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Category: Virtual Hard Disk

  • Windows 7 Tips

    How To Delete a VHD in Windows 7
    Windows 7 has a neat feature where you can create Virtual Hard Drives and even encrypt them. Today we show you how to delete it if you no longer need the drive and regain local hard drive space.
    Virtual Hard Drive
    In a previous post we showed you the steps for creating a VHD. Remember when creating a VHD it’s using the space on the volume where you create it.
    When you no longer have a use for it, you can go into Computer Management by right-clicking Computer then Manage.
    In Computer Management go under Disk Management, right-click on the VHD you want to get rid of and select Delete Volume.
    Agree to the warning message that appears. You probably want to make sure and head its advice and make sure there is no data you need on it.

    However, the drive is not completely gone, you’ll need to go in and manually delete it.

  • Creating VHD using Diskpart

    Creating and Attaching VHD using Diskpart utility
    Open the Elevated Command Prompt with Administrator Privileges and type the following commands:
    DISKPART
    CREATE VDISK FILE=”c:\win7\win7.vhd” MAXIMUM=20000
    SELECT VDISK FILE=”c:\win7\win7.vhd”
    ATTACH VDISK
    CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
    ASSIGN LETTER=X
    FORMAT QUICK LABEL=Windows7
    EXIT

    This will create the VHD file of primary partition. You will see the newly attached disk in Disk Management with Drive Letter X:

    Attaching and Detaching VHD in Windows 7
    Right Click on My Computer and Click ‘Manage‘ that will open up Computer Management, in that click on Disk Management. Just like previous part.
    Then Right Click on Disk Management and select ‘Attach VHD’. This will open new windows ‘Attach Virtual Hard Disk‘
    Click on OK and that will attach the existing Virtual Hard Disk. Now, if you don’t want to make write anything on the VHD, we will select the ‘Read-only’ check box.

    And subsequently we will have the attached VHD in explorer.

    How to Detach VHD?
    To detach the VHD simply Right Click on the ‘Disk 1’ (Blue Color) and select ‘Detach VHD’
    After clicking on ‘Detach VHD’ you will be prompt you with ‘Detach Virtual Hard Disk’ message. Click on OK to detach. Also, if you want delete the VHD permanently you can select the Checkbox.
    This way we have seen how can we create new VHDs, attach/detach existing VHDs using Disk Management and Diskpart utility.

  • Turn Off Hard Disk when Idle or Never

    How to Turn Off Hard Disk when Idle or Never
    Information
    This article will show you how to get your hard disks to either turn off after certain minutes you set of being idle, or to never be turned off in Windows 7 and Vista.

    This setting will only affect internal HDD’s and not SSD’s (solid state drives).
    When set to turn off hard disks after idle, you will notice a brief delay of a few seconds when you try to access a turned off hard disk as it spins back up and is turned back on automatically as needed. Having your hard disks to be turned off after being idle can help save energy and extend a laptop’s battery life.
    Note
    If you have the hard disks set to be turned off after X amount of minutes of being inactive, then this behavior can be caused if any disk activity occurs, whether it is caused by user input or system tasks. Disk activity of any type resets the hard disk idle timer, and this can increase the amount of time it takes for your hard disk to turn off.
    Windows is designed to automatically perform maintenance tasks to improve performance and reliability. When your computer is on AC power and is idle, system maintenance tasks may be able to run for a few minutes. These system maintenance tasks include disk-layout optimization to improve performance and preparing automatic system restoration points to increase reliability. Typically, these tasks occur the first time you leave your computer idle after you start it. These tasks ensure that the system maintains its performance and reliability even after long use. Because these tasks involve reading and writing to the hard disk, the hard disk idle time is reset regularly during this maintenance period.
    There are other items that can reset the hard disk idle timer. These items can include:
    ·         Paging operations.
    ·         Windows Update checking the system state.
    ·         Event logging.
    ·         Network detection such as DHCP or Autonet.
    ·         Third-party services such as quota software or an antivirus program.
    ·         Scheduled tasks.
    ·         The loading of services or drivers.
    When these items either read from or write to the hard disk, the hard disk idle timer is reset.
    Here’s How:
    1. Open the advanced power settings for you selected power plan. (see screenshot below)
    2. To Turn Off Hard Disks After Idle
    A) Expand Hard disk and Turn off hard disk after, set how many minutes you want the hard disks to be idle for before being turned off, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)
    NOTE:
    The default setting is with 20 minutes.
    B) Go to step 4.
    3. To Never Turn Off Hard Disks
    A) Expand Hard disk and Turn off hard disk after, set it to Never, and click on OK. (see screenshot below)
    4. Close the Edit Plan Settings window. (see screenshot below step 1)

  • Creating a VHD in Windows 7

    How To Create A VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) In Windows 7?
    Unlike previous Windows versions, Windows 7 lets you create a new Virtual Hard Disk without the help any third-party applications.

    Creating a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) in Windows 7 is very simple.
    Steps to create Virtual Hard Disk
    1. Type in diskmgmt.msc in Start menu search filed and hit enter to open Disk Management window. Alternatively, right-click on Computer icon on the desktop, select Manage. In the Computer Management window, click on Disk Management link open the program.
    2. In the Disk Management window, go to Action, and select Create VHD option.
    3. In the following window, select a drive/folder location to create a new VHD file.
    4. Next, enter the size of VHD. Make sure that you have enough free space before entering the VHD size. Here, you have the choice to choose between two VHD formats: Dynamically expanding, and Fixed Size (recommended).
    In the dynamically expanding format, the size of the VHD expands to a fixed maximum size as data is saved to it. However, the disk size doesn’t compact automatically when data is deleted. As the name suggests, Fixed size VHD format uses a fixed amount of space regardless of the amount of the data stored in it.
    5. Click on the create button to start the process. You will see a new VHD file.

     

  • Windows 7 Features – Virtual Hard Disk

    Virtual Hard Disk

    The Microsoft virtual hard disk (VHD) file format specifies a virtual hard disk, which is encapsulated in a single file and is capable of hosting native file systems and supporting standard disk operations. This topic contains an overview of the new functionality that is offered in this version of Windows.



    In Windows 7, VHD can be used as the running operating system on designated hardware without any other parent operating system, virtual machine, or hypervisor. You can use the disk management tools (the DiskPart command-line tool and the Disk Management MMC snap-in) to create a VHD file. You can then deploy a Windows 7 image (in .wim format) to the VHD and configure the boot manager for a native or physical boot of the Windows image, which is contained in the VHD.


    Benefits of the new and changed features of VHD

    Enterprise environments that already manage and use VHDs for virtual machine deployment will find the most benefit from the new features in this release. Although enterprise environments are moving an increasing number of applications to virtual machines, they still use physical computers to operate a significant part of the data center. For this reason, IT administrators have to maintain two sets of images: one set based on the .wim format for physical computers, and another set based on the VHD format for virtual machines. The VHD format supports physical computers and virtual machines, and it provides flexibility in image deployment and simplifies image management.

    An image format that runs on both physical computers and virtual machines also benefits developers and testers. This is because they use virtual machines to test new system and application software, but sometimes they need to run tests on physical computers to access a specific hardware device, like the graphics card, or to get accurate performance profiling. Native VHD boot also enables developers and testers to boot into a Windows 7 image without creating a separate partition on the physical computer for installing Windows.