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How can I convert a DMG into a VMDK file? I had a laptop hard drive which i turned into a DMG. I want to make a VM that uses that drive. How can I turn this DMG into a working VMDK or boot from this DMG for the VM?

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  • @DKNUCKLES I tried that and I'm getting vmware-rawdiskCreator command not found. Is that something I have to install separately? Sep 11, 2012 at 19:04
  • Are you executing the command from within the correct directory? You'll need to execute it where the binary is stored - /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-rawdiskCreator
    – DKNUCKLES
    Sep 11, 2012 at 19:11

3 Answers 3

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You can do it on Mac OS as also!

The good start point is this guide. It gave me the idea about how to do this. Here are the steps to make .vmdk image from .dmg.

  1. Double click your hdd.dmg to mount it.
  2. Open Disk Utility and select your hdd volume in the left side. Then press Unmount button. The volume will become semi transparent.
  3. Now press the Info button then find disk identifier in a new window. It should be like disk1.
  4. Open Terminal window. Execute cd /Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/
  5. Run ./vmware-rawdiskCreator print /dev/disk1. To make sure that it's your source .dmg and it is readable.
  6. Then make a linked vmdk via ./vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk1 fullDevice /Users/yourname/Desktop/hdd-link lsilogic It will do not a real vmdk but one linked with your dmg data.
  7. Run following command to make resizable hdd.vmdk with the copy of dmg data. ./vmware-vdiskmanager -r /Users/yourname/Desktop/hdd-link.vmdk -t 0 /Users/yourname/Desktop/hdd.vmdk
  8. After the process successfully completes you can eject your hdd.dmg and add the result hdd.vmdk to your virtual machine.

You can resize the result vmdk from within your VMWare Fusion app.

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On (ubuntu) linux:

First convert to .img:

dmg2img YOURFILE.dmg

Then convert to .vmdk:

qemu-img convert -O vmdk YOURFILE.iso YOURFILE.vmdk

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This is how I do this on Windows 10.

First convert to the DMG to an ISO:

dmg2img YOURFILE.dmg YOURFILE.iso

Then convert that ISO to VMDK:

qemu-img convert -O vmdk YOURFILE.iso YOURFILE.vmdk

You can write the VMDK to a physical partition with Paragon Hard Disk Manager Premium and boot your OS.

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