Mount VMDK, QCOW2, VDI & Parallels disks on Mac
Sometimes you don't need the whole VM — you just need one file inside the disk image. vmount opens VMware, QEMU, VirtualBox, and Parallels disk images directly in Finder with full read/write, no VM boot required.
Supported formats
| Format | Extension | Read | Write | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VMware | .vmdk | Yes | Yes | Sparse, flat, monolithic, snapshot chains |
| QEMU | .qcow2 | Yes | Yes | v2 and v3, with backing files |
| VirtualBox | .vdi | Yes | Yes | Dynamic and fixed |
| Parallels | .hdd | Yes | Yes | Auto-recovers dirty header from force-close |
| Raw | .img / .raw | Yes | Yes | Including dd-style disk dumps |
The 30-second version
- Install vmount from vmount.app/download.
- Click Virtual Disk → Open file and browse to your .vmdk / .qcow2 / .vdi / .hdd file.
- Pick the partition you want (vmount auto-detects all partitions inside the image and shows their filesystem types).
- Click Mount → Open in Finder. The partition appears under
/Volumes/like any external drive.
How it works
VM disk images aren't filesystems — they're containers
that hold filesystems. To open a .vmdk you need two things:
something to translate the format (QEMU's qemu-nbd
does this for VMware/QCOW2/VDI/Parallels), and something to
mount the resulting block device.
vmount runs both inside its sandboxed Linux microVM. The
virtual disk file stays on your Mac's filesystem (read by
the VM via virtiofs), qemu-nbd exposes it as
/dev/nbd0 inside the VM, partitions are
auto-detected with lsblk, the partition is
mounted with the right driver (ext4, NTFS, exFAT, btrfs,
XFS — same toolkit as USB drives), and Finder sees it via
NFS.
Common scenarios
Pulling a single file out of a Linux VM
You shut down a Linux dev VM and realized you forgot to
commit a file. Boot vmount, open the .vmdk, browse to
/home/user/project, copy the file out. No
need to boot the VM (which might take a minute or two
and uses gigabytes of RAM).
Recovering data from a Windows VM that won't boot
VMware can't boot the VM (driver crash, broken Windows
update), but the disk is fine. Open the .vmdk in vmount,
navigate to Users/<name>/Documents,
copy what you need. NTFS read/write is full
(how it
works).
Inspecting a CTF / forensic disk image
Capture-the-flag challenges and forensic exercises often
ship a disk image. vmount handles raw .img and .qcow2
transparently — mount, look around, no analysis tools
required. The in-app terminal also has the standard
Linux toolchain (file, strings,
foremost) for the harder bits.
Working with Parallels Desktop disks while Parallels is closed
Parallels uses a custom .hdd format with strict locking. If the VM was force-closed, the disk header gets a "dirty" flag that even Parallels won't open without a full repair. vmount detects the dirty flag, clears it safely, and opens the disk read-only first so you can copy out before any repair.
Performance
Read performance is bounded by your Mac's SSD speed — virtual disk images are typically 1–500 GB files on APFS. Random reads inside the VM hit the host page cache, so warm reads are essentially memory-speed. Sequential writes are bounded by qemu-nbd throughput (~1 GB/s on recent hardware).
For very large reads (cloning a 500 GB image), the bottleneck is the disk image's underlying format — QCOW2 with many backing files is slower than a flat VMDK. vmount doesn't change this; it's a fundamental property of the format.
What vmount can't do (yet)
- Snapshots inside the disk format — vmount mounts the current state. Switching to an older snapshot requires the VM tool that created it.
- Encrypted disks (other than LUKS) — VeraCrypt, BitLocker, FileVault containers inside a .vmdk aren't currently supported.
- Boot the VM — vmount mounts the data; for executing the VM, use VMware Fusion, UTM, Parallels Desktop, or QEMU directly.
Get vmount
$29 one-time. Apple Silicon, macOS 14+. 14-day refund guarantee.