A while ago I wrote a tool to convert flat disk images (which we commonly call dd images) to VMWare .vmdk disk images (the original blog post on the tool, called dd2vmdk is posted here). I have in the mean time ceased development of it, but despite its relatively archaic nature, some still find it of use. Today I relocated hosting of it to Google's new cloud web application service, Google App Engine.

I am in Lafayette, Indiana this week at DFRWS2006. A gent from CERT was present and demonstrating an excellet tool called "Live View" which, from first impressions to be a p2v GUI that automates running dd images in vmware. It appears that the features of it are far beyond what dd2vmdk does in some respects: you appear to point it at an image upon which it: * generates a vmware vmdk

While performing the last set of investigations, I have produced a simple web based application for automating the conversion of dd images into VMWare Virtual Disks. I have called this tool dd2vmdk - it is accessable at http://www.bschatz.org/2006/p2v/index.html Currently the tool carves up the image into a virtual disk composed of a number of files, where partitions are contained individual files. The next version of the tool will support directly modifying the partition table and NTFS boot record in-situ within the image file.

I left my last post unsure whether of not a PC can boot into a partition that is not aligned with the beginning of a cylinder boundary. I devised a quick test, employing the same image that I have been using for the last two posts. In this case, I left the partition table unmodified, but went into the NTFS boot record and adjusted its conception of the hard drive to reflect the Virtual Drive's geometry.

I have been trying to convert a physical Windows 2000 server running on SCSI RAID to run inside a virtual machine. Given my interest in digital evidence, I was interested in achieving the conversion (which is popuarly referred to as Physical To Virtual or P2V conversion) from first principles. A while ago I came across the Windows Dynamic Disk partitioning scheme (also called Dynamic Disk or LDM). It's support under linux is slowly gaining momentum, but still remains a bugbear for manipulating disks.