{"id":1294,"date":"2012-10-08T06:34:30","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T06:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2022-08-23T11:09:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T11:09:11","slug":"how-to-create-a-virtual-hard-drive-in-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/how-to-create-a-virtual-hard-drive-in-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) in Windows 11\/10\/8\/7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever wished you had an extra hard drive or partition to setup a dual-boot or multi-boot operating system? You can shrink your existing partition to create a new partition but it always carries some risk of data loss. Beginning with Windows 7, you can create a virtual hard drive (VHD) which acts as a separate hard drive in your computer.<\/p>\n

The virtual hard drive (VHD) is stored as a .vhd or .vhdx file on your physical disk. By mounting a virtual hard drive, you can easily copy files to and from the virtual disk. Additionally, Windows 11\/10\/8\/7 can be configured to boot from a VHD. In this tutorial we’ll go through the steps of creating a virtual hard drive (VHD) in Windows 11\/10\/8\/7.<\/p>\n

How to Create a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) in Windows 11\/10\/8\/7?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Press the Windows + R key combination to bring up a Run<\/strong> box, type compmgmt.msc<\/em> and hit Enter<\/strong>.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  2. The Computer Management<\/strong> dialog opens, click Disk Management<\/strong> in the left pane of the window and wait until you see all currently installed disks in the right pane.<\/li>\n
  3. Right-click Disk Management<\/strong> and then select Create VHD<\/strong>.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  4. Click Browse<\/strong> to choose the location where you want your VHD stored, and give it a descriptive name. Choose the size you want it to be, and select dynamic or a fixed. If you want the disk to expand in size as you add files to it, then pick Dynamically expanding<\/strong>. Check Fixed size if you want a specific size and for it to stay that way. Click OK<\/strong>.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  5. You will see the virtual hard drive listed as unallocated space in Disk Management. Right click on the virtual hard drive (Disk 1<\/strong>) and select Initialize Disk<\/strong>.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  6. Press OK<\/strong> in the Initialize Disk<\/strong> box.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  7. Now it is time to create a volume by right-clicking the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume<\/strong>.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  8. The New Simple Volume Wizard<\/strong> starts up and just press Next<\/strong> until the wizard is complete.\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n

  9. Now the new virtual disk is ready to be used, just like any other disk. You can see the virtual hard drive on your computer.\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Windows will automatically dismount the virtual hard drive after a restart. You can also manually dismount the drive by right-clicking it in File Explorer and selecting Eject<\/strong>.\n<\/li>\n

  10. \nWhenever you need to mount a vhd\/vhdx file as a virtual hard disk, just right-click it in File Explorer and choose Mount<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    \"\"\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Have you ever wished you had an extra hard drive or partition to setup a dual-boot or multi-boot operating system? You can shrink your existing partition to create a new partition but it always carries some risk of data loss. Beginning with Windows 7, you can create a virtual hard drive (VHD) which acts as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,10,1894,4713,3,39],"tags":[597,596,598,595,113,40],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-others","category-tips-tricks","category-windows-10","category-windows-11","category-windows-7","category-windows-8","tag-create-a-virtual-hard-drive","tag-vhd","tag-virtual-hard-disk","tag-virtual-hard-drive","tag-windows-7-2","tag-windows-8-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.top-password.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}