In this guide, you will learn how to mount a DMG file on VirtualBox with Windows 10,11 or any Windows operating system. Since the DMG file format was created mainly for Mac OS X, Windows OS can’t read it.
Unfortunately, the VirtualBox running on the Windows host computer will not read the DMG file if you attach it to the DVD drive. We need to convert the DMG file to ISO, and then attach it to VirtualBox.
What is DMG File?
A file with the DMG extension is an Apple disk image created to distribute software for Mac OS X. It may have compressed and encrypted data for macOS. This type of compressed data disk helps to carry the software installation files in DMG file format. Usually, you will see the either Mac Operating System or its applications in the DMG file.
Opening the DMG file in Mac OS X is straightforward like executing the .exe file in Windows OS. But it is not easy to open or use the DMG file on a Windows computer. We need to convert it first
The favorite software to do the task (convert DMG to ISO) is dmg2iso. We tried MagicISO and some other software, but dmg2iso worked well for us.
Mount DMG File on VirtualBox or VMware with Windows OS Host
1) Download dmg2iso (dmg2img) here for Windows.
2) Installation is not required, extract the zip file and add the dmg2img.exe path in the Windows path variable.
3) We mentioned in this guide how to use dmg2img and other tools to convert the DMG to ISO in the Windows OS platform.
By the way, converting the DMG to ISO will help you to mount the installation disk on the VMware workstation as well.
Syntax is dmg2img < Source file.dmg> <destination file.iso>
A successful conversion will start and run like shown below.
4) If the DMG file is clean, it will produce an ISO file. Mounting this ISO file that converted from DMG is easy in VirtualBox.
5) Go to the storage settings of the particular virtual machine and add the ISO file under CD/DVD images.
If the ISO file is bootable, you should be able to boot the virtual machine in VirtualBox now. If the ISO file has some other content, you can browse them inside the virtual machine.
Hope this guide is useful in mounting the DMG disk file on Virtualbox with the Windows Operating System host.
3 Comments
Followed u r step & convert MAC.dmg to MAC.iso but when try to mount it in VMWare it gives error no os found.
You cannot use it in VMWare, VMWare does not work well with HFS+ file system. If you want to use it in VMWare, mount it using DaemonTools and use DaemonTools virtual drive in VMWare.
i converted the dmg to iso with your technics but virtualbox gives an error when i started to machine(same error when i try with original(unconverted) .dmg files)
do you have any suggestions?
tahnk you