sysinternal disk2vhdx v2.02

Is there freeware software to convert vhds to hard disks?

Disk2vhd cannot export or restore a VHD/VHDX back to a physical disk. It is a one‑way physical‑to‑virtual (P2V) tool that only creates VHD/VHDX files from existing physical volumes using Volume Shadow Copy; it has no functionality to write an existing virtual disk image to another disk.

To use the contents of the VHDX on physical hardware, supported options in the documentation are:

1. Native boot from the VHDX
   • Configure Windows Boot Manager to boot directly from the VHDX file (stored on a physical partition) instead of copying it sector‑by‑sector to another disk. This is the documented “Deploy Windows with a VHDX (Native Boot)” scenario.
   • Steps (high level):
     1. Create or obtain a Windows VHDX.
     2. Place the VHDX on a physical partition.
     3. Use bcdboot/boot configuration tools to add a boot entry that points to the VHDX.
2. Attach the VHD/VHDX for data access
   • Use Disk Management or diskpart → select vdisk → attach vdisk to mount the VHD/VHDX and then copy files at the file level to the target physical disk or partition. This is a data migration, not a block‑level restore.

If a full disk‑image restore (VHDX → physical disk) is required, a different imaging/restore tool must be used; Disk2vhd does not provide that capability.

References:

• Disk2vhd v2.02
• Deploy Windows with a VHDX (Native Boot)
• Manage Virtual Hard Disks (VHDs)
• attach vdisk
• Boot to a virtual hard disk: Add a VHDX or VHD to the boot menu
• Convert-VHD