How to Convert VMDK (Virtual Machine Disk) to VDI using VBoxManage?

Updated on September 3, 2017

Sometimes you might want to convert the VMware’s Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) file into VirtualBox’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) format, so that the new image can be transferred to another host system or imported into VirtualBox using the Virtual Media Manager. To do that, we are going to use a tool called convertfromraw, which is a module of VBoxManage. OK! Here we go,

Step 1: If your vmdk image file is connected to a VM, then you have to shutdown the VM first.

Step 2: Once the VM is completely shut down, you can remove the vmdk file from the VM.

Step 3: Once you have the vmdk file, you can convert it to vdi format using the below command.

VBoxManage convertfromraw --format VDI your-server.vmdk new-server.vdi

VMDK to VDI format using clonehd

For some reason, if the above command fails, you can also try the conversion using clonehd. Here’s the command for that:

$ VBoxManage clonehd --format VDI your-server.vmdk  new-server.vdi

That’s it! The newly created VDI disk image will contain a new UUID, which is entirely different and unique UUID from the original vmdk file. Now you can try importing the new VDI file into a VirtualBox using the Virtual Media Manager.

Update: If you are getting an error as “Could not get the storage format of the medium  (VERR_NOT_SUPPORTED)” while importing vmdk in Virtual Box, then convert the vmdk file to VDI format using the above command and import it in VirtualBox.

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