Convert .GHO to .VDI for use in Virtualbox in Win7

My notes on the steps I took to convert a Ghost image into a file I could run in Virtualbox
virtualization

We created a Win7 ghost image in July last year which I was using to roll out to machines directly. Recently I wanted to have a Virtual copy of this image so I could snapshot it before installing some new software to test and quickly get back to my prior state from my workstation. While we use VMware ESXi for the servers I don't have a copy of VMware workstation and I've been using Virtualbox for years and am more familiar with that.

I have a bunch of old Ghost images and I know someday someone is going to ask me to restore one for some reason or another so I wrote down what I did just in case.

  • in diskmgmt.msc create a new VHD set to a suitable size saved at D:\tempdisk.vhd
  • Initiate it (right click in Disk Management)
  • Run the DOS version of ghost32.exe and create new disk from image
  • Select the source of the GHO file and the destination of the VHD
  • Convert the .vhd file to .vdi:

"C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" clonehd "D:\tempdisk.vhd" D:\Sysprep-Win7-7-11-2017-final.vdi --format vdi

from esense.be and stackoverflow.com

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