How To Create Virtual Hard Disk?

             VHD is the acronym of Virtual Hard Disk. VHDs are also used as virtual machine which is used for determining the response of a particular system. VHD is virtual partition created on the system hard drive for the purpose of simulating multiple operating systems on a single machine. It depicts the similar characteristics as displayed by the system hard drive and possesses partition & file system like normal hard drive. In this article I will tell “How you can create VHD in few easy steps“.

You can perform the following task by using VHD:

• Install/Uninstall software.
• Data migration between the VHD and system drives.
• Image, Backup and Restore.
• Disk conversion (virtual to ordinary or vice versa).

You must need admin privileges or you must know Admin password to make the desired changes. For creating a Virtual hard drive on a computer you have to follow the steps mentioned below as,


Procedure for creating the virtual hard drive:

1. Click on the Start button and make a right click on the My computer option available in the Start menu.
2. From the context menu you have to select Manage, this action will open a Disk Management on your computer screen.
3. You can also use alternative method for opening Disk Management. Click on the Start button and in the Start Search box type “dskmgmt.msc” without quotes and press Enter Key form the keyboard, this action will open Disk Management on your computer screen.
4. In the Computer management window select Disk Management and from the menu bar select “Action”. Then a drop down list of option appears on your screen and you have to select “Create VHD”.
5. Then a new window will appears on your screen in which you have to select the desired location where you want to create VHD and the amount of memory you want to assign it.
6. In the bottom half of window you have to select the VHD format. Two types of Format available are: Dynamic and Fix. In Dynamic mode space allotted by computer depends upon the amount of data you store in the VHD and the disk space does not compact automatically when data is not deleted. But in the case of Fix mode a certain amount of space is allocated to the VHD for data storage. You can see the virtual drive listed as unallocated space in the disk management space.
7. Make a right click on the Virtual dive and select initialize disk then fill the check box for making it accessible to Logical Disk Manager.
8. Now select the partition style for virtual drive to be created. You have two choices MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table). It is recommended to choose MBR as GPT is not recognized by the previous version of Windows.
9. Create a volume for VHD by making a right click on the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume. Now follow the instruction and after completion of New Simple Volume wizard, then click on ‘Finish’ to complete the wizard.
10. After completion of wizard you can see your virtual drive in disk management, windows explorer and My computer.

Windows 7 even allow additional feature of Encryption and Compression to apply on VHD. You can even make bootable VHD. Thus VHD offers a better option for users and suffice their needs.

Author Bio:

            Matthew Ferrall…is a Tech Savvy and Software Engineer. He has been working from 2008 for getting secure and reliable software solution for viruses, malwares with ImPcSupport. ImPcSupport provides the computer support for all windows operating system.