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 Success' href='/2020/12/install-macos-mojave-on-supported-pc.html'>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!