Why convert VHDX to VDI?
VHDX is Hyper-V's native disk format while .VDI is Oracle VirtualBox's native container; moving a virtual machine from Hyper-V to VirtualBox requires converting the disk so VirtualBox can attach it directly.
How to convert VHDX to VDI
qemu-img OPEN-SOURCE
Run qemu-img convert -O vdi input.vhdx output.vdi, then attach the resulting .vdi in VirtualBox via Machine > Settings > Storage.
VBoxManage FREE
First convert .vhdx to .vhd with Convert-VHD on Windows, then run VBoxManage convertdd intermediate.vhd output.vdi --format VDI. Requires the Hyper-V PowerShell module for the first step.
About these formats
.VHDX
Virtual Hard Disk v2 (Hyper-V)
A VHDX file is a complete virtual hard disk - partition table, filesystem, and often a full OS - stored in one file. It is Microsoft's modern format for Hyper-V VMs, WSL2, and Dev Drive. On…
Open .VHDX details →
.VDI
Virtual Disk Image (Oracle VirtualBox)
A VDI file is the native virtual hard disk format of Oracle VirtualBox. It holds a complete guest operating system, not a document or optical disc image. To use it, attach it to a VM in…
Open .VDI details →Quality & what to watch
- A dynamically expanding VHDX produces a dynamically allocated VDI by default; this is fine for most uses.
- Snapshots are not transferred - only the current disk state is converted.
- Windows guests will likely need VirtualBox Guest Additions installed after the migration and may go through a hardware reactivation.
