Can you convert a current os install to a virtual one?

So there is a rumor/I cant verify that nvidia is offering up SR-IOV on the 3000 gpus. I want to believe, but am waiting for verification but I figure I can ask some basic questions now ahead of time.

I like windows, the working environment, not necessarily anything else, and never saw linux as a viable replacement.
I don’t like windows 10 for a plethora of reasons, so I refuse to go to it till its mandatory to do anything.

However I see virtualization as a viable working alternative because it does not require me to full stop everything i’m doing and boot a different os, I can suspend what i’m doing, open a different os, do my thing, close it and unsuspend effectively giving me the best of both worlds, then on top of linux use for anything that it does native or better.

so my question is, can I take my current win7 install and use it as a vm, or would I need to effectively re install win 7 to do that?

Yes, it’s called physical to virtual P2V.

If your hardware supports it you can pass the os drive through to a vm. You just need to tune some things in the xml file for it to run properly. Search the forums for vfio.

If the OS is on a separate drive this is my preferred method. It’s gives better performance, and the option to boot “bare metal” as well.

The other option is to copy the disk to a raw file using dd. You can then use the .raw image directly or convert it to qcow2.

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Sounds good, so I would be able to install linux somewhere and potentially run win 7 as though it was any other day. fingers crossed nvidia makes this painless.

Yes, probably, maybe …

I’ve done this many times with the W10.
Mainly taking the operating system from the client’s laptop and putting the OS in virtualbox. It sometimes requires adding a driver or changing settings to have the full potential, but these are details. The W7 should be intelligent enough in detecting equipment that it can handle it, the W10 can handle it without any problems, so maybe it’s time to update?

I dual boot my 2nd nvme either as a vm (99.999% of the time) or as bare metal (hardly ever - normally only to update chipset drivers)

The instructions you need are here to dual boot a vm disk

See also my posts on reddit & particularly my nvidia vfio notes.