P2V Windows 10 | The Simplest Way to Convert Physical to Virtual

The benefits of P2V Windows 10

P2V is short for Physical to Virtual, which means to convert physical machine to virtual machine, and involves the process of operating system (OS), applications and data migration. 

Doing Windows 10 P2V has many significant benefits, I've listed some of them as below:

• Prevent viruses, malware, spyware

Figures show that lots of people have been attacked by virus, malware and spyware. For example, in 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack affected more than 200000 organizations in 150 countries, which made a huge loss. 

To prevent similar situations, many people choose to install anti-virus software. But actually it's also a good precaution to browse Internet with a virtual machine instead of your regular Windows PC. 

• Keep the physical machine safe

Virtual machine is a software running on your Windows PC, acting as a fake computer. After performing Windows 10 P2V, you can use the virtual machine as your physical machine and run your Windows 10 on it. Anything you do to the virtual machine won't affect your host operating system.

• Virtual machine can be reset simply

Another benefit of virtual machine is that you can easily reset it. If there's anything wrong, you can reset the virtual machine to the default state when you first installed it.

• Enhance users’ privacy

In a virtual machine, you can simply erase anything you’ve done, and that would be a good way to protect your privacy information.

With all these advantages, you might understand why there are more and more users choose to P2V Windows 10 as well as Windows 8 and Windows 7. Put away all the abstruse technical knowledges involved, you can complete the job by you own - just with a little help.

The easiest P2V migration tool in Windows 10

To simplify the process of P2V as far as possible, many people would like to pick a migration tool, and there are plenty of options out there - VMWare, Parallels, VirtualBox, etc. If you're struggling with the choice, try this easy-to-use P2V migration tool, AOMEI Backupper Professional.

It's a great data migration software working on Windows 10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista, providing complete data backup and clone features, which can easily restore your computer to earlier state, migrate your Windows PC to virtual machine, clone HDD to a smaller SSD, etc. 

As for P2V Windows 10, there's an Universal Restore feature can make the migrated machine boot properly.

How to P2V windows 10 with AOMEI Backupper

To convert physical to virtual (P2V) in Windows 10, the general procedure is like:

1. Install a virtual machine.
2. Install AOMEI Backupper Professional on your physical machine and launch it.
3. Create a Windows 10 system image on your physical machine with this tool. 
4. Create a bootable disc or USB drive with this tool and boot your virtual machine from it.
5. Restore the earlier created system image to the virtual machine.

After setting up the virtual machine and installing AOMEI Bakupper on the physical machine, you can now follow this guide to migrate Windows 10 from physical machine to virtual machine.

★ Create bootable media on physical machine:

Step 1. Launch the software, go to Tools tab and choose Create Bootable Media.

 

Step 2. Follow the wizard to create a bootable CD/DVD/USB/ISO file.

• For disc type: Windows PE is more recommended for its compatibility and convenience.

• For PE boot mode: when you select Windows PE, you can then choose from legacy bootable disc or UEFI bootable disc, which enables the bootable media to boot from legacy MBR mode or GPT/UEFI mode. You can make the choice according to the information in your motherboard user manual.

★ Create Windows 10 backup image on physical machine:

Step 1. Navigate to Backup tab and choose System Backup.

Step 2. The system partitions will be selected by this software automatically. You just need to specify a destination, and click Start Backup.

• In this case, you can backup system to a removable device like external hard drive, or network for later use.

• To select a network location, you can click on the destination box, and click Share/NAS to Add Network Location.

★ Restore Windows 10 image to virtual machine:

Step 1. Start up the virtual machine using the bootable media, AOMEI Bakupper will pop up automatically, then you can go to Restore tab and click Select Image File. 

Step 2. Locate and select the Windows 10 backup image you created before. 

Step 3. Select Restore this system backup and tick Restore system to other location, then click Next.

Step 4. Select the destination on the virtual machine, and click Next.

Step 5. Confirm the operation and click Start Restore to execute the task. Make sure the Universal Restore option is checked.

Notes:
◆ The option Universal Restore should be checked automatically if you are performing an universal restore.
◆ If you are restoring system backup image to an SSD, you’d better check the option SSD Alignment since it will optimize the performance of SSD.

Conclusion

AOMEI Backupper is a great P2V migration tool that makes Windows 10 P2V so easy. Even if you are a Windows Server user, you can pick the Server edition to convert Windows server P2V.

Beyond that, AOMEI Backupper also provides complete backup & restore solutions to protect your data in daily use. For example, you can set up a schedule to automatically backup Windows 10, thus when any error occurs, you can easily restore the system to a normal state.