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I recently obtained a copy of Mac OS Snow Leopard in VMware (.vmdk) format. It is incredibly slow when running virtualised and I would like to just install it directly to my machine dual booting with Windows 7 (32 bit). Is there any way preferably free that I can convert a VMware .vmdk image to an .iso I can burn to a DVD to boot from?

I've seen this done in Linux and presume there is a way to do it in Windows as well. Downloading another copy that isn't a VMware image isn't an option considering my broadband plan is creeping closer to its limit for the month.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 14 '10 at 3:22

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closed as off topic by studiohack♦ Jun 10 '11 at 21:10

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3 Answers

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You can't convert a VMDK (a hard drive image) to a iso - a cd image - in addition iirc how a cd and a hardrive boot is different. You can boot linux off a .img (a generic hard drive type) or windows off a vhd (a hard drive image varient).

For converting between image types, your best bet is the qemu-img with qemu - but i seriously doubt you can do what you want to do.

Alternately i SUPPOSE you could make a DMG image with carbon copy cloner, and do something with disk tool from OS X, but you might as well do a full reinstall if you get a copy of OS X.

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Thank you very much for your help. I understand where you are coming from in relating relation to hard drive images and an image of a DVD / CD. – Dwayne Jul 14 '10 at 6:00
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Could you please explain how you obtained a downloadable copy of MacOSX Snow Leopard? And possibly also from where you were thinking of downloading it in another format? AFAIK Apple does not supply them in downloadable format...

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Thomas, I presume you're being sarcastic in your response. It doesn't matter where I obtained a copy of Mac OS Snow Leopard from. I wasn't asking for a lecture, I was asking how you can convert a VMware image to an ISO file (if possible). So unless you have a valid answer to this question, please do not post anything. – Dwayne Jul 14 '10 at 0:15
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How would I do that ?

Get a live CD of linux (the distro you prefer)

Boot on the VMWare on the live CD (on burned disk or iso file)

when booted, open a terminal locate the device you want to clone mount

mount

this will show you a list a device
then unmount this device if it is mounted

umount /dev/sda1 (eg.)

plug an empty usb key and connect through to the VM
or add a virtual hard drive (mapped to a partition)
or connect to shared folder of host
and clone using dd 

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/your/destination/file/path
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