Why convert VHD to RAW?
A VHD wraps disk sectors in a container with metadata and a 512-byte 'conectix' footer. A raw image strips this wrapper, leaving only flat sector data. Raw images are the lowest common denominator for disk tooling - QEMU boots them directly, dd writes them to physical drives, and forensic suites such as Autopsy and The Sleuth Kit accept them.
How to convert VHD to RAW
qemu-img FREE
Run qemu-img convert -O raw in.vhd out.img; add -p for a progress indicator. Install via sudo apt install qemu-utils on Linux, brew install qemu on macOS, or download QEMU from qemu.org for Windows.
About these formats
.VHD
Virtual Hard Disk
A VHD file is a complete hard disk stored as a single file - partition table, filesystem, and often a full operating system. On Windows you can mount it in Disk Management to read files, or…
Open .VHD details →
.RAW
Raw Camera Image
A .raw file is most often an unprocessed photo straight from a digital camera sensor - a "digital negative" used by Panasonic, Leica, Contax, Casio, and others. Open and develop it free…
Open .RAW details →Quality & what to watch
- Output size equals the virtual disk size, not the VHD file size - a dynamic VHD may be much smaller on disk than the raw output it produces; ensure sufficient free space before converting.
- Nothing is lost in the conversion - the partition table, filesystem, bootloader, and all files are preserved; only the VHD wrapper is discarded.
- Verify the output with
qemu-img info out.img- it should reportformat: raw.
Frequently asked questions
What extension should the raw output file use?
.img, .raw, or none - because the format is determined by the -O raw flag, not the filename.Can I write the raw image to a physical drive?
dd on Linux or macOS to write the .img directly to a physical drive.
