How to resize a microsoft virtual hard drive (vhd) file

Resizes a virtual hard disk.

Syntax

Description

The Resize-VHD cmdlet changes the maximum physical size of a virtual hard disk. It can expand both VHD and VHDX files but can shrink only VHDX files. The shrink operation fails if it would shrink the virtual disk to less than its minimum size (available through the VHDX object’s MinimumSize property).

If the virtual disk file connects to a virtual machine’s IDE chain, you cannot resize the virtual disk while the virtual machine is online. If the virtual disk file connects to a virtual machine’s SCSI chain, you can resize the virtual disk while the virtual machine is online.

Resize-VHD does not remove empty blocks from a dynamically-expanding virtual hard disk file. Use Optimize-VHD instead.

Examples

Example 1

Expands the VHD to 1 terabyte if the previous size was less than 1 terabyte. If it was larger, the cmdlet will report an error because it cannot shrink a VHD.

Example 2

Changes the VHDX’s size to 20 gigabytes (21,474,836,480 bytes). If it was larger, the cmdlet will only succeed if it had a MinimumSize less than or equal to 20 gigabytes.

Example 3

Shrinks the VHDX to its minimum possible size as indicated in its MinimumSize property.

Parameters

Runs the cmdlet as a background job.

Runs the cmdlet in a remote session or on a remote computer. Enter a computer name or a session object, such as the output of a New-CimSession or Get-CimSession cmdlet. The default is the current session on the local computer.

Specifies one or more Hyper-V hosts on which a virtual hard disk is to be resized. NetBIOS names, IP addresses, and fully qualified domain names are allowable. The default is the local computer. Use localhost or a dot (.) to specify the local computer explicitly.

Prompts you for confirmation before running the cmdlet.

Specifies one or more user accounts that have permission to perform this action. The default is the current user.

Specifies that an object representing the resized virtual hard disk is to be passed through to the pipeline.

Specifies the path to the virtual hard disk that is to be resized.

Specifies the size to which the virtual hard disk is to be resized.

Specifies that the virtual hard disk is to be resized to its minimum possible size.

Shows what would happen if the cmdlet runs. The cmdlet is not run.

When you create a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive either through Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you have to specify the maximum size of the file up front. While you can set the VHD to be a fixed or dynamically sized file, the total size the VHD is determined at the time you create it. Over time, however, you may want to increase the total size of the VHD file as requirements for the system change to allow more space for installed programs and data files.

Increasing the Size of the VHD File

With the help of the freely available VHD Resizer tool, you can expand the size of a VHD using it’s simple wizard interface. When opening VHD Resizer the wizard prompts you for the source VHD file to resize.

After selecting the source, set a destination VHD to a new file.

This new file will be an exact copy of the source, only a larger size.

Once selected, set the new size of the destination VHD file. This will be the capacity of the new VHD. Once set, start the resizing process.

Depending on the size of the source and destination file, this can take some time.

Repeat the process for any additional VHD files.

Resizing the Partition of the VHD Drive

After resizing the VHD file, the extra space is recognized by the respective Windows installation as an unallocated partition. In order to assign this extra space to the system drive, we have to link the new VHD file to an existing VHD file and resize it within the virtual machine.

In an existing VHD file, such as the source, link the new VHD file as a second hard disk. This is done through the the properties of the virtual machine.

Once you have the new VHD linked as a secondary drive, start the respective virtual machine.

When you look at the Disk Management, you can see the additional space is unallocated.

In order to resize the system drive on the new VHD file, you use the Windows tool, Diskpart.

Within Diskpart, set the disk (usually disk 1) and respective partition (usually there is only one) and then issue the ‘extend’ command.

After the extend command of Diskpart has run, the previously unallocated space has been combined with the system drive to form a single larger drive.

Once you have resized the new drive, shut down the virtual machine you used to resize the new drive and then remove the new VHD file as the secondary drive.

The new VHD file is ready to use as it’s own virtual machine, so create a new VM based on the newly created file.

Once created, boot up the new virtual machine.

The new VHD file will now have a single drive with the new space available to use as needed.

Conclusion

The ability to resize VHD files is tremendously useful. Since you can never predict what you may need in the future, you can build your VHD files with the size you know you need and then simply expand the size as needed.

Links

Download VHD Resizer from VM Toolkit (requires registration)

Applies To: Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012

This topic describes how to create, attach, and detach virtual hard disks with Disk Management. Virtual hard disks (VHDs) are virtualized hard disk files that, once mounted, appear and operate pretty much identically to a physical hard drive. They’re most commonly used with Hyper-V virtual machines.

Viewing VHDs in Disk Management

VHDs appear just like physical disks in Disk Management. When a VHD has been attached (that is, made available to the system for use), it appears blue. If the disk is detached (that is, made unavailable), its icon reverts to gray.

Creating a VHD

You must be a member of the Backup Operators or Administrators group, at minimum, to complete these steps.

To create a VHD

On the Action menu, select Create VHD.

In the Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk dialog box, specify both the location on the physical computer where you want the VHD file to be stored, and the size of the VHD.

In Virtual hard disk format, select Dynamically expanding or Fixed size, and then click OK.

Attaching and detaching a VHD

To make a VHD available for use (either one you have just created or another existing VHD):

On the Action menu, select Attach VHD.

Specify the location of the VHD, using a fully-qualified path.

To detach the VHD, making it unavailable: Right-click the disk, select Detach VHD, and then click OK. Detaching a VHD does not delete the VHD or any data stored in it.

Applies To: Windows Server 2012 R2

Starting in Windows ServerВ® 2012 R2, Hyper-V delivers the ability to expand or shrink the size of a virtual hard disk while the virtual machine is still running. For more information about resizing virtual hard disks, see Configure Online Virtual Hard Disk Resize.

Key benefits

Storage administrators can avoid costly downtime by performing maintenance operations on running virtual hard disks. Shutting down virtual machines is no longer required and this eliminates interruption to users accessing those virtual machines and helps reduce maintenance costs. Prior to Windows Server 2012 R2, if a virtual machine was online or a virtual hard disk was in use, it was not possible to perform maintenance on the virtual hard disk without temporarily shutting down the virtual machine.

Requirements

The following functionality is required for resizing a virtual hard disk:

A server capable of running Hyper-V. The server must have processor support for hardware virtualization. The Hyper-V role must be installed.

A user account that is a member of the local Hyper-V Administrators group or the Administrators group.

The following functionality is required for resizing a virtual hard disk:

VHDX – the ability to expand and shrink virtual hard disks is exclusive to virtual hard disks that are using the .vhdx file format. Online resizing is supported for VHDX disk types, including fixed, differencing, and dynamic disks. Virtual hard disks that use the .vhd file format are not supported for resizing operations.

SCSI controller – the ability to expand or shrink the capacity of a virtual hard disk is exclusive to .vhdx files that are attached to a SCSI controller. VHDX files that are attached to an IDE controller are not supported.

Understanding online resizing functionality

There are important concepts to understand when increasing or decreasing the capacity of a virtual hard disk.

Expanding a virtual hard disk

Expanding a virtual hard disk increases the disk capacity of the virtual hard disk. However, to make the additional disk space available to the virtual machine requires some extra configuration. From the perspective of the virtual machine, the virtual hard disk expansion is reflected under Disk Manager as an unallocated disk volume. The size of this unallocated volume is the difference between the original virtual hard disk and the nominated size of the expanded virtual hard disk.

To make the full virtual hard disk capacity available to the virtual machine, you need to use Disk Manager to expand the volume within the virtual machine. You can do this by using the Extend Volume Wizard within Disk Manager. After this is complete, you will be able to view the expanded disk capacity in the operating system of the virtual machine.

Shrinking a virtual hard disk

As expected, when you shrink a virtual hard disk, the virtual hard disk capacity is decreased. However, there is a limit to amount of disk space that can be adjusted when you shrink a virtual hard disk. That limit is defined by the size of the volume that is currently in use by the virtual machine. The Hyper-V Manager user interface shows the minimum disk size available for shrinking a virtual hard disk.

If you want to shrink the size of the virtual hard disk below the size of the currently used volume within the virtual machine, you must first use Disk Manager in the operating system of the virtual machine to shrink the volume. After that is complete, you can reduce the size of the virtual hard disk.

Performing online resizing operations

In Windows Server 2012 R2, the option to resize a virtual hard disk is available through the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard. However, the user interface option to shrink a virtual hard disk is only visible for virtual hard disks that have been previously expanded.

Administrators can use the Windows PowerShell interface for online virtual hard disk resizing operations.

WSL 2 uses a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) to store your Linux files. In WSL 2, a VHD is represented on your Windows hard drive as a .vhdx file.

The WSL 2 VHD uses the ext4 file system. This VHD automatically resizes to meet your storage needs and has an initial maximum size of 256GB. If the storage space required by your Linux files exceeds this size you may need to expand it. If your distribution grows in size to be greater than 256GB, you will see errors stating that you’ve run out of disk space. You can fix this error by expanding the VHD size.

To expand your maximum VHD size beyond 256GB:

Terminate all WSL instances using the command: wsl –shutdown

To find your distribution installation package name (‘PackageFamilyName’):

• Using PowerShell (where ‘distro’ is your distribution name) enter the command:
• Get-AppxPackage -Name “* *” | Select PackageFamilyName
• For example: Get-AppxPackage -Name “*Ubuntu*” | Select PackageFamilyName

Use the resulting PackageFamilyName to locate the VHD file fullpath used by your WSL 2 installation, this will be your pathToVHD . To find the full path:

• In your Start menu, enter: “%LOCALAPPDATA%” and select to open the %LOCALAPPDATA% file folder.
• Next, open the “Packages” folder and search for the PackageFamilyName of your distribution. Open that folder (ie. CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79xxxxx).
• Inside the PackageFamilyName folder, open the “LocalState” folder and find the .vhdx file.
• Copy the path to that file, it should look something like: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\

\LocalState\ .vhdx
For example, the

for Ubuntu 20.04 should look something like: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu20.04onWindows_79xxxx\LocalState\ext4.vhdx .

Resize your WSL 2 VHD by completing the following commands:

Open Windows Command Prompt with admin privileges and enter:

Examine the output of the detail command. The output will include a value for Virtual size. This is the current maximum. Convert this value to megabytes. For example, if the detail output shows Virtual size: 256 GB, convert this to 256000.

The new value you enter must be greater than this original value. As an example, to double the virtual size listed above, you could enter the value: 512000. Once you have determined the number you would like to set for your new size (in megabytes), enter the following command in your Windows Command Prompt diskpart prompt:

Exit diskpart

Launch your WSL distribution (Ubuntu, for example) and make sure it is running in WSL 2 (WSL 1 is not supported). You can confirm this using the command: wsl.exe -l -v .

Make WSL aware that it can expand its file system’s size by running these commands from your WSL distribution command line.

• You may see this message in response to the first mount command: “/dev: none already mounted on /dev.” This message can safely be ignored.
• Copy the name of this entry, which will look like: /dev/sdX (with the X representing any other character). In the following example the value of X is b:

• Using the example from above, we changed the vhd size to 512000, so the command would be: sudo resize2fs /dev/sdb 512000M .

You may need to install resize2fs. If so, you can use this command to install it: sudo apt install resize2fs .

The output will look similar to the following:

Resizes an existing virtual disk to be larger or smaller.

Syntax

Description

The Resize-VirtualDisk cmdlet resizes an existing virtual disk to be larger or smaller.

Note: The ability to expand or shrink is vendor specific.

Note: If there is a partition on the virtual disk, then the partition must also be resized in order for the client to have additional space on the disk surfaced to Windows.

Examples

EXAMPLE 1

This example changes the size of the VirtualDisk object. Note: Any associated Partition object must also be resized to utilize this space.

Parameters

Runs the cmdlet as a background job. Use this parameter to run commands that take a long time to complete.

Runs the cmdlet in a remote session or on a remote computer. Enter a computer name or a session object, such as the output of a New-CimSession or Get-CimSession cmdlet. The default is the current session on the local computer.

Prompts you for confirmation before running the cmdlet.

Specifies a friendly name for a disk. The friendly name may be defined by a user and is not guaranteed to be unique.

Specifies the input object that is used in a pipeline command.

Specifies the name of an object or setting.

Sends items from the interactive window down the pipeline as input to other cmdlets. By default, this cmdlet does not generate any output.

To send items from the interactive window down the pipeline, click to select the items and then click OK. Shift-click and Ctrl-click are supported.

Specifies the size of the partition to create. If not specified, then the number will default to Bytes. The acceptable values for this parameter are: Bytes, KB, MB, GB, or TB. The size may be defined by a user.

Specifies the maximum number of concurrent operations that can be established to run the cmdlet. If this parameter is omitted or a value of 0 is entered, then Windows PowerShellВ® calculates an optimum throttle limit for the cmdlet based on the number of CIM cmdlets that are running on the computer. The throttle limit applies only to the current cmdlet, not to the session or to the computer.

Specifies an ID used to uniquely identify a Disk object in the system. The ID persists through restarts.

Shows what would happen if the cmdlet runs. The cmdlet is not run.

Can’t seem to find anything on this. Only for VDI files. Is there any hope for me to resize a VHD file for VirtualBox? Currently, the VM hangs on Started Gnome Display Manager. Tried purging nvidia drivers but i think its because the hard drive is basically full. (I only gave it a small amount of space in the beginning..)

I want to resize the VHD file and make it larger now but, i can’t seem to find a way how.

The Edge is Real: Harness its Force

4 Replies

Locate your VDI you want to change and make note of the path. Default location is C:\Users\USERNAME\VirtualBox VMs

Open command prompt.

CD into C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox

From there type

VBoxManage modifyhd “C:\PATHTOVM\testvm.vdi” – – resize 81920

So that will resize my test.vdi to 80GB

Totally just f that up. did not see you put vhd sorry

Windows 10 host? resize-vhd powershell command.

Also, there’s VBoxHDTools:

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It Comes Down to This.

32+ years in IT at all levels, and the job search returns this as my best matchJust wow. Way to validate my existence.

Snap! Microsoft Build, DuckDuckGo, Windows File Explorer, happy Geek Pride Day!

Your daily dose of tech news, in brief. Happy Geek Pride, Towel, & Lilac Day! Not sure what that is? Then make sure to read the last story on here! You need to hear this. Microsoft shows off Windows updates at Build dev event Microsoft Bui.

Broadcom buying Vmware?

If this happens how will it affect us users?

Spark! Pro series 25th May 2022

Today in History: 1945 Arthur C. Clark proposes relay satellites in geosynchronous orbitArthur Charles Clarke was born on 16 December 1917 in Minehead, Somerset, United Kingdom. During the Second World War he was involved in developing the new technology .

Save to My DOJO

Table of contents

I’d like to think that we plan ahead and build Hyper-V virtual machines with adequate disk space. But sometimes our best plans can quickly fly out the window. Or you might have a legacy virtual machine that you can’t get rid of yet but its disk space is becoming an issue. Fortunately, this is easily remedied with the Resize-VHD cmdlet. Let me walk you through how I fixed such an issue.

On my test Hyper-V rig I have an older Windows 7 virtual machine that is just about out of space as you can see here.

Fig 1 Drive C running out of space

Since there’s very little to be done I’ll shut it down for now. I need to do that anyway in order to resize the VHD file anyway. Using PowerShell, I can get all of the disk files associated with the virtual machine and pass each path to the Get-VHD cmdlet to return more detailed information.

My results can be seen here.

Fig 2 the current state of the VHD file

As you can see from the highlighted section, there’s no more space in the VHD file. I’ll need to resize it. I’m a “belt and suspenders” kind of IT Pro, so first I’m going to create a copy of the existing VHD file in case something goes wrong by copying it to a different location.

Once that is finished I’m ready to begin resizing. The Resize-VHD cmdlet needs the path to the VHD (or VHDX) file. But I don’t feel like copying and pasting so I’ll modify copy command, since I already know it gets the problem disk file.

I am taking advantage of the Resize-VHD –WhatIf parameter to verify I’ve selected the correct disk file. I’m going to resize it to 20GB. This looks good so I can press the up arrow in the console, delete –Whatif and let the cmdlet do its thing. This shouldn’t take too long. I used –Passthru so the cmdlet would write the new disk file object back to the pipeline. You can see the new size.

Fig 3 The expanded VHD

Excellent. Time to fire up the virtual machine.

The operating system shows the new unallocated space.

Fig 4 Unallocated space after resizing

The process of extending the disk might vary by operating system. In this case, all I need to do is right-click on the C: partition, select Extend Volume and follow the wizard to use the new 5GB of space.

Fig 5 Extension complete.

Problem solved! Extending files will work with both VHD and VHDX formats. If you are using the latter, you can also shrink the volume back to its minimum size.

Lastly, let me demonstrate how to use PowerShell to determine which files might be in need of resizing. Here’s a relatively simple one-line PowerShell command that you could put into a script file.

This command gets all hard drives for all virtual machines and then selects some key properties. The main one is something I added called Utilization which should show you a utilization percentage. This sample is send the results to Out-Gridview so I can further sort and filter. I’ve clicked on the Utilization column to sort in descending order.

Figure 6 A disk drive utilization report

But you could just as easily save the information to a CSV file, XML or even an HTML report. I could even write a PowerShell script to take this information and for drives that exceed a certain value, calculate a new size based on a percentage such as 25%, take the virtual machine offline if running, resize the file and bring the virtual machine back on line. But personally, unless I was managing hundreds of virtual machines where this might be necessary, I’m quite satisfied to use PowerShell to identify what VHD files need resizing and then handling it on my own.

Over the years, this blog has been about many different things related to software development with Microsoft technologies. Since my current role focuses on PowerApps & Flow, that’s what it’s primarily about right now.

I got into a bit of a predicament where the C drive of the VM I created here started to fill up. I needed to install some software that only gave me the option to install to the C drive. The installer was telling me there wasn’t enough disk space. Here’s what I did to increase the size of the OS disk of my Azure VM:

• Delete the VM
• Download the .vhd
• Resize the downloaded .vhd
• Delete the original .vhd from blob storage
• Upload the resized .vhd
• Recreate the VM
• Use diskpart to get access to the unallocated part of C

Delete the VM

Download the .vhd

Cloud Storage Studio is my favorite storage tool for Windows Azure. If you’d prefer a free option, then my next favorite is Azure Storage Explorer. Use one of these to download the .vhd file. This part is going to require a local hard drive with lots of disk space. You will need at least 2x the size of the original VHD + the size you want to grow it by. A fast internet connection will be a big advantage here as well.

Resize the downloaded .vhd

You can use Hyper-V Manager to resize your .vhd file:

My challenge was that the PC with the disk space necessary to store the downloaded and expanded .vhd wasn’t Hyper-V capable. Therefore, I used a tool called VHD Resizer from here. There is a nice walkthrough of how to use it here.

Delete the original .vhd from blob storage

Upload the resized .vhd

You need to upload the resized .vhd back to blob storage. I figured out how to upload it correctly after reviewing Step 5 from the Creating and Uploading a Virtual Hard Disk that Contains the Windows Server Operating System instructions. However, the command line switches for csupload.exe need to look like this:

csupload Add-Disk –Destination “ ” –Label “ ” –LiteralPath “

Recreate the VM

I created a new VM via the management portal and pointed it to the .vhd file I uploaded with csupload. In my case, I had to re-attach an additional .vhd drive since my original .vhd was configured with an F drive where my database files were stored. Once your VM boots up, log in using Remote Desktop. For me, all of my SQL Server 2012 databases were in a recovering state. Not sure why. After I rebooted my server, everything was fine.

Use diskpart to get access to the unallocated part of C

Your C drive will still report the old size in Windows Explorer. You need to claim the additional unallocated space in the expanded drive. To do this, open a command prompt and execute the following series of commands in italics:

Make sure you select the os disk. For me, it was disk 0:

Find the partition that needs extending:

Select the partition. For me, it was partition 1:

Finally, extend the partition:

Now, you have the additional space in the drive you need to install more stuff .

VHD Set files are a new shared Virtual Disk model for guest clusters in Windows Server 2016. VHD Set files support online resizing of shared virtual disks, support Hyper-V Replica, and can be included in application-consistent checkpoints.

VHD Set files use a new VHD file type, .VHDS. VHD Set files store checkpoint information about the group virtual disk used in guest clusters, in the form of metadata.

Hyper-V handles all aspects of managing the checkpoint chains and merging the shared VHD set. Management software can run disk operations like online resizing on VHD Set files in the same way it does for .VHDX files. This means that management software doesn’t need to know about the VHD Set file format.

It’s important to evaluate the impact of VHD Set files before deployment into production. Make sure that there is no performance or functional degradation in your environment, such as disk latency.

Create a VHD Set file from Hyper-V Manager

1. Open Hyper-V Manager. Click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Hyper-V Manager.
2. In the Action pane, click New, and then click Hard Disk.
3. On the Choose Disk Format page, select VHD Set as the format of the virtual hard disk.
4. Continue through the pages of the wizard to customize the virtual hard disk. You can click Next to move through each page of the wizard, or you can click the name of a page in the left pane to move directly to that page.
5. After you have finished configuring the virtual hard disk, click Finish.

Create a VHD Set file from Windows PowerShell

Use the New-VHD cmdlet, with the file type .VHDS in the file path. This example creates a VHD Set file named base.vhds that is 10 Gigabytes in size.

Migrate a shared VHDX file to a VHD Set file

Migrating an existing shared VHDX to a VHDS requires taking the VM offline. This is the recommended process using Windows PowerShell:

Remove the VHDX from the VM. For example, run:

Convert the VHDX to a VHDS. For example, run:

Ever run into a situation that a virtual disk drive proved to small after a period of use? You can always add extra new virtual disk drives to provide extra storage for your virtual computer, but what if you require extra free space in one particular drive?

On the other hand, you can favour fixed size VHD files, and later discover you overdimensioned the virtual disk drive. How to make the fixed size VHD file smaller without converting it to the dynamically expanding type?

VHDMount utility and Symantec Ghost saves the day one more time. Here’s the procedure:

1. Create a new VHD file of new required size.
2. Mount the old and the new VHD files using VHDMount utility (distributed as a part of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1):

vhdmount /p /f old.vhd
vhdmount /p /f new.vhd

Note: Mounting the VHD files is possible only if the VHD files are not currently in use by any virtual machine or other program.
You should receive a “The Virtual Hard Disk is successfully plugged in as a virtual disk device.” response, followed by a series of “New hardware found” messages.

If the path to the VM file is in a deeply rooted or complex location, use quotes or using the drag drop to print path trick which works great in Terminal app to properly point to a complex directory hierarchy.

Resizing the drive with VBoxManage is basically instantaneous from the command line, but keep in mind that once you’re back in the virtual OS (Windows, OS X, Linux, or whatever else you have running in VirtualBox) you will probably want to reallocate the partition to use the new space.

I ran this to grow a dynamical allocation minimum size, if the VDI file is a fixed size and you want to shrink it, the VBoxManage tool will still do the job but the –compact flag is what you’re looking for.

VBoxManage is a helpful tool with a lot of great uses, you can also use it to quickly clone a virtual disk and modify nearly anything within VirtualBox from the command line. If you plan on using VBoxManage often, you may want to add it to your path or create an alias for easier access.

Know of another way to resize a VirtualBox VDI? Let us know in the comments.

By common method, for example, creating VHD in Windows 7 disk management or Virtual PC, with partition assistant you can resize Windows 7 VHD to better optimize the VHD performance.

By Bryce / Last Updated March 11, 2022

What is VHD?

VHD, or Virtual Hard Disk, is a virtual disk file format, structurally identical to a physical hard disk drive. It contains what can be found on a physical hard disk drive, such as files, folders, file system and disk partitions, which is typically used as the hard disk of a virtual machine in Windows 7 or Virtual PC. A Virtual Hard Disk is able to allow multiple operating systems to reside on a single host machine. It can provide a platform that developers test software on different operating systems without the high cost of actual hardware. The ability will directly change machine’s configurations to support various applications.

In today’s world, with the call of “green environment, green business”, VHD is the best solution for IT cost-effective development. The main benefits result from the ability to boot a physical computer from a virtual hard drive:

Ease of deployment: IT organizations can deploy standardized, “pre-built” configurations on a single VHD.

Backup-and-Restore: Changes to the contents of a VHD (such as infection by a virus, or accidental deletion of critical files) are easily undone.

Multi-User Isolation: Many current operating systems support having multiple users, but offer varying degrees of protection between them. By giving each user their own version of the operating system, by creating for each of them a differencing VHD based on a base installation of the OS.

You can learn more knowledge through the line: (file_format).

How to Resize VHD Partition through Partition Assistant?

At present, only Windows 7 Enterprise Edition, Unlimited Edition and Server 2008 can allow physical computer to mount and create VHD file from its disk manager, and then you can use partition manager like Partition Assistant to manage all disk partitions in the Virtual Hard Disk, including resize, extend, shrink partition and repartition with all data protected.

1. Install Partition Manager Assistant to your computer. Here is a example, download it to Windows 7 operating system.

2. Attach the virtual hard disk VHD file. Open disk manager by right clicking “My Computer” > Manage > Storage > Disk Management, and choose the “Active” menu to Attach VHD. Of course, you also can Create VHD and create partition in it by using Partition Assistant.

VHD Manu Options

Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk

3. Launch Partition Assistant Standard Edition, which is a freeware for Home and Business Users. In Main function interface and you will directly get the hard drive information of your working station computer, like disk model, partition file system, capacity etc.

4. Select the partition in VHD to resize it and then click “OK” to adjust the partition size.

Table of Content

• Check VHD in Disk Management
• Shrink a partition in VHD
• Extend a partition in VHD
• Partition Expert extend VHD drive
• Partition Extender increase VHD volume size
• Detach VHD
• Offline VHD
• Errors prompted when managing VHD
  • This disk image isn’t initialized
  • Can’t delete VHD

We already covered how to create vhd in Disk Management, we haven’t gone very deep in how to resize vhd disk partitions, extend or shrink them, we’ll do that in this page

Check VHD in Disk Management

Open Disk Management and check the disk map, if you can see the blue disk icon, then the VHD is listed, otherwise, click Active and Attach VHD

Shrink a partition in VHD

• In Disk Manager, right-click on the partition you’d like to shrink
• Click Shrink Volume and specify the target size or use the recommended number
• Click Shrink

I create a 10M VHD, it becomes 9M after initialized and turns to 7M when creating a partition, so I can’t shrink this volume, I’ll make it to 1G in the extending volume example

BTW, creating 1G VHD takes me 1 min, 10 G takes about 5 mins

Extend a partition in VHD

Virtual disks are widely used on the Server side, mostly a VHD means a single user and an individual system, so it’s likely to get some partition running out of space, extend volume in Disk Management can be a helper, do the followings to enlarge a VHD partition:

1. Check if there’s contiguous unallocated space to the drive you’d like to extend
2. If it’s Yes, right-click on the target drive
3. Click Extend Volume and follow the extend volume wizard

Or if it’s No, or there’s no such space, we can delete the adjacent partition and make that space available, so do this instead:

1. Right-click on a partition we had to delete
2. Click Delete Volume and click Yes to the warning message
3. Click on the target drive and Extend Volume on it

Backup the about-to-delete partition first to other partition or other external storage media before we proceed to delete, and don’t forget to create this partition again when we have left enough unallocated space after extending the other drive

Partition Expert extend VHD drive

We don’t really have to delete any partition to extend another volume, we can simply resize the small volume without data loss, I mean, without formatting or deleting.

In Partition Expert we can perform operations below:

1. Right-click on the large partition
2. Click on Resize/Move Volume
3. Drag the header handle to the right
4. Click on the smaller partition
5. Repeat step 2
6. Drag the footer handle to the right
7. Click OK and Commit

If the large partition is not right next to the small partition, don’t worry, use the Resize/Move Volume function to move unallocated space ahead and next to the small partition

Let’s assume the small partition is C: Drive and the large partition is D: Drive, we can easily enlarge C Drive without data loss in D Drive

Partition Extender increase VHD volume size

The above-mentioned method is to create unallocated space first and then merge that space to the small partition, or C: Drive, i.e., easy to understand but a little bit troublesome, can we just make it simpler?

Sure thing, we can use Partition Extender instead.

In Partition Extender, steps are easy to follow:

1. Directly click on the small-sized partition
2. Click Next
3. Drag the handle and click OK

Then you increased the small partition size and decrease the other partition at the same, one step for two operations

Detach VHD

Detach the VHD so that it doesn’t show in Disk Management and File Explorer

Detach won’t delete partitions and data in it

But we can still access the disk by directly navigating to the folder that contains this file, the .vhd format file, once you double-click the file, the VHD attaches itself automatically in Disk Management

Offline VHD

If you don’t want to any user to check the files on a detach VHD, you can make the disk offline

1. Right-click on the VHD in Disk Management
2. Click Offline
3. Click Yes to confirm

Then when you try to access this .vhd file, you’ll get an error

Errors prompted when managing VHD

• The disk image isn’t initialized
• Can’t delete VHD

This disk image isn’t initialized

When you directly access this file (double-click) right after creating, you’ll get this error message

Steps to fix this issue, we’ll:

1. Right-click on the disk or the red arrow in Disk Management
2. In the pop up window choose MBR or GPT and click OK

Then the disk becomes unallocated space, right-click on it and choose New Simple Volume and follow the wizard to create a new partition, and finally, you can access the volume, it will auto pop up after it finishes formatting

Next time you run Disk Management, it will auto pop up the initialize window if you forget the VHD disk after creating

Can’t delete VHD

When you try to delete the VHD and you don’t detach it from Disk Management, you’ll get this message

To fix this, we try to:

1. Right-click on the disk
2. Click Detach VHD
3. Click OK

Now you can delete the .vhd file like the way deleting other files, press the Delete button and it will go to recycle bin, press Shift + Delete and it gone, can’t be restored from recycle bin

How to Create VHD: On Windows, a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD or VHDX) is the file format that represents a Virtual Disk Drive. The VHD or VHDX files act like a Physical Hard Drive, but the difference is that this is a real file stored on a disk. VHD contains Disk Partition, File System, Partition Table, and files and folders. You can store any files in VHD or VHDX such as the document, videos, pictures, music, and entire OS.

Typically, a VHD file is used to add additional storage to use Hyper-V technology. With Virtual Drive, you can install other OSs in the existing operating system. You can use this storage virtualization technology to make a dual-boot OS machine in the existing disk partition. The difference between VHD and VHDX format is that the VHDX format supports the larger size of 64 TB disk.

In this article, we explain the process to create, attach, and detach a virtual hard disk with Windows Disk Management Utility. VHD is virtualized hard disk file, which once appears on the amount and gives a lot of identity to a physical hard drive. They are most commonly used with Hyper-V virtual machines. We will carry you through the steps to create, mount, and unmount virtual hard disks on Windows.

How to Create VHD or VHDX Files on All Windows Versions?

Create a VHD file on Windows by using the following steps: –

Step 1. Open Start, and search “Disk Management” or “Computer Management”.

Step 2. You can also open the Disk Management utility with This PC (My Computer) >> Right Click >> Open Manage option.

Step 3. Open the Disk Management option, and click on the Action button or create a VHD file.

Step 4. “Create and Attach Virtual Hard Disk” Wizard open, you can find three different sections.

• Location
• Virtual Hard Disk format
• Virtual Hard Disk Type

Step 5. Click the browse option and choose the location you want to save VHD or VHDX files.

Step 6. Use the Save as Type option such as Virtual Disk Files (*.vhd, *.vhdx), if you plan to create VHD or VHDX directly.

Step 7. Under “Virtual Hard Disk Size“, specify the size of the VHD or VHDX file in MB, GB, or TB.

Step 8. In “Virtual Hard Disk Format” choose VHD or VHDX option according to requirement.

Step 9. In “Virtual Hard Disk Type” select VHD file types such as Fixed Size and Dynamically Expanding.

Step 10. Now, click on the “Ok” option to create VHDX or VHD files.

Virtual Hard Disk Type – Fixed & Dynamic VHD files

Before creating a Virtual Disk, make sure that the necessary storage is available on your physical hard drive. Different types of Virtual Hard disks are fully dependent on virtual machine application software. But, usually, there are two types of Fixed and Dynamic VHD files.

Fixed: – Fixed virtual hard disk is a fixed size disk image whose size is determined while creating it. Even if you change the internal data files in a certain disk image, the size will be defined as before.

Dynamic Expanding: – The Dynamically Expanding file grows to its maximum size as data is written to the VHD or VHDX files size limitation.

How to Mount VHD or VHDX Files on Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7?

Follow the below steps to mount VHD or VHDX files on Windows: –

Step 1. Open Disk Management utility and open Action >> Attach VHD file option.

Step 2. Choose the VHD file location, and click on Ok open to the load VHD file.

Step 3. Right-click on disk and open Initialize Disk option.

Step 4. Use the partition style such as MBR (Master Boot Record), or GPT (GUID Partition Table).

Step 5. Now, Right-click the unallocated space, and open “New Simple Volume” option to create Partition.

Step 6. Now, Stipulate the size of the VHD or VHDX partition.

Step 7. In the next step, assign a drive letter to your VHD or VHDX file.

Step 8. Now, choose the File System of your Virtual Disk and Format VHD Partition.

Step 9. Click Finish to complete the process.

How to detach / Unmounted VHD or VHDX files in Windows?

Save any files and applications that reside in VHDX or VHD files before detaching or dismounting them to avoid data loss. Follow the below steps to detach the VHD file from the Disk Management utility.

Step 1. Open Disk Management utility.

Step 2. Right-click on the VHD Disk drive, and choose to Detach VHD option.

Step 3. Check before detaching the correct disk or drive, and click on ok to detach VHD or VHDX file.

Step 4. Lastly, After a few seconds, the VHD or VHDX disk will no longer be displayed in the Disk Management utility.

The Final Word

Finally, in this article, you will learn the process of creating VHD or VHDX files without using Virtual Machine. With Windows Disk Management utility, also, you can easily create numbers of VHD or VHDX files to keep store your data without Physical Hard Disk.

by Jamil Parvez 11/06/2021, 10:14 am 653 Views

A VHD Virtual Hard Disk Recovery file is just like a physical hard drive that has elements like, file systems, disk partitions a boot record, saved data, etc. Loss or corruption of one such file means losing the entire data stored on the VHD. Here is everything you may want to know about how to recover or repair VHD Files.

Virtual Hard Disk Just like physical hard drives, VHD files are at risk for accidental deletion, corruption, virus attacks, and other reasons of data loss. The ability to restore data from a VHD image could be very valuable.

Step by step attach and Copy files from a VHD

I needed some important files that I had backed up as a WindowsImageBackup to the external drive. The only option I could retrieve data from my external disk was buried in system images that I had created. You might think my only way is to restore those system images.

VHD Virtual Hard Disk Recovery Mount a VHD File in Windows

Please make sure you have your VHD file accessible. Right-click on the Windows start button and then select Disk Management.

Select the Action menu and then Attach VHD.

Select browse button.

Browse the location of your VHD file. I am using a VHD file stored as a Windows System Image. Click open.

The virtual hard disk file is then mounted in Disk Management, just as a physical drive.

Browse your VHD disk volume to see your data.

When you have done using the VHD, simply right click on VHD disk and then select Detach VHD.

What to do if your VHD is not assigned a drive letter

Sometimes your VHD might not have a drive letter assigned when you attach it, especially if it is the first time you are attaching the file.
Right-click the VHD and then select change drive letter and paths.

Click Add button.

Choose the radio box Assign the following drive letter and then select in the drive letter list box. Choose an available drive letter and then click ok twice.

For more details click here

I am going to describe two possible methods to copy an entire physical disk drive to a Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive VHD file using Symantec Ghost. The method to choose depends whether you may remove source physical drive and plug it in another computer for the purpose of copying, or not.

To make an accurate snapshot copy of a source physical hard drive, the drive must be offline. That’s why you can’t just run GHOST32 and copy a running Windows disk drive to the VHD.

• The VHDMount utility, which is distributed as a part of Microsoft Virtual Server but can be installed seperately.
• The GHOST32 utility, which is a part of Symantec Ghost installation.

Any method you choose, do it at your own risk.

1. Unplug the physical drive and plug it in another computer

This method is simpler, but implies twiddling with your hardware. You’ll need a source hard drive and a destination computer where you perform the copy.

If the source hard drive was used in a computer using LBA and the destination computer uses Bit-shift sector translation (or vice versa) this method won’t work. GHOST32 on the destination computer won’t recognize the partitions on source drive if the sector translation algorithms in BIOS differ.

Plug in source drive

Plug in the source drive in the destination computer, but make sure it’s used as a secondary drive so you don’t accidentally boot from it.

Turn on the destination computer and bo0t its Windows. Not Windows on the source disk!

Prepare empty VHD file

Use Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server to create a new VHD file of desired size and form (fixed size or dynamically expanding). To get you started, I’ve prepared a 130GB dynamically expanding new VHD file, you can download here.

I wrote another post about handling the VHD files, you can read here.

Make sure you put the VHD file on a partition that is not part of the source drive you wish to copy.

Install VHDMount utility

Download Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 or newer and run the setup. You can select to install the VHDMount utility only. I suggest a restart after the install.

Mount empty VHD file as local drive

Using VHDMount utility you can mount the VHD file as a local hard drive. Execute:

vhdmount /p /f image.vhd

You should receive a “The Virtual Hard Disk is successfully plugged in as a virtual disk device.” response, followed by a series of “New hardware found” messages.

Copy source drive to VHD file

Run GHOST32 utility, which can be found in the directory where you’ve installed Symantec Ghost. Using GHOST32 utility, you can copy any localy attached disk drive to any localy attached disk drive ( Local › Disk › To Disk ) . Thus, you can copy the source drive to the mounted VHD file. Make sure you choose the destination disk drive that represents the mounted VHD file, as you can easily overwrite any other local disk drive. Use GDISK32 utility to determine first which one is the source drive and which one the “MS Virtual Server” drive if uncertain.

Once transfer is complete you can safely choose not to restart the computer and just exit GHOST32. Unmouting the VHD file is sufficient.

Unmount the VHD file

Use VHDMount utility once again to unmount the VHD file. Execute:

vhdmount /u image.vhd

2. Copy over network

This method requires a bit more work, but you don’t need you to open any computer at all. I’ll assume you have a network and a DHCP server installed correctly, and two computers connected to the network. The source computer is the one with the drive to copy and the destination computer is the one to hold the VHD file.

Prepare boot media for source computer

Using Symantec Ghost Boot Wizard create a boot media with networking support for the source computer. Make sure you install the correct driver for the network adapter the source computer is using to access your network.

Boot source computer from boot media

Insert the boot media into the source computer and use it to boot the computer. The Symantec Ghost programme should start. Make sure, the Peer to peer option is not greyed out, as you’ll need it later. If it is greyed out, it means, the network drivers you installed on your boot media, are not working. Try another.

Prepare empty VHD file

Use Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server to create a new VHD file of desired size and form (fixed size or dynamically expanding). To get you started, I’ve prepared 130GB dynamically expanding new VHD file, you can download here.

I wrote another post about handling the VHD files, you can read here.

The VHD file should reside on the destination computer, if that wasn’t obvious by now.

Install VHDMount utility

Download Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 or newer and run the setup on the destination computer. You can select to install the VHDMount utility only. I suggest a restart after the install.

Mount empty VHD file as local drive

Using VHDMount utility you can mount VHD file as a local hard drive on the destination computer. Execute:

vhdmount /p /f image.vhd

You should receive a “The Virtual Hard Disk is successfully plugged in as a virtual disk device.” response, followed by a series of “New hardware found” messages.

Run GHOST32 on destination computer

On the destination computer run the GHOST32 utility, which can be found in the directory where you’ve installed Symantec Ghost, and configure it as a network slave mode ( Peer to peer › TCP/IP › Slave ). Remember the IP displayed.

Copy source drive to VHD file

Go back to the source computer, where the Symantec Ghost programme is already running. Configure it as a network master ( Peer to peer › TCP/IP › Master ). Enter the IP of the slave/destination computer. Using the Symantec Ghost programme, you can copy any localy attached disk drive on the source computer to any localy attached disk drive on the destination computer. Make sure you choose the destination disk drive that represents the mounted VHD file on the destination computer, as you can easily overwrite any other disk drive on the destination computer. Use GDISK32 utility on the destination computer to determine first which one is the “MS Virtual Server” drive if uncertain.

Once transfer is complete you can safely choose not to restart the destination computer and just exit GHOST32. Unmouting the VHD file is sufficient.

Unmount the VHD file

Use VHDMount utility on destination computer once again to unmount the VHD file. Execute:

Hyper-V is previously known as Windows Server Virtualization and it is able to create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Working with Hyper-V dynamically expanding disks is always a risk because disk grows in an uncontrolled way and in a few times reaches the maximum size. To handle this issue you can examine disk size changes on a regular basis and can reconfigure the virtual hard disk properties manually. To ensure impressive storage space allocation, user can compact or shrink virtual hard disks. In this blog, we will know how to compact and shrink Hyper-V Virtual Disk. Follow to the end.

What is Hyper-V Dynamically Expanding Disks?

Hyper-V dynamically expanding disks allow you to use physical storage space effectively. Primarily, users create dynamically expanding disks it is small in size but as well as new data is added it reaches the maximum size, thus allowing you to minimize storage costs. It works well in the development and testing environment and very much compatible with servers running non-disk intensive applications.

Main Difference Between Shrinking and Compacting Virtual Hard Disks

Reducing the Maximum size limit of Hyper-V disk is shrinking of the virtual hard disk while the physical disk space ingested by a virtual disk is reduced and unused physical disk space gets reclaimed is compacting of the virtual hard disk. Shrinking only reduces the storage capacity but compact allows the user to dense the file size of a virtual hard disk and leaving the storage capacity intact.

Now in the next part, we will know the methods to shrink and compact Hyper-V virtual disk.

Note: Before shrinking the hyper v shrink disk or compacting the hyper v compact disk, it is suggested that please empty the Recycle Bin, defragment the disk, and then create its backup to protect critical data in case of disk failure. Remember that the VM using the disk needs to be turned off for the compact operation to work.

How to Shrink Hyper-V Virtual Disk?

Mainly three types of virtual hard disk – fixed, differencing and dynamically expanding. They have the fix upper size limit which can be reduced by the shrink method. Follow the below steps to shrink the virtual hard disk:

• Open Hyper-V Manager and connect >> login to the Virtual Machine.
• After that, launch the Disk Management tool and to launch this tool type MSC in the search bar.
• Right-click the disk volume that you want to shrink, and select the Shrink Volume option from the drop-down menu.

• Now enter the amount of space you wish to shrink in MB. Click Shrink.
• After shrinking, as a result, you will have roughly 25 GB of unallocated disk space.

• Finally, shut down the Virtual Machine and again open it, and again in Hyper-V Manager, right-click the VM and select Settings.
• In the Hardware section, click Hard Drive to get access to the virtual hard disk settings.

• Choose Edit to open the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard. Skip the Locate Disk step if already selected which disk you would like to shrink. Click Next.
• Select Shrink in the Choose Action section and click Next.

• The next step is to configure the new size of the virtual hard disk.

Now you will see the difference between the current disk size and the minimum size is equal to the amount of extra disk space which was previously created inside the VM.

• Here you can look at the changes that you are about to implement, in the Summary section. Click Finish to complete the action and close the wizard.
• Click Inspect to verify that the disk size has actually changed and you have successfully shrunk the virtual hard disk.

Finally, the maximum disk size has successfully reduces to 115 GB.

How to Compact Hyper-V Virtual Disk?

Hyper v shrink disk doesn’t reduce the storage capacity only reduces the file size of the virtual hard disk by removing empty blocks from the file. Now to compact hyper v virtual disk follow the steps below

1. Login and open Hyper-V Manager. Right-click the Virtual Machine (VM) and select Settings.
2. Click Hard Drive to get access to the virtual hard disk attached to this VM. Then click Edit to launch the Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard.
3. Skip the Locate Disk step if already selected which disk you would like to shrink. Click Next.
4. In the Choose Action select the Compact option.
5. Now in the Summary, verify the changes which are made to the virtual hard disk. Click Finish to complete the action and close the wizard.

Conclusion

I have discussed how to compact and shrink Hyper-V virtual disk in detail and also describe the shrinking and compacting method step by step. But it seems like a very complicated and required technical expertise to perform the above methods. So, many times it happens that the Virtual disk data get effect during shrinking or compacting the hyper v virtual disk. So if due to whatever reason you face any issue in the Hyper v VHD file then you can use the VHDX File Recovery tool to repair and recover the corrupt VHD file. It is a high-class vhd restoration software which can easily save the VHD data without any data alteration.

Do you get stuck with VMDK files and wish to convert VMDK Files to VHD formats? To migrate from VMDK to VHD, one must learn the basics of the two file formats VMDK and VHD file in detail. There are two kinds of tools that permit users to extend the utilization of the hardware i.e, VMware and Hyper-V. Know more about both of them in this detailed guide.

Moving on to the introduction of two file extensions respectively. You can read here major difference between VHDX and VHD file format.

Table of Contents

What Do You Mean by VMDK File Virtualbox?

VMDK is also referred to as virtual machine disk, that is generated by VMware machines. A virtual machine can easily replicate a computer system and provide attributes as well. A .vmdk file can save the whole data to a hard drive and can further be utilized as a uniform hard drive or backup device for important files. With a VMDK file, one can save upto 2TB of information. However, using VMware vSphere, one can save almost 62 GB of data. Several VMware products utilize VMDK file format, such as:

• VMware Server
• VMware ESXi
• VMware Fusion
• VMware Workstation
• VMware ESX
• VMware Player

Also, there are a variety of third-party applications that utilize the same file extension. Lets read here the difference between VMWare and VirtualBox.

What Do You Understand About VHD File?

A VHD file is formerly renown as Virtual Hard Disk. It was first introduced by Connectix for virtualization, but in 2003, it was bought by Microsoft. In 2005, VHD format was available to third parties under Microsoft Open Specification Promise. A VHD can work as a traditional physical disk to download OS, generate files/folders, open applications, etc. Also, the VHD file does not have any file size restriction and can further be controlled by a virtualization manager. If anyhow your VHD file have corruption issues you can repair them easily with the help of VHD Recovery software.

Now, let’s take a look at what requirements users need to make sure before converting VMDK to VHD Virtualbox.

Prerequisites:

• Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012 Operating Systems
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or 4 if you are running MVMC on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Validates Bits Compact server
• Visual C++ Readjustable for Visual Studio 2012 Upgrade 1.
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 if you’re downloading MVMC on Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8

Effortless Ways to Convert VMDK Files using Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2019:

It is a self-sufficient utility built for IT professionals or solution providers who wish to update themselves using Virtual Machine Disks to Microsoft’s Hyper-V hosts and Azure. Users who feel the need to migrate physical machines/disks to Hyper-V hosts can also utilize this utility.

Moreover, it is compatible with Windows PowerShell that permits a user to automate conversions and merge them with data centre automation workflows. As one can observe, it is the brand new variant of Virtual Machine Converter, Besides, it comprises online migration of physical machines to virtual hard disks.

Now, let’s have a look at the process to convert VMDK files to VHD formats.

• First, install and run the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter on your local PC.
• Secondly, after downloading the utility, begin the PowerShell and utilize the cmdlet to export the following module:
• Thirdly, Import-Module in to this file path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter\mvmcCmdlet.psd1” Once the module is forwarded, one can utilize the below cmdlet to convert VMDK to VHD PowerShell.
• Now, convert VMDK files into VHD by the following path:

VPSC:\>ConvertTo-MvmcVirtualHardDisk-SourceLiteralPathE:\SERVERNAME\SERVERNAME.vmdk -VhdType DynamicHardDisk -VhdFormat vhdx -destination E:\VHD\

• Lastly, after the VMDK file is successfully exported to VHD. Then, you can create a new VM in Hyper-V manager and select an existing disk. If you have several disks, then generate VM with lone disk and include others.

If you are performing the manual conversion of VMDK files to VHD, you may face corruption issues in VMDK Files. So, to avoid such corruption issues, use VMDK Recovery Software to quickly recover those corrupted VMDK files.

One must also know the reasons for the conversion of VMDK to VHD files.

Potential Reasons to Convert VMDK to VHD Files:

There can be various causes behind the need for VMDK to VHD conversion. Suppose you wish to migrate from VMware environment to Microsoft Hyper-V, then you must transfer VMDK file VHD format. If an individual is utilizing Azure cloud service, then to export VMware load to the cloud, he/she must try to Convert VMDK to VHD Virtualbox format.

• Users often find it manageable to work on the Windows platform, as they do not require an extra acknowledgement for such tasks.
• Microsoft Hyper-V is an inbuilt attribute attached to Windows server, so that users need not have to pay extra cost for VM.
• If some users wish to export VMDK files to VHD format for saving them from any data leak or saving it as a backup.

Wrapping It Up:

This article defined the ways to convert VMDK to VHD files. Besides, there is no alternative approach available to export VMDK files. Although, users can utilize the manual strategy to attain the VMDK backup in VHD format. Either way, the user can face issues while performing the manual approach. So, he/she can try using the automated approach to recover VMDK file data by taking the file backup.

Save to My DOJO

Table of contents

Hyper-V Manager isn’t just for working with virtual machines. It also has the ability to perform a number of operations directly on virtual hard disks (VHDs). This includes the VHDX format introduced in 2012.

One of these features is the ability to transfer data from an existing physical or virtual hard disk into an a new file. You can use this task to save the contents of a drive from a failed system, to make a clean duplicate of a virtual disk as a new dynamically expanded disk with all the empty blocks removed, or any reason that you might come up with. When used with a source virtual disk, this is the graphical equivalent of the Convert-VHD PowerShell cmdlet, as it makes a new disk file out of an existing one, potentially with a completely different configuration.

Warning : You cannot use this to convert a guest installed in UEFI mode (Generation 2) to BIOS mode (Generation 1) or vice versa.

How to copy a disk’s contents to a new VHD in Hyper-V in 7 steps:

1. In Hyper-V Manager, select the host that you want to create the new disk on in the left-most pane. In the Actions pane at the right, click New, then Hard Disk.

Start the New VHD Wizard

New VHD Wizard: Version Select

New VHD Wizard: Type Select

New VHD Wizard: Select Destination

New VHD Wizard: Select Source

New VHD Wizard: Confirmation

Your new virtual disk file is filled with the contents of the source and is ready to use!

Resizing a Fixed disk

Resizing can only be done on dynamically allocated disks. So one must first convert the disk to dynamic then resize.

In reality there is no way to change between Fixed-size and dynamic disks. However one may clone the existing Virtual Machine form one format to the other. This works with VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) format

The tool one needs for the said conversion and resizing is VBoxManage.exe and this can be found in:

Dynamic to fixed Cloning

VBoxManage clonehd [Current_VHD] [New-VHD] –variant Fixed

Fixed to Dynamic Cloning

VBoxManage clonehd [Current_VHD] [New-VHD] –variant Standard

VBoxManage modifyhd [New-VHD] –resize [megabytes]

Note that resizing only works with increasing the size

Open a Command Prompt near the VHD (using Shift + Right Click)

C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage clonehd Win7.vhd Win7D.vhd –variant Standard

And wait for it to finish.

“C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VboxManage” modifyhd Win7D.vhd –resize 40000

Importing the new Virtual Machine

Locate the new VM and Create and Power it up

Today we will see how to create and configure (initialized and formatted) a new VHD y VHDX virtual hard disk file in Windows 11/10 using Disk Management. But before we get started, let’s take a look at what a VHD and a VHDX are.

What is VHD and VHDX?

• VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) is a file format that represents a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). It can contain what is on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and folders. It is normally used as the hard drive of a virtual machine.
• VHDX is a Hyper-V virtual hard disk file format. VHDX has a storage capacity of 64TB, much higher than the previous 2TB limit of the VHD format. It also provides protection against data corruption during power failures and optimizes the structural alignments of dynamic and differencing disks to prevent performance degradation on new large physical disks.

You can choose to have a fixed size o dynamic expansion Archivo VHD o VHDX.

• Fixed size = This type of disc provides better performance. The virtual hard disk file is allocated to its maximum size when the virtual hard disk is created.
• Dynamic expansion = This type of disk provides better use of physical storage space. The virtual hard disk file grows to its maximum size as data is written to the virtual hard disk.

Once you have the new . Vhd o .vhdx file created and configured, you can copy or move it to any Windows 10 PC you want to mount it on.

When you mount a .vhd or .vhdx file in Windows, it will be added as a drive in this computer to open it from.

Create a new VHD or VHDX file in Windows 11/10

1. Press Windows Key + R. In the Run dialog box, type diskmgmt.msc, hit Enter to open Disk Management.
2. Click Action in the menu bar and click Create virtual hard drive.
3. In the dialog box that appears, click the Home button.
4. Browse to and select and open the location (folder or drive) where you want to create and save the .vhd or .vhdx file, type a file name you want and click Save.
5. Enter the size (eg: “1 GB”) you want for the virtual hard drive.
6. Select the radio button to VHD o VHDX for which virtual hard disk format you want.
7. Select the radio button to Fixed size o Dynamic expansion for the type of virtual hard disk you want.
8. Click OK.

You have now successfully created a VHD or VHDX file.

How to set up a new VHD or VHDX file via Disk Management

1. Open the new blank .vhd or .vhdx file that you created.

This will add the new virtual hard disk as an unknown (uninitialized) unallocated disk in Disk Management.

2. Click OK in the Could not mount file error message indicator.

3. Open Disk management (Press Win + R. Type diskmgmt.msc in the box, press Enter.)

4. Right-click the unknown disk (eg “Disk 1”) for the unallocated virtual hard disk and click initialize disk.

5. In initialize disk dialog box, select the radio button for MBR or GPT for the partition style you want for the virtual hard disk, and click OK.

6. In Disk managementright click on the not assigned disk for the virtual hard drive and click New Simple Volume.

7. In New Simple Volume Wizard dialog box, click Next.

8. Make sure single volume size is the same size as Maximum disk space (for example: 1021), and click Next.

9. Select the radio button to Assign the following drive letterselect the drive letter (ex: “E”) you want from the virtual hard drive drop-down menu and click Next.

If you only want to configure the virtual hard disk without mounting right now, you can select the radio button to Do not assign a drive letter or drive path instead of.

10 Select the radio button to Format this volume with the following settingsSelect the File System (for example: NTFS) you want for the virtual hard drive, type a volume label (for example: “Lab VHD”) you want for the mounted name of the virtual hard disk and click Next.

11 Click Finalize.

now you can go out Disk management.

You have successfully configured a VHD or VHDX file which you can now mount y disassemble on any Windows 10 system.

We hope you find this tutorial on how to create and set up a new VHD or VHDX file in Windows 10.