I converted my current win os into a vhd and booted off of ventoy on the same drive the os was installed on. (shrunk vhd)
Hello strangers, I've successfully converted my pre-existing windows 10 operating system into a bootable vhd. Please read all steps beforehand if bored enough to replicate; I used 3 storage devices; a ventoy usb, a external hard drive (4tbs), and my original ssd installed for my os. I first freed up space on my windows system then used diskgenius to shrink the partition size so it could fit on the same drive it was installed on. I used disk2vhd.exe on the os itself to save a copy to my hdd. Also using disk genius, I made a new vhd on external hard drive with enough space to fit the os but still smaller with it soon to be stored on the original hard drive again, don't do anything with the empty vhd yet. Using ventoy, I booted HBCD_PE_x64.iso and launched lazesoft software, attached two vhd files from that program, then I used the clone disk option from the large vhd to the smaller empty vhd and the old vhd can be deleted (unless otherwise, aka you give up ez backup). Using lazesoft software as the clone disk option is free but don't use other features of the program because it doesn't always work like creating new vhds or backups 💀. Ensure you're cloning the partitions excluding the empty one (created from shrinking win system). Don't copy each partition manually as it could mess up boot files in win system. Once done, using a linuxlivecd iso ( I used linux mint since it was faster at copying. ) connect to the internet or using prepared files, use the linux version of the ventoy installer, show all drives⚠️, enable secure boot, used gpt, and in storage options preserved storage space to the size of the vhd (please note this option goes by hundreds and can't do specific numbers so it basically goes by 200 gbs, 300 gbs, 400 gbs, and so on) then purge the original drive storing windows by installing ventoy on it. Once installed use disk software provided by linux to format the empty partition provided by ventoy into NTFS as the vhd must be booted from a NTFS format. Heard that you could also format the ventoy partition but storing the windows vhd into its own partition might be safer so you don't store files with it as I didn't allocate all space on my vhd so that can be a problem potentially if things get full on the real partition itself as when windows is mounted it would probably blow up like a bomb in storage when mounted. I wouldn't want to find out the hard way. When formatted, store the ventoy_vhdboot.img plugin in a new "ventoy" folder under the ventoy partition as instructed by the plugin download page (https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin\_vhdboot.html) then copy your vhd to the NTFS partition. At this point, create vlinks to the vhd so its easier to boot or use the file explorer in ventoy to boot the vhd. If your windows boot files aren't screwed up, your windows system will boot like if it was installed normally else the windows logo will show for a second then the computer boots off if you failed miserably. Windows recovery will not show for you. Also if you attempt to boot the vhd from a virtual machine, it'll boot on the virtual machine after you fixed permission issues with the os you're using the program on but it'll make it impossible to boot on the real machine again and you'll have to restore a backup of the vhd. Not sure if you can fix this with from the Disk2vhd.exe or more. I haven't selected the option to prep for virtual machine in the program to make the vhd. Either way when running the vhd on real hardware; it works nicely, you can run games and everything else fine and it doesn't detect it as virtual machine if you're concerned with anti-cheat (tested R6Siege) but I was also trying to boot from a virtual machine to see if it left permanent marks on the system that'll prevent games from booting on virtual machines despite running on real hardware again idk just a theory as you already read my vhd broke when I tried to run it on ventoy after it already booted on a virtual machine once. Good that I had the backup but I don't think I should try it again as I already did alot of copying on my ssd and that's not good for the drive. Secure boot and TPM work, I don't think there should be any issue trying this yourself, just don't detach the vhd while windows is running if you can even do that, I'm not brave enough click that button in disk manager. Anyone let me know if they figured out how to make a good combo with linux vhd and win vhd and can use vms on either system without it breaking the vhd and isn't unable to boot on real hardware. Also test anti-cheat games, I ran siege on a virtual machine before and it only kicks you from the game rather than destroy your entire account still proceed with caution as they can change things or be evil if they hear this even though its not malicious its like duel booting. In windows disks management the system virt drive has blue icon so it knows its a virt drive. They could easily be evil and there wouldn't be enough users to complain about it if they blocked vhd windows operating systems. So yeah that's pretty much it.