Re: Using qemu-img to directly convert physical disk to KVM image

[Michael Tokarev <mjt@tls.msk.ru>]

09.11.2010 01:48, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
> I'm trying to convert a physical Windows XP machine into a KVM guest.
> All the guides so far mentions using dd to create a flat image file,
> then using qemu-img to convert that to qcow2. Since I've been making
> mistake here and there, retrying the process several times (initially
> converting each logical partition into an image), the question struck
> me: is there any reason why I cannot do something like this
> qemu-img convert -f /dev/sdc -O qcow2 /images/winxp.qcow instead of
> having to do it in two passes which literally take hours each.

This is exactly the way to do it - converting the physical disk directly
to a qcow (or whatever format) file using qemu-img.  I've no idea why
all the guide writers are so confused.

The only problem with your exact version is that you've extra -f
argument - it expects a parameter, the input image type, which is
raw, so either use -f raw, or remove -f.

/mjt