PC died but I have the drive - can I use it to install?

[LarryL]

I can't imagine this hasn't come up before but I couldn't find anything about this problem in a search of the archive. My PC died due to a motherboard fault but the primary drive with the OS and my Windows apps is fine. I put the drive in an external enclosure and it's fully readable so I'd like to use it to setup a VM. Can this be done? I don't want to install/run from the external drive (there are lots of threads about that!), just use it to create the VM. Think of it as transporting from a PC without the PC actually running. I haven't found anything in the documentation or my searches explaining how a complete Windows install could be used directly from an external drive without Windows running to create a new VM. Can anyone help me with this? It would be a huge relief to have both my data AND my Windows apps back up and running.

THANKS! in advance for any help you can provide.

Larry

 

[LarryL]

SOLVED! I can't believe the solution was this easy!

I found a thread that referenced another thread in which a poster stated that he merely installed NTFS support, mounted the external drive, and installed from there. I tried it and IT WORKED PERFECTLY! The old PC primary drive with Windows Vista, Office, a pile of other apps, and all my data is now running in a VM on our new iMac.

The only other step I'd like to take is to image the USB drive and move the image onto the iMac hard drive to improve performance. It doesn't run poorly as it is but I imagine it would be better if it wasn't forced to use the USB connection.

Just thought it would be a good idea to post this in case anyone else runs into this problem.