How to Copy .VHD File to Physical Hard Disk Using DD Command

Question

I have read other question/answers on this site that say this is possible, but I'm wondering how it is done. I have tried the following command, which completes successfully, but the NTFS isn't valid on the drive afterwards.

dd if=\backup\image.vhd of=\dev\sda

Does the .vhd file have to be mounted somehow first? Will this restore the MBR?

Thank you.

Reference Question

Answer 1

The VHD file isn't a raw image format (like DD uses), so you will have to use something to convert it to a raw format.

Looking at the VBoxManage webpage the following command should work, but I haven't tried it:

$ VBoxManage clonehd /backup/image.vhd - --format RAW | dd of=/dev/sda

As I say I haven't tried it, but yuo could read up on VBoxManage at the VirtualBox website:

• http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch08.html