How To: Use Virtual Hard Disks as Real Hard Disks in Windows 7
Windows 7 has this unique feature of creating and manipulating a virtual hard disk drive as if they were real. More importantly, you don’t even need to boot in virtual PC environment to do so. Here is a process which will make virtual hard drive in Windows 7 which work as a real hard drive and you will be able to interact with it through Windows Explorer without even knowing that it is a virtual disk.
To Create Virtual Hard Disks in Windows 7
- Click on Windows 7 Start orb, right click on Computer, and then click on Manage. Provide consent to the User Account Control(UAC) dialog if required.
- In the left hand pane, click on Disk Management, and wait for it to load.
- In the menu bar, click on Action, and then click on Create VHD.
- Here you will be able to specfify the size and the location of the virtual hard disk file.
To Attach a Virtual Hard Disk File in Windows 7
- Click on Windows 7 Start orb, right click on Computer, and then click on Manage. Provide consent to the User Account Control dialog if required.
- In the left hand pane, click on Disk Management, and wait for it to load.
- In the menu bar, click on Action, and then click on Attach VHD.
- In the dialog that appears, you can specify the location of the VHD file as well as mark it as read-only.
Initializing Virtual Hard Disks in Windows 7
- Click on Windows 7 Start orb, right click on Computer, and then click on Manage.Provide consent to the Windows 7 User Account Control dialog if required.
- In the left hand pane, click on Disk Management, and wait for it to load.
- In the menu bar, click on Action, and then click on Attach VHD.
- Specify the location of the VHD file and click on OK, the Disk Management Service will go ahead and mount the VHD file.
- Once it is mounted, right click on the virtual disk (which will show up as a blue hard drive) and click on Initialize Disk.
- In the dialog that appears, select the partition style you wish to use and click on OK. The Disk Management Service will now initialize the disk for use.
- Right-click on the unallocated space in the virtual hard disk and click on New Simple Volume, and follow through the instructions in the wizard to create a new partition within the VHD.
Now, if you go to Windows Explorer, you’ll see another hard drive here, which is the virtual hard disk – you can interact with it as if it were a real hard drive.
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Written by Tony on January 8th, 2009 with
2 comments.
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Sidd
#1. January 8th, 2009, at 11:32 PM.
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.