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I'd like to install a fresh copy of Windows 7. My plan would be to install the system in a VMWare Workstation virtual machine, take a few days to configure it nicely and install everything, and finally to move it to physical hardware. My intention is to save time.

Can I safely move the contents of the VHD to physical hardware?

I'd keep the image on the same physical box, so there would be no change in CPU architecture and such. Just all the virtual hardware devices would suddenly change to different physical hardware.

For copying I'd use some disk imaging tool like Acronis TrueImage.

I'm running on a SSD drive. Could that be a problem?

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Yes, it's possible but not recommended.

VMWare Workstation installs a lot of custom drivers, and when you copy all data to the host system, a lot of the hardware will be different. This usually doesn't cause big problems, but only performance problems related to the extra drivers to load.

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  • But would these drivers keep loading? Wouldn't they just be installed, but Windows detect no hardware that requires them and just not load them?
    – Hikari
    Commented Mar 10, 2019 at 7:07

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