subject: How to Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on Windows 7 [print this page] How to Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on Windows 7
If you are just a Windows 7 user, now you can completely mount Virtual hard disks (VHDs) exactly like a physical disk. Of course, you can easily copy files to and from the virtual disk by mounting a VHD. Also Windows 7 can be configured to boot from a VHD. You can create a VHD from either the Disk Management snap-in or the command line.
Virtual hard disks (VHDs) are a file type that acts like a hard disk. In previous versions of Windows, VHDs were used by virtual machines, such as those created by Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 or Microsoft Virtual PC. Additionally, Complete PC Backup in Windows Vista created a copy of the computer's hard disk as a VHD disk image.
Note: After you create the VHD, you must attach it and then format it before you can use it, just like a physical partition.
From the Disk Management console, follow the steps below:
1. Right-click Disk Management and then click Create VHD. Then follow the prompts that appear.
2. Right-click the new disk and then click Initialize Disk. Click OK.
3. Right-click the new disk and then click New Simple Volume (or select a different volume type, if available). Then follow the prompts that appear.
Now you can use the new virtual disk (just like any other disk).
From the DiskPart command-line tool at an elevated command prompt, run the create vdisk command and specify the file (to name the file) and maximum (to set the maximum size in megabytes) parameters. The following code demonstrates how to create a VHD file at C:vdisksdisk1.vdh with a maximum file size of 16 GB (or 16,000 MB).
Volume 4 D New Volume NTFS Partition 52 GB Healthy
DISKPART> select volume 0
Volume 0 is the selected volume.
DISKPART> delete volume
DiskPart successfully deleted the volume.
Additionally, run the command help create vdisk at the DiskPart command prompt. Once you create a VHD, you must attach it, create a partition, assign it a drive letter, and format it before it can be used.
Thefollowing script (which must be run within a DiskPart session) demonstrates how to do this.
