Disk2vhd

As the name suggests, Disk2vhd is a tiny, portable tool that enables you to create VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) files from physical disks that you can later employ with virtual machines. According to the developer, the main distinction between this tool and similar ones is that you can run it on an online system.

The application is portable, so all you need to do to get started is download and decompress the archive in the desired location on the hard disk. The application comes with a minimalistic and user-friendly interface that displays the current volumes, lets you name the new virtual file and basic settings, such as using VHDX or using the volumes' shadow copies.

It is worth mentioning that the tool can create one virtual file for each physical disk detected and that it preserves all relevant information. In fact, this is another particularity of the tool, as it relies on shadow copies and hence, allows you to create consistent snapshots of the volumes to be used in a conversion.

Working with it is quite simple and intuitive and you can start by specifying the output directory and the name of the virtual file. You will be happy to learn that the tool enables you to select more than one drive to include in the conversion. Since it is basically a conversion of a physical disk, on a first boot from the virtual machine, the captured copy of Windows detects the hardware automatically and installs the necessary drivers.

As you would expect, the tool also supports command line and therefore, you can achieve the aforementioned result via commands. Disk2vhd is a reliable and straightforward utility that lets you create VHD files from physical drives that you can use with various virtual machines.