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
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:
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
- If you want to run Windows without partitioning your hard drive, you can use Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion to create a virtual environment, read our round up of the best virtual machine.
- It will work with just about any storage device that you can mount to your Mac, including disk images, hard drives, SSDs, and USB flash drives. While it's still possible to create an exact copy (a clone) of any drive connected directly to your Mac, changes to Disk Utility have created extra steps when you use Disk Utility’s Restore function.
- Drive speed is measured in revolutions per minute (rpm), based on how fast the drive can spin. Most portable hard drives run at 5400 rpm. This reduced power draw helps preserve the battery life of the Mac you plug the drive into. Desktop external hard drives usually run at 7200 rpm to offer all the speed they can.
For example theres a virtual drive called daemon tools for windows, but is there a program like that for mac!?? Update: DETAILS: Ok so im trying to mount an iso image so it will act as a removable disk for mac.
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.External Hard Drives For Mac
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 diskOS 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 SystemmacOS 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:- Mac computer for hosting your preferred guest OS preferably with a working Recovery Partition
- 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
- Purchase/install/update your preferred virtualisation software (see list above)
- 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
- 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)
- 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)
- 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.
- 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
- 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'
- 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:
Virtual Machine Hard Drive Image How To Open
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
- Make sure the basic/clean Mac virtual machine you created in the preparation section above is shutdown
- 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.
- Start up/boot the virtual machine
- 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)
- Select the unformatted additional virtual machine drive on the left (VMware Virtual SATA) - this is the one without 'Macintosh HD' underneath it
- 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')
- Click 'Erase'
- If OS X / macOS asks you whether you want to use the additional virtual machine drive for Time Machine Backups click 'Don't Use'
- Quit Disk Utility
- 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
- 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
- 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:
- In the virtual machine go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Startup Disk > set it to 'Second HD'
- Quit System Preferences
- Shutdown the virtual machine (Apple menu > Shut Down) - not Restart
- 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'
- 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)
- Go to Virtual Machine menu > Settings > General
- 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'
- Change the virtual machine's 'OS' to match that was on your physical Mac/hard disk/clone/disk image file
- Go through and configure your required virtual machine custom settings:
- Start up/boot the virtual machine
- 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'
- Go to Virtual Machine menu > Install VMWare Tools
- 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])
- 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
- 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.
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: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.
If this information helped you or saved you time and/or money why not donate a little to us via PayPal?
All proceeds go directly to MacStrategy / Burning Helix Limited to help fund this web site.
All proceeds go directly to MacStrategy / Burning Helix Limited to help fund this web site.
If this information helped you or saved you time and/or money why not donate a little to us via PayPal?
All proceeds go directly to MacStrategy / Burning Helix Limited to help fund this web site.
Go to this
web page
to donate to us.
All proceeds go directly to MacStrategy / Burning Helix Limited to help fund this web site.
Go to this
web page
to donate to us.
With VirtualBox, it's possible to emulate many types of hard drives and make them appear as conventional hard drives or SSDs if you wish.
1. SATA controller
To begin, VirtualBox obviously supports SATA connectivity that allows the use of hard drives and CD/DVD drives that can be used under Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 for example.
As you can see, by default, the type of SATA controller used is AHCI because it offers better performance than the IDE.
Note that, as explained in the VirtualBox manual, the 'Use host I/O cache' option can significantly increase the performance of your virtual machine (due to delayed or asynchronous write), but that it's disabled by default for security reasons.
In particular, to avoid data loss.
In particular, to avoid data loss.
As you can see next to 'Controller: SATA', it's possible to add CD/DVD drives and virtual SATA hard disks.
To add a virtual SATA hard disk, click the icon on the right and click : Create a new disk.
Choose the type of hard drive you want.
Note : to use other virtual hard disk formats, click on 'Expert Mode' at the bottom.
For each virtual SATA hard disk, you will be able to :
- choose which SATA port you want to plug into
- if you want it to be recognized as a Solid State Drive (SSD) or not
- if you want it to be hotplug (to be able to disconnect it from Windows or not)
Note that the number of available SATA ports increases depending on the number of SATA devices that you add to your virtual machine.
To add a SATA CD/DVD drive, click the left-side icon (representing a small disc), and then click : Choose a disk.
For example, the iso file of Windows 7.
For SATA CD/DVD drives, you can enable the options :
- Live CD/DVD : when this option is checked, the guest operating system will not be able to eject the CD/DVD inserted in this drive.
- Hot-pluggable : allows you to 'plug' or 'unplug' the CD/DVD drive when Windows is running in the virtual machine
2. IDE controller
If you want to install Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you will need an IDE controller because SATA is not supported by default by this OS.
In short, to add an IDE controller, click on the + icon at the bottom and click on : Add IDE Controller.
In short, to add an IDE controller, click on the + icon at the bottom and click on : Add IDE Controller.
Now we have a SATA controller and an IDE controller.
To add an IDE hard drive, the principle is the same.
Where are my screenshots going mac. Click the small hard disk icon (to the right of : IDE Controller), and then click : Create a new disk.
Where are my screenshots going mac. Click the small hard disk icon (to the right of : IDE Controller), and then click : Create a new disk.
If you have already mounted an old computer, you probably know that the hard drives had to be connected respecting a system of master and slave.
Just for info, it was done through jumpers.
These are small white plastic blocks that had to be plugged in according to :
These are small white plastic blocks that had to be plugged in according to :
- the position to use (master / slave)
- the configuration indicated on the hard disk (at the top of the image)
As you may have understood, you can connect up to 4 IDE hard drives.
For their position, you can connect them (in order) by :
For their position, you can connect them (in order) by :
- Primary master IDE
- Primary slave IDE
- Secondary master IDE
- Secondary slave IDE
As with the SATA controller, you can also add a CD/DVD drive.
But this time, it will be IDE.
But this time, it will be IDE.
For the CD/DVD drive, you must also respect the master / slave system.
3. SCSI controller
For those who do not know the SCSI, it's a connector type used mainly in professional servers.
In fact, SCSI hard drives cost more, but they are also more reliable and perform better than conventional hard drives that you use in your home computer.
In fact, SCSI hard drives cost more, but they are also more reliable and perform better than conventional hard drives that you use in your home computer.
Currently, VirtualBox supports 2 types of SCSI controllers : Lsilogic and BusLogic.
For SCSI hard drives, they will be recognized by the operating system by different SCSI port numbers.
Same for SCSI CD/DVD drives.