qemu-img is a command line disk converter that allows you to convert virtual machine hard drive images between a variety of formats including IMG, VMDK, VHD, VHDX, COW2, VDI, and more.

qemu-img is part of the qemu-utils package and can be installed on Debian and Ubuntu linux machines using the following command.

sudo apt-get install qemu-utils

Once installed, run man qemu-img to get instructions or click here.

The qemu-utils package also includes the following tools

  • qemu-img - QEMU disk image utility.
  • qemu-ndb - Exports QEMU disk images using NBD protocol.
  • qemu-io - A command line utility to exercise the QEMU I/O path.
  • qemu-make-debian-root - Creates a debian root image for qemu.

There is also a windows version of qemu-img that I have successfully used.

QEMU is short for Quick Emulator