Migration from VAX 3100 to SIMH questions and looking for ideas

Hi, Our 3100 is dying. Thinking of running SIMH. Big stumbling block is how to move the OS and files. I've used Kermit when I've done this for RT11, but that seems like torture for 8 Gb on two disks. Can't I just stick in a SCSI controller and use something like ODS2 to read the SCSI drive and put them into the new container? Thinking of using (probably) XP or Windows7. Am I missing something here? And, if I read it correctly, the only device that talks to the outside world is the ethernet connection in SIMH-vax. Well, that will take care of pretty much everything, I guesss, since we only have printers and terminals, and I can switch over to PCs with VT100 software. Anybody been through this already and have some pointers? thanks in advance Joe Heck