Virtual Hard Disks in Windows 7 : Tutorial

New features in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 allow Windows Admins to create, mount, and attach virtual hard disks (VHD).

Need to mount VHD files

Windows Admins need to mount VHD files to access files in these virtual disk images. Admins use VHD files for - serving as the virtual hard drive for a virtual machine (VM). Similar to ISO files which you require because you needed a driver file from an archive or to install an application.

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Create, attach, and mount VHD files in Windows 7

Attach and Create is done inside the Windows Disk Management console. Right-click on My Computer, then click Manage. This brings up the Computer Management MMC console where you can do many different things (task scheduler, event viewer, performance, device manager, manage services, and, finally, disk management).

Alternate way is by just going to the start menu, typing is diskmgmt.msc, and pressing enter

To attach or create a VHD, you click on the Action menu and select the choice



Creating VHD

After you click on the Create option in the Action menu. You will need to choose as to whether you want to create a fixed or a dynamic VHD file, specify a path, and specify the size of the new virtual disk



When you create the new VHD for the first time, you will see that the Microsoft VHD HBA device driver is being loaded which enables Disk Management to see the new drive but you still need to initialize it, create a new volume, and format it like any other drive. Right-click on the new disk and click to Initialize Disk

Confirm that you want to initialise disk by pressing ok



Right-click on the disk again and click New Simple Volume. This will bring up the New Simple Volume Wizard. Select the volume size, drive letter, format, and disk block size before you click Finish to complete the wizard.

When done, you will have a new disk volume that looks just like any other physical disk partition.



You can detach it by right clicking on it and selecting Detach VHD



To attach it again, just go to Action then Attach VHD.



So this is the way you can enjoy the advantages of Virtual Hard Disk inside the Windows 7 with in-built mechanism itself without the need of any third party tool or software.

Hope this proves useful to many of Windows 7 using CEans.