URceBy

MacOS should now be installed in VirtualBox. Any time you want to use it, simply launch VirtualBox, and start your virtual machine. When you’re done, you can either close VirtualBox or shut down through your macOS virtual machine. If you want to continue dabbling in virtual machines, here’s how to convert VM files between Virtualbox and VMWare. If you have original diskettes and a working Apple II, Virtual can help you convert the diskettes to the Mac via a serial interface cable. The program automatically indexes all Apple II disk images on your Mac, so you can find an Apple II file instantly, by entering its name.

1. Catalina Virtualbox Vmdk
2. Mac Os Catalina Vmdk Download

Article ID = 232
Article Title = Virtualising a physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file
Article Author(s) = Graham Needham (BH)
Article Created On = 27th March 2019
Article Last Updated = 27th March 2019
Article URL = https://www.macstrategy.com/article.php?232
Article Brief Description:
Instructions for installing, setting up and virtualising a physical Mac/hard disk/disk image file

Virtualising a physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file

The ability to virtualise an existing Mac/macOS installation is important and very useful as it is an easy way to continue running your old Mac and also a possible way to run 32-bit applications that do not run on macOS 10.15 or later. MacStrategy presents this special guide to virtualising a physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file.
This article deals with transferring an existing Mac running Mac OS X / OS X / macOS to a virtual machine, or take a bootable storage device/clone/disk image and convert it into a virtual machine. If you would prefer to set up/install a virtual machine with a clean Mac OS X/OS X/macOS from scratch please see one of the following articles instead:

• Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (Server) - costs money but you may already be running/want to run this to be able to use PowerPC/Rosetta based applications
• OS X 10.7 - OS X 10.8 is better
• OS X 10.8 - costs money but if you already own it/want to pay for it, it runs very efficiently in a virtual machine and there are few internet/iCloud based services clogging it up
• OS X 10.9 - was very kludgy and slow when installed on a hard disk
• OS X 10.10 - was slow when installed on a hard disk, does not support latest Apple internet/iCloud based services
• OS X 10.11 - free, supports most internet/iCloud based services
• macOS 10.12 - free, supports most internet/iCloud based services
• macOS 10.13 - buggy, slow, new Apple File System
• macOS 10.14 - still being revised, new Apple File System

Virtualisation Software

• Parallels Desktop [£79.99 inc VAT - 14 day free trial available]
  
• VMWare Fusion [£70.00 inc VAT - 30 day free trial available]
• Oracle VirtualBox [FREE - Open source under GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2]

Instructions

NOTE: This document was written using a Mac mini (2014 model) with macOS 10.14 Mojave running in 64-bit only test mode and using Parallels Desktop 14.1.2, VMWare Fusion 11.0.2 and VirtualBox 6.0.4.

Preparation

NOTE: You will need the following:

1. Mac computer for hosting your preferred guest OS preferably with a working Recovery Partition
2. Make sure your actual, physical Mac has a working internet connection e.g. use a web browser to go to https://www.apple.com and see if you can view a web page
3. Purchase/install/update your preferred virtualisation software (see list above)
4. On later versions of macOS your preferred virtualisation software will require specifically allowing their System Extension(s) to run via System Preferences > Security & Privacy, plus they may require to be granted access to Accessibility
5. Purchase/download/obtain your preferred cloning software (we list some in our How To Clone Your Primary/Boot Drive article - we highly recommend Carbon Copy Cloner)
6. If you going to clone from a physical Mac or a clone on a bootable storage device, if possible, boot that system first to make sure it works/is bootable, and also de-activate any software e.g. Adobe Creative Suite (applications)
7. Bootable physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file of your old system
NOTE: If you have the original Mac you will need to clone its startup disk either to an external storage device (preferably USB) or to a disk image first using, for example, Carbon Copy Cloner.
8. Make sure you have plenty of free space on your physical Mac's hosting drive - you will need to create a basic Mac OS X / OS X / macOS virtual machine where you may need to copy the disk image file of your old system to + an additional virtual machine drive that has enough space to host your old system
9. If you are using an external storage device for your bootable clone or to hold the disk image file it's best to rename it to something that is easy to recognise e.g. 'VM Transfer'
10. Create a basic/clean Mac OS X / OS X / macOS virtual machine - if your Mac host computer has a working Recovery Partition, in VMWare Fusion you can easily do this by going to File menu > New… > select 'Install macOS from the recovery partition' > click 'Continue' and follow the on-screen instructions. Alternatively, use our step-by-step guides:

Instructions for virtualising a physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file with:

Parallels Desktop Instructions

We have not tested this in Parallels Desktop but you should be able to do something similar to what we did in VMWare Fusion - we will update this article when we have more time to test this. Don't forget to donate to us (use the button in the bottom left corner of this web page).

VMWare Fusion

1. Make sure the basic/clean Mac virtual machine you created in the preparation section above is shutdown
2. Go to Virtual Machine menu > Settings > Hard Disk (SATA) > click 'Add Device…' > select 'New Hard Disk' > click 'Add…' > choose size > Apply
NOTE: This additional virtual machine drive must be larger than the space used by the physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file of your old system.
3. Start up/boot the virtual machine
4. At the Desktop Mac OS X / OS X / macOS will recognise the additional virtual machine drive and ask you to initalize it > click 'Initialize' (which will open Disk Utility)
5. Select the unformatted additional virtual machine drive on the left (VMware Virtual SATA) - this is the one without 'Macintosh HD' underneath it
6. Set 'Name:' to 'Second HD', 'Format:' to 'OS X Extended (Journaled)', and 'Scheme:' to 'GUID Partition Map' > click 'Erase' to initalize/format the additional virtual machine drive (it should now mount/appear on your Desktop if you have the virtual machine's Finder 'Preferences' set to show 'Hard Disks')
7. Click 'Erase'
8. If OS X / macOS asks you whether you want to use the additional virtual machine drive for Time Machine Backups click 'Don't Use'
9. Quit Disk Utility
10. Connect your physical Mac/clone or hard disk with the disk image file of your old system to your virtual machine OR, if you have enough space, copy the disk image file of your old system on to the virtual machine's Desktop
11. The physical Mac/clone or hard disk with the disk image file of your old system on it should now mount/appear on your Desktop (if you have the virtual machine's Finder 'Preferences' set to show 'Hard Disks') OR double click to open the disk image file of your old system that is now on your virtual machine's Desktop
12. Using your cloning software of choice, clone your physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file of your old system to the additional virtual machine drive e.g. with Carbon Copy Cloner:
13. In the virtual machine go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Startup Disk > set it to 'Second HD'
14. Quit System Preferences
15. Shutdown the virtual machine (Apple menu > Shut Down) - not Restart
16. Go to Virtual Machine menu > Settings > Hard Disk (SATA) > make sure 'File name:' is 'Virtual Disk.vmdk' > click 'Advanced options' at the bottom > click 'Remove Hard Disk'
17. You will be given the choice to keep or Trash the virtual disk file which is your choice (it might be worth keeping the original virtual disk if you have plenty of space as it is a clean Mac OS X / OS X / macOS virtual machine)
18. Go to Virtual Machine menu > Settings > General
19. Change the virtual machine's 'Name' to something that is relevant to your original Mac system e.g. 'Old OS X 10.8 Mac Pro'
20. Change the virtual machine's 'OS' to match that was on your physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file
21. Go through and configure your required virtual machine custom settings:
22. Start up/boot the virtual machine
23. To avoid confusion with your host Mac, rename the virtual machine's hard disk from 'Second HD' to something that is different to your current hard disk e.g. 'Virtual OS X 10.8 HD'
24. Go to Virtual Machine menu > Install VMWare Tools
25. Install VMWare Tools, following the on screen instructions and restart the virtual machine when complete (you may get a message about the installer certificate being out of date and this appears to stop the Tools installing so things like drag and drop are not supported [with this guest OS])
26. If you are running an unsupported version of Mac OS X / OS X / macOS make sure you check out our Securing Older Operating Systems article

Q. What are the current, supported versions of macOS?

A. macOS 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14 (Mojave) and macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) are supported by Apple. The latest security updates are:
• macOS 10.15 - included in the macOS 10.15.6 Combo Update
• macOS 10.14 - included in the macOS 10.14.6 Combo Update + Supplemental Update 2 (1st October 2020)
• macOS 10.13 - included in the macOS 10.13.6 Combo Update + Security Update 2020-005
• SECURITY WARNING: macOS 10.12 and earlier are no longer supported with security updates - see our securing older operating systems article.

VirtualBox

We have not tested this in VirtualBox but you should be able to do something similar to what we did in VMWare Fusion - we will update this article when we have more time to test this. Don't forget to donate to us (use the button in the bottom left corner of this web page).

Article Keywords: OS X OSX 107 108 109 1010 1011 macOS 1012 1013 1014 1015 Snow Leopard Lion Mountain Lion Mavericks Yosemite El Capitan Sierra High Sierra Mojave Catalina VM virtual machine virtualisation virtualising virtualization virtualizing physical hardware Mac hard disk drive clone disk image file .dmg bootable clone

This article is © MacStrategy » a trading name of Burning Helix. As an Amazon Associate, employee's of MacStrategy's holding company (Burning Helix sro) may earn from qualifying purchases. Apple, the Apple logo, and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.

We all have the partitioned physical hard disk drives on our system. But then, how does a VHD ( Virtual hard disk ) differ from the physical hard disk? Here you go. VHDs are mainly used as hard disks for virtual machines. They completely mimic what the hard disks in our computers have.VHDs too have the same directory structure which is composed of files and folders and the disk partitions. If it has the same structure, you might wonder why would you ever require a separate VHD then! If Microsoft has launched such a feature, then there must be something special about it.

VHDs can easily be backed up and they allow you to create dynamic volumes, because of which you need not allocate the disk spaces altogether. You need not actually partition your hard drive for this purpose and they can be easily accessed by means of local networks. Also once you create a dynamic VHD and install an operating system, there are options to dual boot it. As they are dynamic, no much space is needed to be allocated for them and also, the whole space can be regained back once you delete the VHD container file.

Feeling like creating one for yourselves? Let me take you through the steps of creating a VHD.

Steps to Create Virtual Hard Disk in Window 10

STEP 1 – Open up the Administrative tools app in yours Windows 10 by typing its name in the search bar.

STEP 2 – Once it gets opened up in the Control Panel,towards the right pane you will find an option titled Computer Management shortcut. Double click on it.

STEP 3 – Expand the option named Storage found in the left pane of the window that gets launched.You will find an option named Disk Management. Right click on it and choose the option Create VHD.

STEP 4 – Once you do that, you will find that a window named Create and Attach VHD pops up. You will find a text box below the option Location.

Click the Browse button and choose the location where you want to store the VHD file.

Catalina Virtualbox Vmdk

Now, Choose a folder where you want to store the VHD file.

Also you can choose the size of the VHD by changing the number next to Virtual Hard disk size. The size by default,will be set in GB. You can change it to MB(megabytes) or TB(terabytes), if required.

Note: – You must have 1 GB space free on the drive in which you have stored the VHD folder if you choose 1 GB as the size of the Virtual hard disk.

Also, you have two options for creating virtual hard disk: –

• Fixed Size (It allocates a fixed size of virtual hard drive which you chose)
• Dynamically expanding (It does not allocate instantly the size chosen, but keep growing in size till the allocated size, as it grows in size.)

In my case, I have chosen the path ” S:syslabvhd.vhd” to store the corresponding VHD file and I have set its size to 1 GB.

STEP 5 – Choose on the option Dynamically expanding or Fixed size as the virtual hard disk type and click on the OK button.

STEP 6 – Once you do the above steps, you will find the Virtual hard disk created, towards the right of the window. Right click on it and choose the option Initialize.This helps you to create new volumes on the disk.

Note: – Its recommended that you choose MBR (Master boot record).

Mac Os Catalina Vmdk Download

STEP 7 – Click OK on the alert message that pops up. Go back to the disk created, right click and choose the option New Simple Volume.

The Simple Volume wizard opens up and you will have to click on the Next button to modify the Settings.

STEP 8 – Select the size of the volume you want to have and click again on the Next button.I have chosen the option that was set by default.

STEP 9 – In the next window that appears, choose the drive letter with which you can name the volume. Once you are done with that, choose the Nextbutton.

I have opted to name the drive as P.

STEP 10 – In all the rest of the windows,keep clicking on the Next button in order to go with their default options .

Choose to format the new partition.

Finally, Click on the Finish button in the last window of the Simple Volume wizard.

STEP 11 – You will find the new VHD creates in the Disk Management utility and the same will be apparent in the File Explorer too. Now, you are completely done with all the process of its creation.

STEP 12 – Whenever you want to unmount the drive and retrieve back the space in the system’s memory, just right click on the VHD just created in the file Explorer.Click on the option Eject.The VHD will now be deleted.

Hope you found this article useful. Do try it out.!