<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" version="5.0" xml:id="ch_converting"> <title>Converting between image formats</title> <para>Converting images from one format to another is generally straightforward.</para> <simplesect> <title>qemu-img convert: raw, qcow2, VDI, VMDK</title> <para>The <command>qemu-img convert</command> command can do conversion between multiple formats, including raw, qcow2, VDI (VirtualBox), VMDK (VMware) and VHD (Hyper-V).</para> <table rules="all"> <caption>qemu-img format strings</caption> <thead> <tr> <th>Image format</th> <th>Argument to qemu-img</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>raw</td> <td><literal>raw</literal></td> </tr> <tr> <td>qcow2</td> <td><literal>qcow2</literal></td> </tr> <tr> <td>VDI (VirtualBox)</td> <td><literal>vdi</literal></td> </tr> <tr> <td>VMDK (VMware)</td> <td><literal>vmdk</literal></td> </tr> <tr> <td>VHD (Hyper-V)</td> <td><literal>vpc</literal></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <para>This example will convert a raw image file named centos63.dsk to a qcow2 image file.</para> <para> <screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 centos64.dsk centos64.qcow2</userinput></screen> </para> <para>To convert from vmdk to raw, you would do: <screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O raw centos64.vmdk centos64.img</userinput></screen></para> <para> <note> <para>The <literal>-f <replaceable>format</replaceable></literal> flag is optional. If omitted, qemu-img will try to infer the image format.</para> </note> </para> </simplesect> <simplesect> <title>VBoxManage: VDI (VirtualBox) to raw</title> <para>If you've created a VDI image using VirtualBox, you can convert it to raw format using the <command>VBoxManage</command> command-line tool that ships with VirtualBox. On Mac OS X, VirtualBox stores images by default in the <filename>~/VirtualBox VMs/</filename> directory. The following example creates a raw image in the current directory from a VirtualBox VDI image.<screen><prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>VBoxManage clonehd ~/VirtualBox\ VMs/fedora18.vdi fedora18.img --format raw</userinput></screen></para> </simplesect> </chapter>