Convert Virtual Disk Image VMWare VMDK to VirtualBox VDI

Oracle’s VirtualBox can use a few different virtual disk types, however their own disk type is VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image). It’s not one of the most widely used formats so if you’ve downloaded a VM, it’s unlikely its disk in is VDI format.

Luckily with the tools from VirtualBox you’re able to move virtual disks between VMDK and VDI formats.

The VBoxManage command is the Swis Army Knife of tools to manage all things VirtualBox. The VBoxManage command will need to be in your path to be able to use it. The easiest way is to navigate to your VirtualBox installation. On Windows open a new Command Prompt and navigate to your VirtualBox installation directory

cd c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\

Now run the VBoxManage command with the clonehd switch to create a copy of your VMDK in the VDI format.

Before you start, make sure you remove any snapshots on the source disk, and ensure it’s not attached to a running virtual machine.

Run the below command and substitute your input and output virtual disk image paths:

VBoxManage clonehd --format VDI server1-disk1.vmdk c:\vms\server2\server2-disk1.vdi

In the above example, change server1-disk1.vmdk to your input VMDK disk and c:\vms\server2\server2-disk1.vdi to the path you’d like to store the ouput VDI.