cloned windows 7 dell optiplex 7010 on External SSD. Wanting it to open on my Dell inspirion 3020s

Phew ... thank the powers that be for that ... lol

Have you had any luck creating the file?

that's what im currently stuck on. don't know why it keeps doing that. I haven't changed the way Im selecting it. I should go to my iphone so I can upload pics of what it looks like

Use the snipping tool in Windows 11 to grab a screenshot. Hold down Shift + Windows key + S then click on the centre icon in the small toolbar that appears. Then click on the window titlebar to capture the window you are looking at.

Then click in the reply window here and press CTRL + V to paste the image here.

apparently this site doesn't resize pics

It will handle the pics well enough, but you can upload them to Google Drive, OneDrive, etc.... if you wish to and then provide a link to them.

Thanks. Click on HD2:SanDiskExtreme.... to select the entire drive.

Then go to Disk > Create New Virtual Disk File(N) > Create VirtualBox Virtual File(O) and create the file.

For the Capacity, set it to 1000GB and again, do NOT check Allocate all disk space.

Fingers crossed we will get there ... lol

did that. just waiting to see what comes up

I getting this blue line that progresses and regresses so Im assuming it's doing it's thing

Let's hope it is doing it's thing. If I am reading things correctly, the file is going to be ~195GB, so it will take a while to complete.

You might want to consider buying another internal hard drive for your PC, because you are not going to have a lot of space left on your current drive. Set it up as D: drive and then store all of your data on that drive.

Leave only the Windows files on C: drive. Then you can re-install Windows at any time without losing any of your data

Ill upgrade to 64 gb of ram and a 2tb internal ssd

It seems your PC comes with an M.2 SSD mounted on the motherboard and a drive cage for a 2.5" SSD and/or 3.5" HDD. The only question is, does it have a SATA cable and Power cable floating around in there. Being Dell, the answer is probably not ... lol

It is difficult to tell from the images in the service manual.

If your PC is still under warranty, you should probably have them install the drive etc...
If you are not concerned about the warranty, then you could easily fit the parts yourself.