when compared to other projects – like Hyper-V – 1000 downloads in a month and a half is not earth shattering.   But Hyper-V had marketing behind it.  People knew that Hyper-V was coming – it was demoed at conferences and by news outlets.  WIM2VHD was a surprise (and I hope it was a pleasant one).

It’s very humbling to know that something I’ve been working on is useful to you, and is (hopefully) helping you use Windows and virtualization more efficiently.

So, to all of the people out there who have downloaded and used WIM2VHD; to all of the people who have blogged about it; tweeted about it, or told co-workers about it; and to everyone who joined the “Fans of WIM2VHD” group on Facebook:

Thank you!

So, seeing how many people have downloaded WIM2VHD – How are you guys using it?  Are you just playing around with it, or has it actually helped you be more productive?  I’d love to know, so if you don’t mind sharing your stories and experiences please leave a comment letting me know.

Again, thank you all very, very much.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on putting together a new set of videos for WIM2VHD, but I’ve run into a bit of a problem.

I’m creating a video that goes through and explains the different command line options for WIM2VHD, but the end result, even after editing and re-encoding, is too large for me to upload to any of the video hosting providers that I want to use.

I could try to cut some more space out of the existing video, but it occurred to me that perhaps I should ask all of you what would work better for you.

Should I have one big video that explains all of the options, or should I have a very small video for each of the options?

Please leave a comment and let me know which you’d prefer.