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Converting a VHD to a VHDX

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In Windows Server 2012 / Windows 8 we have introduced a new virtual hard disk format called “VHDX”.  There are a number of advantages to this format:

  • Support for greater than 2TB disks
  • Better performance for dynamic and differencing disks
  • Better handling of different disk sector sizes
  • And more…

But what if you have a collection of VHD files?  Luckily, converting to a VHDX format is simple (though potentially time consuming).  To do this – all you need to do is:

  • Open the Hyper-V Manager
  • Select Edit Disk… from the action pane (or from the Action menu)
  • Click Next to get past the introduction page of the Edit Virtual Disk Wizard
  • Enter the name and location of your existing VHD file on the Location page and click Next
  • On the Choose Action page select Convert and then click Next
  • On the Choose Disk Format page select VHDX and click Next
    image
  • Complete the rest of the wizard and select the options you want

This will then create a new VHDX file that is a copy of your existing virtual hard disk.  You can actually use the same process to convert a VHDX file back to a VHD file (if you needed to move it to an earlier version of Windows).

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 02, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2012
    is there any way to script this in PowerShell, in order to convert a collection? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2012
    Sorry I didn't see the other post about powershell. I'm following you through RSS reader and didn't receive this post until now, and I just realize that there's also another newer post on the topic I was asking!

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2012
    Backup - Windows 2008 native backup (either file or block level) had a 2TB limit. Do we still have to limit these Volumes to 2TB if we use native Windows server backup? VHDX is going to have some very large volumes created.

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2012
    Johnbade-outback - VHDTool is an unsupported tool that one of the Hyper-V developers made in their spare time.  I do not know if there are any plans to update it. Cheers, Ben

  • Anonymous
    October 05, 2012
    Here is a link to my article I wrote up over last weekend on the conversion. I also included how to do it in VMM 2012 SP1 (beta). Thanks for powershell info! I will piggyback onto your blog for Powershell :) blogs.catapultsystems.com/.../converting-vhd-drives-to-vhdx.aspx

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2012
    What does the convert do when the source VHD have an error? Leave it the source in original state or crash the source VHD file?

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2012
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 28, 2012
    Can a .VHD file be used directly in Windows 8 Hyper-V? (without having to convert?) I'm thinking about getting a new laptop, and they mostly come with Windows 8 now. I'd love the ability to keep a .vhd file on a removable drive and use it both at work (Windows 7 host) and at home (Windows 8 host) without needing to convert.  Is this possible?

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2013
    To answer JCDrumKing, yes. VHD can be read natively by Win8 -ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker

  • Anonymous
    June 03, 2013
    when converting back down to VHD for azure migration if I didn't specify .vhd in the file extension no conversion actually occurred, it just copied the disk. Have you seen this before?

  • Anonymous
    May 11, 2015
    Have a look at this converter: it will convert VHD to VHDX in a fraction of a second, regardless of the size! www.systola.com/.../VhdTool-Is-Dead-Long-Live-VhdxTool

  • Anonymous
    January 17, 2016
    can you upload a vhd to azure that was converted with hyper-v manager

  • Anonymous
    January 26, 2016
    Azure currently only accepts .VHD files (not .VHDX)