Using a Parallels Hard Disk image in VirtualBox

Question

The question has been asked before, but there appear to be no current solutions.

I have a current version of Parallels 11, and a current version of VirtualBox 4.3. I have an existing Windows image in Parallels, which I would like to use in VirtualBox. All on my iMac running El Capitan 10.11.4

I have tried to create a new VirtualBox machine with an existing virtual hard drive. This is a .hdd file extracted from a .pvm package. While VirtualBox sees the image, it fails with the message:

Failed to open the hard disk file … the medium … can't be used as the requested device type.

Most solutions I have found involve using Parallels Image Tool, which, as far as I can tell, is no longer part of the package.

Is there a straight forward solution to importing the image into VirtualBox?

Thanks

Answer 1

The procedure is like this: (Parallels Desktop 12)

1) Prepare the Parallels VM by removing the Parallels Tools and anything that is “special" (mounts, shared folders, etc)..

sudo /usr/lib/parallels-tools/install -r

2) Copy the HDD file from inside the PVM OS X package into the open file system (Finder, Right Click, Show Package Content). Generally, the first HDD file contains the bootable system.

3) Use this command line tool while being in the directory where the HDD file is located:

$/Applications/Parallels\ Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/prl_disk_tool convert --hdd my-parallels-disk1.hdd --plain

4) The resulting HDD file replaces the source file and still is a package. So enter again and copy the HDS (not HDD) file into the open file system, best where the (empty) VirtualBox VM is located (You can use the “file” command on the HDS to verify that it is indeed a bootable disk image).

5) Rename the file giving it a HDD extension.

6) Add the file as (start-up) disk to an “empty” VirtualBox VM, (update settings), boot and enjoy.

More info here.

Hope this helps :)