How to make new KVM with existing hard drive
Solution 1
virt-install ... --disk [path to your existing image] --import ...
--import
Skip the OS installation process, and build a guest around an existing disk image. The device used for booting is the first device specified via "--disk" or "--file".
--disk [path]
path - A path to some storage media to use, existing or not. Existing media can be a file or block device. Specifying a non-existent path implies attempting to create the new storage, and will require specifyng a ’size’ value.
Solution 2
qemu-img
command can convert any img format.
You can convert .vdi
image to raw image. All hypervisors support raw image format.
Then you can convert raw image to qed
/qcow2
format to save image size.
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jwbensley
Senior network engineer / architect Programmer Hobbyist hardware hacker/tinkerer
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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jwbensley over 1 year
I've been looking through the options of the QEMU binary, and I can't work this one out: Is it possible to make a new KVM machine with an existing hard drive image with an OS (XP Pro in this case) already installed?
I have seen a guide online to turn my VirtualBox XP Pro hard drive (.vdi) into a qemu image (which I have done) but I can't seem to make a new KVM using this existing hard drive?
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jwbensley over 12 yearsAh, the import option, I didnt find this. Thanks so much :D
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Edward Shen almost 11 yearsqemu-img command support vdi format.
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Edward Shen almost 11 yearsqemu can directly run vdi format disk.