Hi,
This is mostly a process of doing I'm afraid and yes some of it is time consuming depending on the size of your host.
As for VMware Workstation, you can uninstall it afterwards. It works in a VM (it's one of my favorite use cases as it simplifies testing scenarios that involve having a dependency on VMware Workstation)
It has been a while since I last ran it, but you can resize the virtual disks during the migration.
I would certainly use an external disk or NAS for creating the VM.
It might also be a good idea to move some of the larger files off that you do not need in your VM.
--
Wil
