One of the great new features in Windows 7 is the ability to mount a virtual hard drive. Just the simple fact that you can boot your machine from a virtual disk, opens up a whole new array of options for advanced users.
For a kick-off
The first thing you need to do is right click on ‘Computer’ and go to ‘Manage’. The Computer Management console will pop up and you will be able to see the Disk Management option on the left side. Once you access it, go to the Actions button in the upper left side of the screen. If you already have a virtual drive you can use the Attach VHD ( Virtual Hard Disk ) option but if you want to create one, select Create VHD. First you have to browse and select where you want to store this virtual hard drive. Choose your preferred location and the name of the new drive and click save. After this you have to choose the size of the new virtual disk and the way you want to format it, be it dynamically expanding or fixed size. If you want your virtual drive to grow as you add information to it, then use the dynamic format. The drawback here is that the use of dynamic disks that expand in size will reduce your system’s performance notably. This is because, as the data is stored on your hard drive, it will slowly but surely fragment it, hence slowing it down.
Virtual hard drive
After you click Ok, you should see a new virtual hard drive showing in the lower part of the Disk Management window. If you check your Computer after this operation, you will not be able to see your new virtual drive next to your physical drives, but you will be able to see it in the location you choose to save it even if you can’t do anything with it yet. In order to use the disk, you need to go back to the Disk Management console and initialize it. Do this by right clicking the new drive and choosing the Initialize Disk option in the context menu. A new window will pop up where you can choose the partition style for the disk. Leave the default setting here and click ok.
New Simple Volume
Once the new hard disk has been initialized, you still can’t do anything with it until you actually turn it into a new simple volume. This is done by right clicking it and choosing the New Simple Volume option. In the window that pops up choose next, then choose the volume size and drive letter. After this, select the settings you want to use to format the new volume. It is advised to use the NTFS file system and the default allocation unit size so just write the name of the volume label and perform the quick format.
Virtual hard disk is alive!
Now, this new virtual hard disk will act like a Real Hard Drive and you will also see the new volume in your Computer console next to the physical drives. Your new virtual drive is now ready to use and you can also rename it here to whatever you want. You can also use the file that was first created in the location you originally chose to copy the drive to any other Windows 7 computer or you can run anything from this virtual hard drive in a virtual machine after mounting it. So the good thing about this great new feature in Windows 7 is that you can save information on this new drive and have it wherever you need it.
You can always return
If you decide you don’t need the virtual drive anymore you won’t be able to get rid of it just by deleting the new file because you will get a message telling you that it is already in use. What you need to do is go back to your Computer Management console, select Disk Management, right click on the new drive, choose Detach VHD and press ok when the notification window pops up. The virtual disk will not show up in Disk Management or your Computer Console anymore and now you can also safely delete the original file, without fearing any consequences.
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