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Features of creating virtual disks, their application. Features of creating virtual disks, their application How to make a windows 10 virtual disk

To create a virtual disk in Windows 10, you need to open the Disk Control Panel, and to do this, hover over the button Start and press the right mouse button and in the context menu that opens, select the item Disk Management.

How to Create a Windows 10 Virtual Disk

The Disk Control Panel will open, in which all partitions are displayed at the top, and all disks with partitions located in them are displayed at the bottom. First, select the logical drive on which you will create the virtual drive. Next, in the top menu, click Action - Create virtual hard disk.

When creating a virtual disk in Windows 10, you must specify its parameters

A window will open in which you need to enter the following parameters.

Specify the location where the created VHD file will be stored.
Set the size to at least 3 MB.
Select VHD or VHDX virtual hard disk format.
Select fixed or dynamic virtual hard disk type.

When you have finished making settings, click OK and close the Disk Control Panel.

Initialize Windows 10 Virtual Hard Disk

Now, in order for the local disk manager to be able to access the virtual disk, it must be initialized. To do this, launch the Disk Control Panel again and a window will immediately open in which you need to select the MBR or GPT partition style. After selecting a style, click OK.

After that, in the Disk Control Panel, you will see a new disk with unallocated space. Now you need to create a partition in this disk, and to do this, hover over it and click the right mouse button. A menu will open in which select the item Create a simple volume. The wizard for creating a simple volume will open in which you need to click the Next button in all windows. When the last window opens Completing the Create Simple Volume Wizard, you will need to click the Finish button and wait until the partition becomes Healthy. As a result, if you open this computer in Explorer, you will see that a new disk has appeared, which is actually virtual.

Each user can create a virtual drive if desired. But what if you no longer need it? It is about how to correctly remove such a drive in Windows 10 that we will describe further.

In total, it is worth highlighting two methods that will allow you to correctly remove the drive. You need to select the one that corresponds to the preliminary process of creating a virtual hard disk. In practice, everything does not look as difficult as it seems at first glance.

Method 1: "Disk Management"

This method is suitable for you if the virtual drive was created through the specified tool.

Remember that before performing the steps described below, you should copy all the necessary information from the disk being deleted, because after the final uninstallation you will not be able to restore it.

To remove a disk, do the following:

This completes this method.

Method 2: "Command line"

If you created a virtual drive through "Command line", then you should use the method described below. You need to perform the following operations:

By resorting to one of the methods described above, you can remove the virtual hard disk without much effort. Remember that these steps do not allow you to delete the physical partitions of the hard drive. To do this, it is better to use other methods that we talked about earlier in a separate lesson.

A lot of users of personal computers on the Windows platform often ask themselves questions - what are virtual disks and how to create virtual disk. To increase our readers' awareness of these issues, in this article we will try to fully cover the topic with specific examples.

Also in our article we will consider what is virtual hard drives and where they are used. After reading the material, our readers will be able to easily create virtual hard disks and image disk in ISO format, as well as mount them on a virtual device and burn them to DVD without any problems.

Virtual optical drive and its applications

The main purpose of a virtual drive is mounting images optical discs. To understand in detail why it is needed, we will look at an example where an image disk in ISO format will be mounted on a virtual DVD-ROM. For this example, we will use the Windows 10 operating system.

A pleasant moment for owners of computers with the Windows 10 operating system will be that a virtual DVD-ROM is already installed in it. Therefore, owners of Windows 10 will not have to use third-party programs to mount images.

To mount an optical disc image into a virtual DVD-ROM, we need the image itself. For example, we will use image with Linux operating system ubuntu. You can download an image of this operating system on its official website http://www.ubuntu.com. In our example, we will use the image 64-bit Ubuntu version 15.10, which has a size of 1.1 GB.

After loading the image, you can proceed to its direct mounting. To do this, right-click on the image file to open the context menu.

Mounted "virtual disk" can be opened and copied all its contents.

As you can see from the example, we mounted the Ubuntu OS image on a virtual DVD drive. In fact, we were able to do almost what we do with a regular and optical disc, when we insert it into a DVD drive and open it, only in our version all the components are virtual.

Creating a LaserDisc Image

In the previous example, we looked at how to open an image disk in a virtual DVD drive. Now let's deal with the situation when you need to create an image of an optical disc. To create an image, we need the DAEMON Tools Lite program, which must be downloaded and installed. It is also worth noting that in addition to creating various image formats, DAEMON Tools Lite it can also mount a huge number of formats into its own virtual DVD drive. After installing the program DAEMON Tools Lite in Explorer you can see a new drive named ""

This "" is just the drive of the program in question DAEMON Tools Lite. In this example, we will create an image of the original installation DVD with the Windows 10 operating system. To make an image from the installation DVD with ten, insert it into the DVD drive. Now run the utility and go to the section " New look».

In the utility window we find the button " Create image from disk” and press it. These actions will take us to the image creation window.

In this window, you can select the DVD drive from which the ISO image will be created, as well as select the location to save it.

We will also select the image ISO format and confirm the creation by clicking the Start button, which will start creating the Windows 10 DVD image.

After creation, we will receive an ISO image file called "J_CCSA_X86FRE_RU-RU_DV5.iso", which can be mounted or burned to a regular disc and installed with it a new Windows.

The example shows how easy it is to burn an image to a virtual DVD-ROM using DAEMON Tools Lite. In the same way, you can burn images for all licensed Windows discs, be it XP or Vista. In addition, you can burn images of games or software that do not start without a disc. Apart from the program DAEMON Tools Lite I would like to advise other popular utilities that can create and allow you to open images of optical discs:

Alcohol 120%;
GizmoDrive;
WinCDEmu.

It is especially important to use these utilities on an OS where there are no built-in virtual DVD drives, for example, in OS Windows XP. In addition to supporting XP, each of these programs, including DAEMON Tools Lite, will be able to burn ISO images to DVD disk. In addition to supporting the ISO format, these utilities can mount other formats, including their own, they can be written to regular discs.

Virtual hard disk

A virtual hard disk is quite often used by IT specialists, as it allows you to solve many problems with backup, virtual machines and testing various operating systems. Virtual hard disk is a container file that mimics the file structure of a hard drive.

Since such a disk is a file, therefore it is usually stored on a physical HDD or SSD. Starting with Windows 7, users have the ability to create and mount a hard disk directly in the operating system.

Consider an example of creating a virtual hard disk using Windows 10. First, let's go to the utility " Run"Using the key combination Win + R and type in it the following command: diskmgmt.msc

This command will take us to the Disk Control Panel.

To create a new virtual HDD, you need to go to the menu " Action / Create virtual hard disk", which will open a window to create such a disk.

Starting with Windows 10, it became possible to create a disk with the format " VHDX". Unlike the "VHD" format, the " VHDX» can create containers up to 64 terabytes. Let's make our virtual hard disk 100 GB in the new format " VHDX”, and also put the switch in dynamic creation mode, in which our disk will increase as it fills up.

After setting the parameters of our hard disk, press the OK button, which will allow you to write it to the specified folder on the screw. After creating the output, we will get a virtual hard disk named "virtual disk.vhdx". The image below shows that our disk is automatically mounted, but it is still not visible in the system.

In order for the system to see our VHDX disk, it must be initialized. You can do this by right-clicking on the VHDX disk and selecting " Initialize disk».

In the window that appears, do not change anything and press the OK button.

Now the simplest thing left is to choose a file system and a letter for our disk. To do this, go to it and select the item " Create a simple volume».

After that, a wizard will start in which you need to assign a drive letter and select a file system. After the wizard completes, the virtual hard disk will appear in Explorer.

The example shows that creating a virtual HDD using the OS is very simple, so we hope that you will no longer have a question - how to create a virtual hard disk. I would also like to note that with the created VHDX disk you can do the following operations:

Encrypt it with BitLocker;
Install an additional OS on it;
Move and open it on another computer;
Connect it to a virtual machine.

Computers based on the Windows XP operating system, which is still quite popular, do not support VHD disks. But do not be upset, because in the utility we reviewed earlier DAEMON Tools Lite there is support for VHD disks and it fully compatible with Windows XP.

Using a VHD Disk in a Virtual Machine

Let's create a virtual machine based on the Windows XP operating system using the VirtualBox program. At the step of creating a virtual machine for XP, you will be prompted to create or attach a virtual hard disk that will be used to install Windows XP on it.

At this point, we can attach the VHD disk that we will create using Windows 10. So we will try to attach our 30 GB VHD container that we made in ten. After creating a virtual machine, you can view the attached VHD disk in its settings.

If there is not enough space in the virtual machine on XP, then you can always attach new VHD virtual hard disk. Besides, you can connect containers with various file data to a virtual machine for XP. In the same way, you can use the virtual machine from other software products. For example, VHD containers can be installed on VMware Workstation products.

Outcome

From the reviewed material, it can be seen that the use of virtual drives and hard drives helps to solve many problems much better, especially since even a novice PC user will figure out how to create them. We hope that our material will help our readers to better understand the question - how to create a virtual disk and how to use it for work.

How to Create a Virtual Hard Disk

The principle of creating a virtual disk drive has not changed a bit since Windows 7 and 8. The only difference is that in the G8 you have the ability to install a VHD file in the system by simply double-clicking on it: after clicking it, it will instantly be connected as an HDD and it will be associated with a certain letter. To launch the disk drive manager in the system, as always, we will use the key combination Win+R and team diskmgmt.msc.

An alternative option is to right-click on the Start button (or the Win + X sequence) and select the Disk Management option from the context menu.

The snap-in for managing disk drives is launched. It is here that all actions are performed to create and manage virtual devices, as well as to mount and install them.

To create a virtual partition, select the logical device on the basis of which the virtual disk drive will be created. Next, turn to the top menu by selecting the option "Action" -> "Create virtual HDD"(Please note, here, very close, is the option "Connect virtual disk drive"; it will come in handy if you want to move the VHD from one PC to another).

As a result of such simple manipulations, the main form of the wizard for creating virtual disk drives will appear on the screen. Here you need to specify the location of the VHD file, its size (for this parameter, its value must be at least 3 MB) and one of the formats provided to choose from: fixed size or dynamically expanding. To make it clearer, here are a few words about the differences between the formats: with a fixed size, the storage capacity is always static, that is, unchanged; even if the partition itself is empty, on the hard drive it will strictly occupy a clearly specified volume. A dynamic device, in turn, is more flexible, and will occupy the volume on the drive that corresponds to the size of the files written to it.

When all the preliminary settings are set, and you click OK to confirm your choice, a new device will appear in the disk space structure. If necessary, the Microsoft Virtual Disk Drive HBA driver will also be installed.

As a next step, we need to initialize the HDD we created by right-clicking on the new virtual disk and selecting "Initialize Disk".

During the initialization of the disk device, we will actually have to specify the partition style used when marking the disk space: MBR or GPT. In operating systems of the Windows family, it would be more appropriate to specify the MBR style, since it is it that is used in all environments above the indicated generation.

The final step towards creating a virtual disk in Windows 10 is to generate a simple disk volume that will be attached to the virtual device. To create a volume, a special step-by-step wizard is used, which will complete the entire procedure for creating a virtual disk. First, we will be prompted to specify the volume size, which is based on the value we set earlier at the stage of allocating disk space to the virtual device. It is logical to specify the same size as the first time, since otherwise not all of the disk space you allocated will be used for its immediate tasks.

One of the most important actions in the wizard is the association of a virtual drive with a logical device, that is, in fact, a letter that will act as a drive name.

The next iteration is formatting the disk partition. If you do not want to format right now, you can do it later, already in the explorer. However, it makes sense to prepare the entire disk for use, so choose the file system and volume label.

This brings the whole process to an end. The work of the wizard is also over, and now we can work with the virtual disk, as with a regular disk drive: write files to it, store information, install operating systems, form a RAID array, and everything else that comes into your head.

How to delete a virtual disk in Windows 10?

If you have already finished testing the new utility, you may want to remove the device from the environment. How to do it? First of all, let's delete the volume corresponding to the new virtual device. Before performing this operation, make sure that all the necessary information is copied to a safe place, so that when you delete the volume, you will not lose any valuable data.

Right-click on the virtual volume and select the "Delete volume" option.

Now we see that the disk layout is missing, and we can detach the disk device. We perform a right click on the designation of the disk itself and select the item "Disconnect virtual HDD" from the menu.

We confirm the operation on the next dialog mini-form and disconnect the virtual drive from the hard drive structure.

Now the virtual device is detached, but it is still stored at the address you specified when creating the disk. We go in the file explorer to the folder we need, find our virtual disk there, and delete the corresponding VHD file completely manually - everything is as usual.

How to install Windows 10 on a virtual drive?

After the virtual hard disk is created, you have the right to do whatever you want with it: install any programs, test services, set audit and local policy, and, of course, install a new operating system (even Windows 10). How to do it, you ask? Yes, just like installing an OS on a regular hard drive. When installing the distribution kit from a disk or flash drive, before the procedure for copying system files, you will be prompted to select the logical partition on which this very copying will be carried out. Among all other devices on the hard drive, our newly created disk will also be available, and you can install the OS directly on it without changing anything else in the parameters and settings of the virtual HDD. If desired, its volume can also be expanded by resorting to the services of the same Disk Management snap-in.

If you prefer to use third-party software for such operations, we recommend using emulators such as Oracle VM VirtualBox or Microsoft's Virtual PC to create virtual disks. All these software products have an expanded arsenal for working with virtual disks, and working with them here is as easy as in the standard Windows shell.

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

An ordinary user may not know what a virtual machine is and why it can be useful, I will try to explain this. A "virtual machine" is a kind of programmatically launched separate computer, if even more simply - Windows, Linux or other OS running in a window, with its own virtual hard disk, system files and other things.

How to do it:

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

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

Create a Hyper-V virtual machine

Also, 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 for the virtual machine files on the computer instead of the default one.

The next step allows you to select the generation of the virtual machine (introduced in Windows 10, this step was not in 8.1). Read the description of the two options carefully. Basically, generation 2 is a virtual machine with UEFI. 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, only UEFI).

The third step is to allocate RAM for the virtual machine. Use the size that is required for the OS you are planning to install, or even more, bearing in mind that this memory will not be available in your main OS while the virtual machine is running. I usually uncheck "Use dynamic memory" (I like predictability).

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

After clicking "Next", you can set the installation options. For example, by setting the item "Install an operating system from a bootable CD or DVD", you can specify a physical disk in the drive or an ISO image file with a distribution kit. In this case, when you first turn on the virtual machine, it 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 when you click the "Finish" button, it will be created and appear in the list of virtual machines of the Hyper-V Manager.

Starting the 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 window for connecting to the virtual machine, click the "Enable" button.

If, when creating it, you specified an ISO image or a disk from which you want to boot, this will happen at the first start, and you can install an OS, for example, Windows 7, in the same way as installing on a regular computer. If you did not specify an image, then you can do this in the "Media" menu item of the connection to the virtual machine.

Usually, after installation, the boot of the virtual machine is automatically installed 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 the "Settings" item and then the "BIOS" settings item.

Also in the settings 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.

Finally

Of course, this instruction is only a superficial description of creating Hyper-V virtual machines in Windows 10, all the nuances cannot fit 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, as a first acquaintance for a novice user, it is quite suitable. With many things in Hyper-V, you can figure it out on your own if you wish. Fortunately, everything is in Russian, well explained, and, if necessary, searched on the Internet. And if you suddenly have questions during the experiments - ask them, I will be happy to answer.