Easy way to copy your Big Sur image from Parallels or VMware!

I used this article to install Big Sure in both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion! There were two techniques given for Parallels. I tried them both. The second technique was easier and less hassle.

After fiddling with the tricks I could find to copy the Virtual images to USB drives, I fell upon this little secret! QMEU! Yes! It's so easy!

Install QMEU:

brew install qemu 

Yep! That's it! Now you've got the great little utility qemu-img!

For VMware Fusion find your Virtual Disk.vmdk file (My thumb drive was disk4):

diskutil umountDisk disk4 qemu-img convert ~/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Path/To/Virtual\ Disk.vmdk -O raw /dev/disk4 

And for Parallels Desktop find your hds file hidden within your hdd package:

diskutil umountDisk disk4 sudo qemu-img convert ~/Parallels/macOS 11.0.pvm/macos.hdd/macos.hdd.0.\{5fbaabe3-6958-40ff-92a7-860e329aab41\}.hds -O raw /dev/disk4 

This technique does leave unused space after the image on your drive. I wasn't comfortable using Mojave's Disk Utility to expand the APFS Container, since it doesn't recognize the new filesystem used for Big Sur's boot partition. Also, Big Sur's Recovery isn't bootable at all! I ended up installing Big Sur on two drives and used each to expand the other with Disk Utility.

Now… Let's see if I can install Big Sur into a QEMU machine! I doubt it!

submitted by /u/ADSaxton
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