Microsoft developers have added to Windows 7 the ability to create and connect virtual hard drives, without using a third party for this software. Today we will look at the question of how to create a virtual hard drive, initialize and connect so that the OS recognizes it and displays it as a regular HDD partition.

operating room Windows system 7 allows you to create virtual hard drives without using third-party software to do so. However, that’s not all; the “seven” allows you to make sure that the created virtual hard the disk was perceived by the system as an ordinary one, one that is installed in a computer case.

So hard drive very convenient to use. Judge for yourself. Firstly, you can store files on it, both encrypted and in plain form, or OS backups. Secondly, you can install additional operating system. Third, include it in home network and synchronize with other home devices.

Creating a Windows 7 virtual disk

So, to create and then connect a virtual hard disk that will be detected as a regular one in Windows 7, open Control Panel. To do this, click on the “Start” button and in the menu that opens, on the right, follow the appropriate link.

In the panel that opens, go to the “System and Security” section, and then click on “Administration”. In a new window, open “Computer Management”.

In the “Computer Management” window that appears on your screen, sequentially, as shown in the figure below, expand the menu on the left side of the window and right-click on “Disk Management”. In the appeared context menu Click on “Create Virtual Hard Disk”.

Next, in a new dialog box, you will be asked to determine the location for the virtual hard drive, to do this, click on the “Browse” button. Also in the same window, give the new disk a name, for example, “vhhd”. Specify the desired size of the future disk, and activate the “Fixed size” radio button in the “Virtual disk format” section to speed up its operation as much as possible. Complete the disk settings by clicking on the “Ok” button to start creating a VHD file with the specified amount of virtual space by Windows 7. Virtual hard Windows disk 7 will be created.

Initializing the created disk

We created a Windows 7 virtual hard disk, it can be seen and accessed from the “Computer Management” section, but so far the system does not see it, and, therefore, neither do we.

So that it starts to appear as a regular HDD in Explorer or another file manager, it needs to be initialized (connected). To do this, in the “Computer Management” window, right-click on its icon and in the context menu that appears, find and select the “Initialize disk” line. Then agree with everything that the system offers you by clicking “Yes”.

Once the virtual disk has been initialized, you should begin creating a simple volume from it. To do this, right-click on the disk and in the context menu that opens, select “Create a simple volume”, then follow the prompts and instructions of the creation wizard.

That's all. We created and connected a virtual disk, now you can use it like a regular hard disk.

The only thing else worth paying attention to is how to disable it and, if necessary, remove it.

Removing a virtual hard disk

If over time you no longer need the created virtual disk, you can easily delete it. Open the “Computer Management” window as described above. Select the virtual hard disk, right-click on it and select “Detach virtual hard disk” from the context menu. In the dialog box that appears, check the “Delete virtual hard disk after removing the disk” checkbox. The disk will be ejected and the VHD file will be deleted.

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

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

Virtual optical drive and its applications

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

A nice thing for owners of computers with the Windows 10 operating system is that it already has a virtual DVD-ROM installed. Therefore, Windows 10 owners will not have to use third party programs for mounting images.

To mount the image optical disk into a virtual DVD-ROM, we need the image itself. For example, we will use image with operating Linux system Ubuntu. You can download the 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.

Having downloaded the image, you can begin to mount it directly. To do this, right-click on the image file to open the context menu.

The mounted “virtual disk” can be opened and all its contents copied.

As you can see from the example, we mounted an image from the Ubuntu OS on a virtual DVD drive. Essentially, 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 disk. To create an image, we will need the DAEMON Tools Lite program, which must be downloaded and installed. It is also worth noting that in addition to creating different image formats, DAEMON Tools Lite can also mount a huge number of formats into its own virtual DVD drive. After installing the program DAEMON Tools Lite In Explorer you will notice a new drive named ""

This “” is precisely 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 let’s run the utility and go to the “ New look».

In the utility window we find the button “ Create an 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, and also 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 a DVD image with Windows 10.

After creation, we will receive an ISO image file named “J_CCSA_X86FRE_RU-RU_DV5.iso”, which can be mounted or written to a regular disc and installed a new Windows using it.

The example shows how easy it is to burn an image for 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 record images of games or software that will not run without a disc. In addition to the program DAEMON Tools Lite I would like to recommend other popular utilities that can create and allow you to open images of optical disks:

• Alcohol 120%;
• Gizmo Drive;
• WinCDEmu.

It is especially important to use these utilities on an OS that does not have built-in virtual DVD drives, for example, in OS Windows XP. In addition to XP support, 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, which can be written to regular discs.

Virtual hard disk

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

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

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

This command will take us to the Disk Control Panel.

To create a new virtual HDD, you need to go to the " 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 100 GB virtual hard disk in the new format " VHDX", and also set the switch to dynamic creation mode, in which our disk will grow as it fills.

After setting the parameters of our hard drive, press the OK button, which will allow you to write it to the specified folder on the screw. Once created, the output will be a virtual hard disk named “virtual disk.vhdx”. From the image below you can see that our disk was automatically mounted, but it is still not visible in the system.

For the system to see our VHDX disk, it must be initialized. This can be done by right-clicking on the VHDX disk and selecting “ Initialize disk».

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

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

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

From the example it is clear that creating a virtual HDD using OS tools is very simple, so we hope that you will no longer have the question of 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 using 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 drives. But don’t 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 it using VirtualBox virtual machine based on the Windows XP operating system. At the virtual machine creation stage for XP, you will be prompted to create or attach a virtual hard disk that will be used for Windows installations XP on it.

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

If there is little space in the virtual machine on XP, you can always attach new VHD virtual hard disk. Besides this, you can connect containers with various file data to the virtual machine for XP. In the same way you can use virtual machines from others software products. For example, VHD containers can be installed on VMware Workstation products.

Bottom line

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

Video on the topic

It's no secret that the use of DVDs and CDs has been declining recently, since there are more convenient analogues: various flash cards, removable hard drives and other wonders of technology. However, a technology developed relatively long ago remains unattended - the creation of virtual drives and disks.

What is a virtual drive?

You should distinguish between virtual drives and virtual disks.

A virtual drive is a device that has the same functions as a physical drive: disc writing, reading, and so on.

A virtual disk is analogous to a disk that can be read or written using a virtual drive. Most often, the object of recording on a virtual disk is a so-called disk image, which is an iso file.

However, the virtual drive and disk cannot be moved, scratched, or folded into an envelope. These devices are virtual, that is, they do not physically exist. We emulate their presence in our computer.

What is a virtual drive used for?

There are a number of reasons why using virtual drives and disks is justified:

• The ability to quickly transfer a disc to a computer without spending money on buying a DVD disc.
• Maximum security. The actual disk or drive can be scratched, hit, or broken. Virtual devices do not have this threat.
• The ability to create as many virtual drives as you like, and even more so disks.
• Convenience of transmitting information over the Internet.

Thus, we get a flexible mechanism for writing, reading and transmitting information, without spending any money on purchasing additional drives and a bunch of disks; this approach is becoming outdated every day. You don’t have to bother with packaging disks, you don’t have to learn how to install and configure the drive in your computer. You just need to have Windows 7 or higher operating system installed on your computer.

How to create a virtual drive?

Having figured out what using virtual drives gives us, we move on to the most interesting stage - creating them on your computer.
Today there are a lot of programs that allow you to implement this. The most time-tested and easy to use are Alcohol 120 and UltraISO. We will analyze the use of both programs, after which everyone can decide for themselves which program is more convenient.

Virtual drive for Windows 7 using UltraISO

Download this program from an official or any other source. It is advisable to use latest version 9.6.5, although using older versions is not critical.

During installation, at the stage of selecting additional tasks, you must check the box for “Install ISO CD/DVD emulator”

Ready. After installation, go to My Computer and see that the virtual drive has already been created:

Let's launch the program. In the upper left corner we see a disk image, which was also created automatically. To the right of it is shown its contents, which are still empty. Below is the directory of files on our computer, this is where we can choose necessary files and send them to our virtual disk:

We see that the data has been added to the virtual disk directory. Go to File -> Save As:

Click on the “Mount to virtual drive” icon:

Make sure that the path to the file is set correctly and click “Mount”:

We go to My Computer, open the contents of the virtual disk and see that the file Pactioner.php is written to it:

Thus, in just a minute we created a virtual drive and mounted the disk image on it. The example uses a regular file; instead of it there could be, for example, some game that you need to emulate from disk, so as not to take out the disk every time and load it into a real drive. Recording such things looks the same way: select the game disk files in the directory, transfer them to a virtual disk, emulate it, and you're done. You no longer need a real disk.

Virtual drive for Windows 7 using Alcohol 120

Download and install the program. After installing the program, we see that Alcohol 120 separates physical drives from virtual ones:

The virtual drive F is ready for use; all you need to do is transfer the necessary ISO files in the field above and select the desired function. To burn the image to a real disk, select Image Burning Wizard. In this case, we want to emulate our image on a virtual drive, so we’ll add the same image that we created in UltraISO, right-click and select Mount on Device:

Ready. It will be revealed to us new disk with the recorded file Pactioner.php:

Results

We have reviewed theoretical basis virtual drives and disks, figured out programs that allow you to use this technology. Undoubtedly, using these things will save your time and nerves, which is very important in the age of information technology.

Creating a virtual hard disk is one of the operations available to everyone Windows user. Using the free space of your hard drive, you can create separate volume, endowed with the same capabilities as the main (physical) HDD.

The Windows operating system has a utility "Disk Management", which works with all hard drives connected to a computer or laptop. With its help, you can perform various operations, including creating a virtual HDD, which is part of a physical disk.

1. Launch dialog box "Run" with Win+R keys. In the input field write diskmgmt.msc.

   

2. The utility will open. From the toolbar, select "Action" > "Create a virtual hard disk".

   

3. A window will open in which specify the following settings:
4. The initialized disk will appear in Windows Explorer.

   

   In addition, autostart will be carried out.

   

Using a virtual HDD

You can use a virtual drive in the same way as a regular disk. You can move various documents and files to it, as well as install a second operating system, for example, Ubuntu.

Good day everyone!

Regular CD/DVD discs, sad as it may be, are losing their popularity year after year (they used to be sold on every corner 👀). Still, development network technologies does its job...

Meanwhile, there is another side of the coin - the so-called virtual disks - a separate file(s) made from an exact copy of a physical CD/DVD. They are also called images.

The most popular image formats: ISO, BIN, MDS/MDF, NRG, CCD. By the way, now many files are transferred over the network in images (for example, even to create bootable USB flash drive with Windows - you must first download the installation image with the system from the Microsoft website).

You can’t just open such an image, you need (you guessed it) a special one virtual disk drive (or drive. Also called CD/DVD emulators).

In general, I decided to construct this article in the form of questions and answers on working with images (of which there are always many). Along the way, I will present programs that best cope with the task. I think this will make it easier to present the basics to the inexperienced reader.

So, let's get started...

The most popular questions about working with virtual disks

❶. How to create a virtual disk/ISO image, etc.

And in general, in my opinion, it is one of the best (and most popular, by the way) programs for working with disk images. I definitely recommend installation and review.

Daemon Tools (Lite)

This program allows you to mount almost all types of images, and also emulates the simultaneous operation of up to 4 drives. In addition, the program allows you to record finished images on physical disks, convert from one format to another, create protected images and much more (by the way, some of the functions are paid, unfortunately).

The program organizes image storage quite well: you can always find required disk from your collection.

So, let’s say we have several CDs with music and games that are often used, and you are simply tired of inserting them into the drive (and over time, the discs deteriorate, get scratched, and make noise when inserted into the drive). Therefore, it is logical that having made images of these disks once, you can easily and quietly use them.

1) First you need to insert the CD into an actual physical drive.

3) Then you need to specify the drive with the disk, specify the folder where the image will be saved, and the image format (in my example, I chose ISO). To start copying, click the "Start" button.

5) When the image is ready, you will see a message stating that the operation was completed successfully, as in the screenshot below.

In general, that's all. Now you can use this image (you just need to first create a virtual drive, more on that below).

❷. How to create a virtual drive/CD/DVD-Rom emulator

Let's use the same Daemon Tools...

First you need to run the program and press "Add drive" (in the left menu of the program).

A new drive should appear at the bottom of the window: in my case, under the letter "F: (blank)".

DAEMON Tools Lite - a new drive has appeared (F:)!

❸. How to open images: ISO, MDF, NRG, etc. and run the application from them

After the virtual drive has been created in Daemon Tools, you can start opening and reading images in it. In general, Daemon Tools opens almost any image: ISO, BIN, MDF, NRG (even archives in 7z, rar, zip, etc.).

At the bottom of the window - left-click on the virtual drive (which we created in the previous step). See screenshot below.

DAEMON Tools Lite - first left click on the drive

If automatic start Your CD/DVD drives are disconnected (and nothing appears on the screen), go to “/This Computer”: among the drives there should be a virtual one, with the disk (i.e. image) that we opened.

If you are asked whether to allow this application to make changes, answer in the affirmative (at least for familiar drives...).

❹. How to burn an image to a physical CD/DVD

Daemon Tools, of course, can burn images to physical disks, but this feature is only available in the paid version of the program. Therefore, it is better to use analogues, especially since there are also free versions in this segment.

Why not Nero? Because the Nero package is paid, weighs several gigabytes, is very slow and clumsy. It’s unlikely that many will use even a tenth of its functions (not to mention the fact that most just need to burn a disc and that’s it...).

CDBurnerXP

CDBurnerXP - free program for burning CDs and DVDs, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The program also works great with ISO images, allowing you not only to create them, but also burn them to physical discs. The program supports dozens of languages ​​(including Russian). Works on Windows XP/7/8/9/10.

Main features:

1. record data (files, documents, pictures, etc.) on any type of disk;
2. recording audio CDs;
3. creating and burning ISO images;
4. creating boot (installation) disks;
5. BIN/NRG image converter → to ISO;
6. possibility of printing covers.

After starting the program, click the button "Burn ISO image to disc" (see screenshot below).

Then specify the ISO image to burn, the physical drive, the recording speed (highlighted in yellow in the screenshot below - by the way, do not set the highest speed, errors are possible) and click "Burn disc" . In general, that's all - in 10-15 minutes. your disc will be burned!

Burn Settings // CDBurnerXP

❺. What other programs can be used to work and read images?

Alcohol 120%

Alcohol 120% is an excellent and very powerful program for working with images. Does everything: creates images, mounts them into virtual drives, writes them, creates a library on your PC (for them quick search and reading).

Although the program is paid, there is a trial free period in 15 days (and there are free version, with reduced capabilities). In general, I recommend you check it out!

Main features:

1. creation of up to 31 virtual drives;
2. creating disk images (format support: MDF/MDS, CCD, BIN/CUE, ISO, CDI, etc.);
3. recording from disk images: CD, DVD and Blu-ray;
4. erasing discs: CD-RW, DVD-RW and BD-RE;
5. search and create a library from image files on the PC hard drive;
6. Availability of an audio converter for working with audio CDs.

Ultra ISO

A very powerful program for working with ISO images. Allows you to create them from real disks, record them, emulate them in a virtual drive, and, most importantly, edit them on the fly.

Those. you can open the ISO image, delete from it unnecessary file(or add) and save the image. Actually, this is done very quickly!

In addition, the program will help you create a boot (installation) disk or flash drive. You can also try to compress current ISO images, etc. In general, I recommend that everyone who works with ISO have it on their PC...

Burn4Free

Very reliable and simple program for working with CD/DVD discs. Allows you to perform almost the entire range of tasks that the average PC user may need. With all this, it takes up very little space on your hard drive (several megabytes!).

Main advantages:

• burn CD/DVD discs in a few mouse clicks;
• the program is very easy and simple, the design is made in a minimalist style;
• you can copy audio discs in various formats (WAV, FLAC, WavPack, WMA, etc.);
• support SCSI - IDE/EIDE - SATA - USB;
• Russian language support;
• creation and recording ISO images;
• ability to record MP3 discs;
• support for everyone Windows versions: 10, 8, 7, Vista, 2008, 2003, XP, 2000, 98;
• support for most drive models (more than 4000!).

In general, I’ll add on my own behalf that this program worked even in cases where its analogs refused to either start or see the drive. I recommend it to anyone who often works with ISO or optical discs to have in their arsenal.

Virtual Clone Drive

This program is free and designed to create a virtual drive. The program is very simple and reliable. Supports up to 15 virtual drives, fully integrated into Windows Explorer, for easier and faster work.

In general, compared to many similar programs in this spectrum, it stands out noticeably. I recommend you check it out.

Main features:

1. support for all popular image formats: ISO, BIN, IMG, UDF, DVD, CCD;
2. emulation of up to 15 virtual drives (CD, DVD, and Blu-ray);
3. there is a history of using images (for faster search and reading of the desired file);
4. convenient integration into Explorer (now any image can be opened with a couple of mouse clicks!).