Create Win11 VM from physical disk

2025-05-04

My laptop is dual boot Win11 and linux. Here's how I turned the windows volume into a virtual machine running under linux.

Identify the physical disk for Windows using lsblk. We deduce this is nvme1n1, since it has no mount points:

❯ lsblk
NAME                            MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
zram0                           252:0    0     8G  0 disk  [SWAP]
nvme1n1                         259:0    0 476.9G  0 disk  
├─nvme1n1p1                     259:1    0   100M  0 part  
├─nvme1n1p2                     259:2    0    16M  0 part  
├─nvme1n1p3                     259:3    0 475.3G  0 part  
└─nvme1n1p4                     259:4    0   1.5G  0 part  
nvme0n1                         259:5    0 931.5G  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1                     259:6    0   600M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2                     259:7    0     1G  0 part  /boot
└─nvme0n1p3                     259:8    0 929.9G  0 part  
  └─luks-1439bba5-9df2-43be-8aad-6664b239fa32
                                253:0    0 929.9G  0 crypt /usr/bin/swtpm
                                                           /var/home
                                                           /var
                                                           /sysroot/ostree/deploy/default/var
                                                           /usr
                                                           /etc
                                                           /
                                                           /sysroot

Open virt-manager

Create a new virtual machine
In the first step, choose "Import existing disk image"
On the next screen, click "Browse" → "Browse Local"
Click on the + button in the lower left
Select "Select or create custom storage"
Choose "Device" as the storage type
Select /dev/nvme1n1 as the device to use
Continue with VM creation as normal

This creates a special image file that acts as a pointer to your physical Windows disk (nvme1n1). it will ask to “install”, but that's ok. It'll just use the disk as is.

Get BitLocker recovery key to access your Windows drive:

Go to https://account.microsoft.com/devices/recoverykey (from a different device), or
Check for local saved file or printout in places such things are stashed

→ Will need to repeat on every boot, so essential to find a way to paste into the VM. (maybe pause vm instead of reboot?)

Host:

Bluefin (Version: 41.20250421.1 / FROM Fedora Silverblue 41). Framework Laptop 16 AMD Ryzen 7040 Series

Sources#

Claude.ai - Sonnet 3.7