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Written By Rohan Wiese
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Updated on December 22nd, 2020
How to Restore VHD to Physical Disk using DD Command on Windows
The article aims to introduce the users a reliable and efficient Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) to physical disk solution. It will guide the users how to restore VHD to physical disk using DD Command.
VHD stands for Virtual Hard Disk. It is basically a file format that represents a virtual hard disk drive i.e. HDD. Mostly, it contains whatever found on a physical HDD, such as a file system and a disk partition, which may also consist of files and folders. Typically, we can say it is the hard disk of a virtual machine. It enables multiple operating systems on a single host machine. Apart from that, it has some other advantages:
- On a single VHD, IT organizations can deploy prebuilt and standardized configurations.
- We can easily undo the changes in the content of the VHD file.
It also has some limitations as:
- Allow a maximum of 65535×16×255 sectors.
- It has a limitation of just under 2TB for the size of any dynamic or differencing VHDs.
Also Read: How to Repair Corrupted VHD File
Need to restore VHD to physical disk
There are some of the reasons that led to the need of Virtual to physical conversion to restore VHD to Physical disk.
- When you have a virtual hard disk file i.e. VHD which you wish to migrate to a physical drive.
- Deployment of your configurations is not suited in a virtual environment.
- You are out of support from your vendor because of their ignorance of Hyper-V.
Methods to restore VHD to physical disk
The virtual to physical conversion by restoring VHD to physical disk is a tedious task. Even if done, there are high chances of being unsuccessful even with your best effort. A preferred workaround would be migration. You can Install the desired OS on the new hardware and start migrating applications and settings.
If you are using Hyper-V Server and converting a VM running a recent version of Windows, you could simply install the operating system on the physical hardware and then mount the VHDX in the new OS. Now, you can transfer the files using copy, xcopy, robocopy, Windows Explorer, etc.
The automated method to restore VHD to physical disk
As it has been discussed earlier that virtual to physical conversion to restore VHD to physical disk is very tedious and cumbersome task. Even if you try it with all your efforts, there is not any guarantee that it will be successful. So, it is recommended to consider third-party software, VHD Recovery helps in creating the image file of your Virtual Hard Disk after that run DD Command of Windows then copy your VHD file into Physical Disk. Although they make you to pay a cost, but it will all be worth your time and sanity. It is a reliable and efficient solution for virtual to physical conversion. Here, I am explaining how to restore VHD to the physical disk.
Step 1. Install and run VHD Recovery software on your desktop and Select the disk type.
Step 2. Browse the information of the selected VHD file from the screen. Hit Next to continue.
Step 3. Now, select the mode of scanning from Standard and Advanced. You can also customize the scanning mode settings.
Note: Now click on Save Disk Image then successfully save an image file of your virtual hard disk data.
Step 4. Runs DD Command to copy or restore VHD into Physical Disk
About The Author:
Rohan Wiese is a Technical Writer at Aryson Technologies. He is an expert Email Forensic, Cloud Computing, and a passionate nerd with over 10 years of experience in technical content writing. He writes about Cloud Migration, Database Recovery, Email Backup, Windows, Mac, and Tech.
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