Create a Virtual Hard Drive in Windows 7 - Windows Tips

Windows 7 allows you to create virtual hard drives for uses such as installing other operating systems using programs such as Microsoft Virtual PC, organizing your files on different drives, speeding up your system by caching files on the virtual drive, and so on.

Creating the virtual hard drive (VHD) is a fairly simple process as long as you know what options to choose when creating it. The first thing to do is to go to Disk Management by right clicking the Computer icon and choosing Manage. Then click on Action and Create VHD.

Next you need to choose a location to create the virtual hard drive. If you only have one hard drive then that's your only choice but if not you can choose whichever hard drive or partition you want to use that has enough free space to hold the VHD. You can browse to the location and name the virtual disk file or manually type it in the Location box.

Enter the size in MB, GB or TB for your new drive. Just make sure you have enough free space on the drive you are going to use to create the VHD.

Choose if you want to use a dynamically expanding disk or a fixed size disk and then click OK.

You will then see your new VHD listed in Disk Management but it will have a different icon and say Not Initialized for its status.

The next step is to right click where it says Disk 1 and choose Initialize Disk.

Then stick with the defaults on the Initialize Disk window that comes up next.

It will then show your new disk but it will say unallocated until you create a volume on the disk. So the next step is to right click the drive and choose New Simple Volume.

Choose how much of the drive you want to use for the new volume. You will most likely use the whole drive for your VHD so the default should be fine.

Then assign it a drive letter of your choosing.

Next you can format the volume and give it a label.

Review your settings and then click Finish to apply the changes.

Your newly created virtual drive will now be ready for use.

If you open up Windows Explorer you can see your new drive there as well and use it just like it was a separate hard drive installed in your computer.

If you want to remove the VHD simply go back to Disk Mangement, right click the virtual drive and choose Detach VHD.

If you check the Delete the virtual hard disk after removing the disk check box then it will delete the drive and any files you had on the drive otherwise it will just detach it from your system so you will not see it anymore.

To put it back go to Action and then Attach VHD to reattach the virtual hard drive. Then browse to where you saved the virtual drive in the first step to have it reattached. Any files you had on the drive will be there after you reattach it.

Keep in mind that when you restart your computer, you will have to reattach your virtual drives using Computer Management since they don't reattach automatically.

Related Tips:
Using Disk Management to Manage Hard Drives
The Difference Between Basic and Dynamic Hard Disks
How a Hard Drive Works
Flash Hard Drives
Microsoft Virtual PC

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