How to make a virtual disk in five minutes. Features of creating virtual disks, their application Creating a virtual disk drive in Windows 10

With the development of technology and increasing availability high speed internet The need for physical storage media is steadily decreasing. Of course, completely abandon CDs and DVDs, flash drives and external hard drives will not work, since they are needed for backup data storage. However, virtual devices can quite reduce their use to a minimum.

What are virtual devices in Windows 10 and what are they for?

Virtual devices are software codes that imitate physical devices, fully or almost fully implementing their functionality. Examples of this kind of devices that are most often used in everyday life are:

• virtual (on-screen) keyboard;
• virtual drive;
• virtual hard drive(VZD).

Virtual keyboards are needed if it is impossible to use physical ones; they are not capable of more. For example, if the real keyboard is broken or a person with disabilities is using the computer, you can display the input device on the screen and use the cursor to enter a key combination or type text.

Virtual drives are designed to connect CD and DVD images to a computer and then interact with them. Disk images are often used during installation software products: applications, games and system shells.

Virtual hard disks are the most widely used. First of all, because the virtual hard drive partition is very easy to encrypt or protect with a password. This significantly increases the security of documents and other important data. In addition, VZD is a convenient environment for testing software, scripts and other products software development. Technology virtual disks simplifies the creation of backup data, cloning physical media and many other operations.

How to create a virtual hard disk in Windows 10

Creating a VZD is a fairly simple procedure that takes little time. It is done as follows:

1. IN Windows search enter the line “Computer Management” and select the best match. In the Windows search, enter the string “Computer Management” and select the best match
2. On the left side of the window that opens, go to the “Storage Devices” section and select “Disk Management”.
   On the left side of the computer management console window, go to the “Storage Devices” section and select “Disk Management”
3. On the toolbar, open the “Action” tab and click on the line “Create a virtual hard disk”.
   On the toolbar, open the “Action” tab and click on the line “Create a virtual hard disk”
4. Select the location on the hard drive where the file containing the virtual hard disk will be located and enter its name. Set the size in MB, GB or TB in the appropriate field and click OK.
   Set the size of the VZD file, enter its name and indicate the location on the physical disk
5. At the bottom of the window, in the section with volumes, a new section “Disk 2” will appear (the number may differ depending on the number of hard drives installed on the computer). This section will be marked to the left of the name with a red arrow pointing down. Right-click on it and select the “Initialize disk” action, and then click OK in the confirmation window.
   Right-click on the new partition and select “Initialize disk”

The virtual disk is connected and working. All that remains is to create a section. To do this:

1. Right-click on the “Unallocated” area and select the “Create simple volume” option.
   Right-click on the “Unallocated” area and select the “Create simple volume” option
2. In the partition creation utility window that opens, click the “Next” button, select the virtual volume size and click “Next” again.
   Set the volume size in megabytes and click “Next”
3. Assign a drive letter from among the available ones and click the “Next” button.
   Select a Latin letter from the available ones and click the “Next” button
4. Leave the formatting settings untouched and click the “Next” button.
   Leave the file type NTFS systems and click the “Next” button
5. Confirm the changes with the “Done” button.
   Checking given parameters and click the “Finish” button
6. Upon completion of the operation, a new partition will appear on the hard disk containing a ready-to-use virtual volume.
   In the Disk Management console, the VZD is practically no different from standard hard drive partitions

For myself, I only created virtual hard disks a couple of times. The first time the reason was that important documents were stored on a work computer, to which many people had access. Therefore, during working hours I initialized the VZD, and after work I turned it off. All data on the disk was saved, but no one had access to it. The second time I created a VZD to store very personal media files. Unfortunately, the hard drive then burned down along with the virtual disk.

Video: how to create a virtual hard disk

How to create a virtual drive

Standard using Windows 10, you cannot create and permanently save a virtual drive in the system. The service responsible for virtual DVD devices starts working only after the image is mounted. That is, the virtual drive immediately disappears as soon as the ISO file is extracted from it. These are standard Windows features differ from special emulator programs. This implementation option was chosen for reasons of economy. RAM.

To connect a virtual drive, perform the following steps:

How to remove a virtual device in Windows 10

If the virtual drive is not used, then I recommend removing it. Supporting a virtual DVD takes up computer resources, albeit small ones, but they may be needed if you play a more or less decent game. I always immediately check out the image as soon as I'm done with it.

How to remove a virtual drive

As mentioned above, a standard virtual drive in Windows is removed by extracting a file - a disk image. If you used third-party emulator programs, then in each of them the drive is removed in its own way.

Removing a standard virtual drive

To remove a standard virtual drive, open the Disk Management console, and then do the following:

Disabling a virtual drive in emulator programs

In most emulators, virtual drives are created automatically the first time the program is launched, sometimes even without the user's knowledge. But they are easy to remove. This is done like this (each program has its own way):

1. In the UltraIso program on top panel Open the “Options” tab and select the “Settings” mode. Then go to the “Virtual drive” tab, set the “Number of devices” filter to “No” and save the changes with the OK button.
   Find the virtual drive parameters and set the “Number of devices” filter to “No”
2. In the Alcohol 120% program, open the “Service” tab, select “Settings”, then go to the “Virtual disk” item, set the number of drives to 0 and save the changes with the OK button.
   Find the parameters of the virtual drive and set the “Number of virtual disks” filter to 0
3. In the Daemon Tools application, right-click on the bottom panel with drives, select “Delete all” and confirm the action.

How to remove a virtual hard disk

If a virtual hard disk is no longer needed, it is very easy to remove. You can do this in two ways:

• through the disk management console;
• using the command line.

Uninstall via Disk Management console

We perform the following steps:

1. Open the Disk Management console. Right-click on the virtual hard disk and select the “Delete Volume” action. Then we agree that all data from this section will be deleted and wait for the result.
   Right-click on the virtual hard disk and select “Delete Volume”
2. Next, right-click on the virtual hard disk again, select “Detach virtual hard disk” and agree to the terms by clicking OK.
   Right-click on the virtual hard disk, select “Detach virtual hard disk” and agree to the terms by clicking OK
3. After this, we delete the virtual partition file itself.
   After disconnecting the virtual hard drive delete the partition file

Uninstall using the command line

The command line also allows you to delete a virtual volume, and you can do this literally with one command.

To do this:

Create virtual device It's very easy on a computer. At the same time, you get a disk or drive that is almost identical in its properties to a physical one, and can be used for a variety of purposes. And when it is no longer needed, it is just as easy to remove.

Good afternoon friends, today we will talk about how to make a virtual disk. All PC users know what an optical disk is and how to use it. Not everyone knows what a virtual disk is. An optical disk is a very convenient thing. Just 10 years ago, computer users stored the information they received on floppy disks. The capacity of such media is small - about 1.4 MB. At the moment, some people don’t really have a clue what it is, because... modern computers They are released without the so-called “Flopik” - a floppy disk drive.

Nowadays, users store information on optical disks. Unfortunately, in some cases this is inconvenient or not entirely appropriate compared to a virtual disk. Optical discs scratch, break and generally take up free space in the drawers of your computer desk. In addition, disks often get lost, and finding them takes a lot of free time. If the disk is lost or becomes unusable, this leads to the loss of your information, which is unacceptable. Most of us add a new, larger hard drive to expand our data.

This is a good option, although information may be lost from there too. You can store information on Blu-Ray discs. This isn't a bad option either, although they can just as easily get lost or broken as optical discs.

But let's remember for a moment, you launch your favorite game or, and it completely refuses to work without it being in the drive original disc. This is due to the fact that the creators of optical or Blu-Ray discs intentionally build this feature into the discs to increase sales of their product.

IN in this case you will have to copy the disk as accurately as possible onto a blank and insert such a blank into the drive. Although, by the way, not every such recorded disc will launch a program or game.

How to make a virtual disk through Explorer

First, let's try to make a VZD, working directly through the computer system. This is done quite simply. Right-click on the “Computer” shortcut and select “Management”.

A new window will open. In this window, select “Disk Management”.

At the top of the main menu, click “Action” and select “Create a virtual hard disk.”

In a new window, we will indicate the location of the VZD by clicking the “Browse” button for these purposes.

We will see that we already have the disk selected. For me it is D. Your case may be different. Enter a name of this disk. For example, I will enter Virtual HDD, click on save.

At the bottom of the VZD management window we will see another disk that is not allocated (Disk 1). Right-click on it and click “Initialize disk”.

A window will open in which you can leave everything as default and click OK.

We will see the “Create Simple Volume Wizard”. Click next,

The “Volume Size” window will open, where we also need to click “Next”. We don’t need to change the drive letter, click “Next”. Let's move on to formatting the section, where we will leave everything as default. Click “Next”. All we have to do is complete our action by clicking “Finish”. Our virtual disk has been created!

How to make a virtual disk using DAEMON Tools Lite

You can also create a virtual disk with a virtual floppy drive using third-party software. The most famous of these programs is Nero. This convenient program to create a virtual disk. But the problem is that the modern version of Nero is paid.

So we'll talk about free analogue this program, which is called DAEMON Tools Lite. In my opinion, this program is no worse than the paid Nero in helping you create a virtual disk. This program can also be paid, but we are now talking about the free version with the word Lite at the end.

We launch the program and start creating an image, insert the disk into the drive. Click “Create a disk image.” Next, we indicate the drive from which we will save the image and indicate the path where we will create this image.

After this, we move on to motivating the image being created. To do this, we need to select the image we have selected, located at the bottom of the catalog window, there we select the virtual disk (the program creates it automatically) into which we are going to mount it. If necessary, you can create additional drive, click on the “Add virtual DT drive” button.

I hope you are now aware, “How to make a virtual disk? It's actually quite easy. All the best to you!

Another anecdote:

Starting with Windows 7, users of the Windows operating system have the opportunity to create virtual hard drives(VHD). VHD (Virtual Hard Drive) is a single file with the extension “.vhd”, which has the same structure and content as regular hard disk installed on the computer.

When using this file format, it will be possible to install and run several operating systems on one computer. If a user wants to try to work in another Windows operating system, then he usually installs the system on another logical drive your computer, or installs Windows on a virtual machine.

Since I have my own website dedicated to computer topics, I often have to answer questions from visitors. My work computer currently has the Windows 7 operating system installed, but I often have to answer questions about Windows 8.1, and soon I will have to answer about Windows 10.

So I use a virtual machine VMware Workstation, on which they are installed operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Mac OS X, Android. I also have a virtual machine running Windows XP Mode on my computer. If necessary, I launch the desired operating system in the program window, working in the main operating system.

Despite all the convenience of this method, it has a big drawback: when actively working on the main system, the operating system virtual machine will slow down its work. This occurs because the resources of one computer are simultaneously consumed to run two operating systems.

Using a virtual hard disk will solve this problem. Another Windows will be installed on the VHD disk, without the need to run a virtual machine. Operating systems will be loaded on the computer of the user's choice. At Windows work installed on a virtual hard disk, all computer resources will be used, so there will be no slowdown.

At the same time, the main system will not be affected in any way, and the system installed on the VHD disk can be easily removed from your computer at any time.

In this article I will tell you how to create a virtual hard disk for Windows installations, as a second, third, etc. system on your computer. You can read about the process of installing Windows on a virtual hard disk in a separate article.

Please note that creating virtual hard drives possible in any version of Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, but only the ability to load another operating system will be available Windows users 7 Ultimate and Enterprise, and Windows 8.1 Pro and Enterprise editions.

How to create a virtual hard disk

You can create a virtual hard disk in different ways: Using the Diskpart utility, or using the disk management tool. In this article we will consider the second option, as it is easier for the average user.

You can enter the Disk Management snap-in through the Control Panel, going through several steps. A shorter way: right-click on “Computer” or “This Computer”, and in context menu you should select the “Management” item.

After this, the “Computer Management” window will open, in which, in the “Storage Devices” section, you will need to click on the “Disk Management” item. The utility window will display all drives currently connected to your computer.

In this image, you can see that my computer has one hard drive, divided into two logical partitions (“C” and “D”).

You can access Disk Management more quickly. To do this, you will first need to press the “Win” + “R” buttons on your keyboard, and then enter the following command in the “Run” field:

Diskmgmt.msc

After this, the Disk Management window will open.

Next, you will need to select the disk on which the virtual hard disk will be created. Since on mine computer hard the disk is divided into two partitions, I chose logical drive “D” based on the following: in case of reinstallation of the system, all data on drive “C” will be destroyed, and data on drive “D” will be saved, therefore, the virtual VHD disk will not will be lost. If your computer has only one disk partition “C”, then in this case the choice of disk will be obvious.

Select the desired disk, then click on the “Action” menu item, in the context menu click on the “Create virtual hard disk” item.

In the Explorer window, enter a file name, and then click the Save button.

The file name must consist of Latin letters and numbers. I named the created VHD disk “win10” (give the file name Windows name not recommended). Attentive readers will notice that on the “D” drive of my computer, there is already a previously created virtual hard disk “win8”, on which I installed the Windows 8.1 operating system.

You can manually add the path to the virtual disk to the “Location” field, as shown in this picture.

You will then need to select the virtual hard disk size. Choose right size It will be possible in MB or directly in GB. For normal system operation, I chose a size of 32 GB.

After this you will need to select the virtual hard disk format:

• dynamic expansion;
• fixed size (recommended).

With dynamic expansion, the size of the virtual VHD disk will expand as data is stored on it until it reaches a fixed size.

With a fixed size, the virtual hard disk occupies all of the allocated space, regardless of how much space the data takes up on that disk.

After completing the settings, click on the “OK” button.

After this, the process of creating a virtual hard disk on your computer will begin, which will take some time.

After the creation of the virtual disk is completed, the Disk Management window will display new disk with unallocated space.

There is no need to install the created virtual disk as a new volume. After this, you can exit Disk Management.

If you open an Explorer window, on drive “D” you will see the created virtual hard disk “win10” with the extension “.vhd”. VHD disk is displayed in the system as regular file, but in reality it is a virtual hard disk.

Now you can install the Windows operating system on this disk.

Next steps to install Windows

Now I will briefly talk about the next steps to install the system. First you will need to write down Windows image to optical DVD disc, or create a bootable USB flash drive, for example, in the Rufus program.

Next you will need to boot from the DVD drive, or bootable flash drive, and then install the operating system on the virtual VHD disk. You can read a detailed article about installing Windows on a VHD disk.

How to Delete a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

If you need to delete a virtual VHD disk that was created in the corresponding partition of your computer, then you can easily perform this operation. The reasons for deleting a virtual hard disk can be very different: there are few left free space on a logical disk, this operating system is no longer needed, etc.

At the very in a simple way deletion, you will need to open in Explorer the logical drive in which this VHD disk is located. Then, you will need to select the virtual hard disk, and then select “Delete” from the context menu. In other ways, you can delete the VHD using the Disk Management snap-in, or using the Diskpart utility.

After this, the virtual hard disk will be removed from your computer.

Conclusions of the article

You can create a virtual hard disk (VHD) on your computer to install the Windows operating system on the disk, which you can use as a second operating system on your computer.

Please note that only users of Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise, and Windows 8.1 Pro and Enterprise editions have this opportunity.

If you have Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise installed on your computer, you may not know that this operating system has built-in support for virtual Hyper-V machines. Those. everything you need to install Windows (and more) in a virtual machine is already on your computer. If you have a home Windows version, you can .

Regular user may not know what a virtual machine is and why it can be useful, I will try to explain it. A "virtual machine" is a kind of software-based separate computer, to put it even more simply - Windows, Linux or another OS running in a window, with its own virtual hard disk, system files and so on.

How to do it:

1. In Hyper-V Manager, select the second item (your computer name) from the list on the left.
2. Right-click on it (or the “Action” menu item) - Manager virtual switches.
3. In Virtual Switch Manager, select Create Virtual Switch network switch, “External” (if you need the Internet) and click the “Create” button.
4. In the next window, in most cases you don’t need to change anything (unless you are an expert), except that you can set your own network name and, if you have and Wi-Fi adapter And network card, select in the “External network” item the network adapter that is used to access the Internet.
5. Click OK and wait until the virtual one is created and configured network adapter. During this time, the Internet connection may be lost.

Done, you can move on to creating a virtual machine and installing Windows into it (you can also install Linux, but according to my observations, its performance in Hyper-V leaves much to be desired, I recommend Virtual Box for these purposes).

Creating a Hyper-V virtual machine

Just as in the previous step, right-click on the name of your computer in the list on the left or click the “Action” menu item, select “Create” - “Virtual Machine”.

At the first stage, you will need to specify the name of the future virtual machine (at your discretion); you can also specify your own location of the virtual machine files on your computer instead of the default one.

The next step allows you to select the generation of the virtual machine (appeared in Windows 10, this step was not present in 8.1). Please read the descriptions of the two options carefully. Generation 2 is essentially a UEFI virtual machine. If you plan to experiment a lot with booting a virtual machine from different images and installing different operating systems, I recommend leaving the 1st generation (2nd generation virtual machines do not boot from all boot images, UEFI only).

The third step is to allocate RAM for the virtual machine. Use the size required for the OS you plan to install, or better yet, even more, keeping in mind that this memory will not be available in your main OS while the virtual machine is running. I usually uncheck the “Use dynamic memory” checkbox (I like predictability).

The virtual hard disk is mounted or created on next step. Specify the desired location on the disk, the name of the virtual hard disk file, and also set the size that will be sufficient for your purposes.

After clicking “Next” you can set the installation options. For example, by selecting the “Install operating system from a bootable CD or DVD” option, you can specify the physical disk in the drive or the ISO image file with the distribution. In this case, when you turn it on for the first time, the virtual machine will boot from this drive and you can immediately install the system. You can also do this later.

That's all: you will be shown a summary of the virtual machine, and by clicking the “Finish” button it will be created and appear in the list of virtual machines Hyper-V Manager.

Starting a virtual machine

In order to start the created virtual machine, you can simply double-click on it in the Hyper-V manager list, and in the virtual machine connection window, click the “Enable” button.

If, when you created it, you specified an ISO image or disk from which to boot, this will happen the first time you launch it, and you will be able to install an OS, for example, Windows 7, in the same way as installing on regular computer. If you did not specify an image, you can do this in the “Media” menu item for connecting to the virtual machine.

Typically, after installation, the virtual machine will automatically boot from the virtual hard disk. But, if this does not happen, you can adjust the boot order by right-clicking on the virtual machine in the Hyper-V manager list, selecting “Options” and then “BIOS” settings.

Also in the parameters you can change the size of RAM, the number of virtual processors, add a new virtual hard disk and change other parameters of the virtual machine.

In conclusion

Of course, this instruction is only a superficial description of creating Hyper-V virtual machines in Windows 10; all the nuances cannot be covered here. Additionally, you should pay attention to the possibility of creating checkpoints, connecting physical drives to the OS installed in a virtual machine, advanced settings, etc.

But I think it’s quite suitable as a first introduction for a novice user. You can figure out many things in Hyper-V yourself if you wish. Fortunately, everything is in Russian, explained quite well, and if necessary, can be searched on the Internet. And if you suddenly have questions during the experiments, ask them, I will be happy to answer.

Hello admin! My computer has one hard drive divided into two volumes. On the first partition (C:) Windows 8.1 is installed, and on the second partition (D:) I want to install Windows 10, but not just like that, but on a VHD virtual disk. Please explain how to do this quickly and easily? I read on the Internet that a simple hard drive can accommodate a dozen virtual disks and you can actually install an operating system on each of them!

How to install Windows 10 on a virtual disk using a program WinNTSetup

Hello friends!

First, I’ll tell you what a VHD virtual hard disk is and why our reader wants to install Windows 10 on it.

Secondly, I’ll introduce another hero of today’s article, this is a utility WinNTSetup, capable of creating virtual VHD disks and installing operating systems on them.

Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) is a file format that has a structure identical to a hard disk. In simple words, the operating system perceives virtual diskVHD is like a regular hard drive, but the disk VHD has several advantages, the most important of which allows several operating systems to simultaneously reside on one partition of a regular hard drive!

For example, we have a hard drive installed in our computer; in order to install five operating systems on this hard drive, it must first be divided into five partitions, but this is not at all necessary to do when using virtual disks. We will simply create five virtual disks on any hard disk partition VHD and install on them different Windows. We can do all this without leaving the operating system!

I propose to move from theory to practice and create a VHD virtual disk using the utility WinNTSetup, then the same utility will install Windows 10 directly onto the virtual hard disk, everything is quick and simple.

• Note: If you like to solve various computer problems, then WinNTSetup will come in handy more than once, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the descriptions of how the program works.
• Another article for you on this topic.

Preparing for work

Let's look at Disk Management on my computer.

The hard drive is divided into three sections.

1 . Hidden section System Reserved (Reserved by the system, volume 350 MB) containing files Windows boot 8.1.

2. Disk (C:) with installed Windows 8.1 (located on the desktop ISO image Windows 10).

3 . New volume(E:) - file dump. On it we will create a virtual VHD disk on which Windows 10 will be installed.

Note: Before starting, be sure to createbackup copy boot storage (BCD), in case, after using Windows 10, you decide to delete it, because after removing the system, the choice of operating systems ( Windows 8.1 or Windows 10) will remain upon boot.

Editboot CD (BCD) storage and removing unnecessary entries is very simple, but it is even easier to deploy a backup copy. In detail this question, be sure to check it out.

Windows 10 ISO image

Before starting the WinNTSetup program, find an ISO image with Windows 10 on the drive (C:) and copy all the distribution files to a folder or double-click on the ISO image with the left mouse and connect it to the virtual drive (if you are working on Windows 8.1).

I have the Win 10 image right on my desktop.

Windows 10 ISO image connected to virtual drive (D:)

It's WinNTSetup's turn

Download WinNTSetup can be found on my Yandex.Disk using the linkhttps://yadi.sk/d/xLGkpAOzhXCPcor on the official website

http://www.winntsetup.com/?page_id=5

Unzip and launch executable file WinNTSetup_x64.exe program (if you are running a 64-bit version of Windows).

In the main WinNTSetup window, specify the install.wim file located in the D:\sources folder of the Windows 10 distribution.

Click Select.

Select the file with the left mouse install.wim and click Open.

The Windows 10 bootloader is selected automatically by the program - Z: (the first partition, System Reserved, reserved by the system, volume 350 MB, hidden and does not have a letter).

Create a VHD file on which Windows 10 will be installed. Click the VHD button.

If you create a dynamically extensible the size of the VHD virtual disk, then after installing Windows its size will be small (several megabytes), but during operation it can grow to gigantic sizes and when data is deleted from it, the size will not decrease, this is a little inconvenient. It is worth choosing this type if you do not plan to work for a long time in a system installed on a VHD disk, but just want to experiment.

If you create a fixed size virtual disk VHD and select its size of 50 GB, then a virtual disk of exactly this size 50 GB will be created; when filled with files, its space will be filled, and when deleted, it will be freed, that is, everything is the same as in the case of a simple hard drive. I'll choose this option.

I indicate the size created file VHD and click on the View button.

In the Explorer window that appears, I indicate the location of the virtual disk to be created on the partition (E:), also give it the name Windows 10.vhd and click Save.

The process of creating a VHD virtual hard disk on volume (E:) begins and ends successfully

Disk management

IN WinNTSetup program Click on the Install button.

The process of installing Windows 10 on the VHD virtual disk begins

and ends successfully, click OK.

To continue the installation, restart the computer.

After the reboot, a window for selecting operating systems appears (Windows 8.1 or Windows 10).

Select Windows 10

and we enter the final stage of installing Windows 10, familiar to you from our previous articles about the WinNTSetup program (I won’t repeat it).

I think everything worked out for you and Windows 10 booted successfully.

In Disk Management you can see that Windows 10 treats our VHD virtual disk as a regular hard drive with one partition under the letter C: (the operating system is installed on it).

However, the virtual disk itself is located on the partition (E:).

Properties of virtual Windows disk 10.vhd

device Manager

In exactly the same way, you can create several more virtual disks on the drive (E:) and install operating systems on them. When the computer boots, the boot menu will appear, in which you can select the Windows you need to work with.