qemu-img convert -O qcow2 -c large.qcow2 small.qcow2
: You can take snapshots of the system state easily, allowing you to revert to a fresh Windows 7 install if something breaks. windows 7 qcow2 file
Thus, a is simply a virtual hard drive formatted with NTFS (the Windows file system) but wrapped inside the QCOW2 container for use on Linux/KVM hosts. qemu-img convert -O qcow2 -c large
Unlike a raw disk image, which is a byte-for-byte copy of a hard drive (meaning a 100GB drive takes up 100GB of space immediately), QCOW2 is a . It grows dynamically as data is written to it. It grows dynamically as data is written to it
When running the VM manually via QEMU command line, use:
There are repositories and cloud marketplaces (often used for testing CI/CD pipelines) that offer pre-installed Windows 7 QCOW2 images.