Boot a second OS on a virtual machine in parallel to windows 10?

[Kahlo kahlow]

Hi, I have a USB hard drive with a linux distribution in it and I tried searching around for how to use that os in the external hard drive to be booted to a virtual machine but all I find is how to boot virtual images out of USB.

The linux distribution in the external hard drive is a full OS not a burned virtual image. I would like to know if it's possible to run a virtual machine with the linux in the external hard drive and how to do it.

Thank you.

 

[boosted1g]

No, not in your configuraiton.

The OS has to be installed as a virutal image (so installed under the configuration of being a vm).
You cant take an OS installation to your PC hardware and make it into a VM.

Thus if you want to do it that way you will have to reinstall linux to the drive within the VM manager.

 

[u2desire420]

Not necessarily this article explains how you can supposedly do this https://www.howtogeek.com/97923/how-to-boot-a-vmware-virtual-machine-from-a-usb-drive/
This may also work with https://www.howtogeek.com/187721/how-to-boot-from-a-usb-drive-in-virtualbox/
Looks like Hyper-V may also work
https://www.petri.com/boot-hyper-v-virtual-machine-usb-drive

 

[Solandri]

There are a variety of tools which can convert a disk into a virtual hard drive image.

https://hyperv.veeam.com/blog/how-to-convert-physical-machine-hyper-v-virtual-machine-disk2vhd/
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/features/convert-physical-to-virtual.htm
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/brh/features.html
http://www.acronis.com/fr-ca/promo/ATICWandAUR/backup-and-restore-001.html
http://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html

Some of these require the disk be booted (i.e. the running machine is converted). Some will convert a raw disk, which sounds like what you want.

While the virtual machine programs (VMWare, VirtualBox, HyperV) mostly claim to be able to read each others' virtual drive images, I've found it's rarely that simple. And converting from one image format to another can be quite a chore. So try to find a converter which writes to the disk image format you need.