VHD Mount
Chris Wolf wrote this great article on a tool with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.
Original Article: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1793
"Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Treasures: VHD Mount - Use VHD Mount to mount and edit the contents of VHD virtual hard disk files.
By Chris Wolf
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be writing about some of my
favorite features in the recently released Microsoft Virtual Server
2005 R2 Service Pack 1 http://tinyurl.com/2ej294 . This week, I'll
start with VHD Mount.
VHD Mount is installed by default by the Virtual Server R2 SP1
setup, but can be installed individually, as well. VHD Mount can be
installed on any Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1-supported OS, which
includes Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003.
To install just the VHD Mount utility on a Windows system, follow
these steps:
1. Download Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.
2. Once the download completes, run setup.exe from the
download location.
3. When the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 setup window
appears, click "Install Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1."
4. Click the "I accept the terms in the license agreement" radio
button and click Next.
5. Enter your name and organization and click Next.
6. Choose Custom as the setup type and click Next.
7. In the Custom Setup dialog box, click the drop-down menu
next to each installation component and select the "This
feature will not be available" option. For the VHD Mount
option, click its drop-down menu and select "This feature
will be installed on local hard drive." The installation
options are shown at http://tinyurl.com/24kqty .
8. Once you have set the correct installation options,
click Next.
9. In the Ready To Install dialog box, click Install.
Once the installation completes, you can use VHD Mount to mount any
VHD file as a local hard disk.
VHD Mount uses the Virtual Disk Service to mount and assign a custom
drive letter to a VHD file. The problem with this is that VDS was
introduced in Windows Server 2003 and, thus, is not available on
Windows XP and earlier operating systems. So if you're running
Windows Server 2003, you would perform the following steps to mount
a VHD file and assign a specific drive letter:
1. Open the command prompt by clicking Start -- Run, typing cmd
in the Run dialog box, and hitting Enter.
2. Navigate to the Vhdmount installation folder. By default,
this will be "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\
Vhdmount." So assuming the default installation, you would
run the following command:
cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server\Vhdmount"
3. Mount a virtual hard disk to your system by using the
following syntax:
vhdmount /m [/f] <vhd file> <drive letter>
For example, to mount the D:\XPVM\XP.vhd file and assign it
the drive letter V, you would run:
vhdmount /m /f D:\XPVM\XP.vhd V:
Note that when the /f switch is used, any changes made to the virtual
hard disk will be directly written to the VHD file. If you just want
to examine a virtual hard disk file and not commit any changes,
then do not include the /f switch in the command. Without /f, the
VHD file is still mounted, but any changes are written to an
Undo Disk. If you want to commit the changes stored in the Undo
Disk, you can do so by using the following syntax:
vhdmount /u /c <vhd file> | All
More: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1793
Chris Wolf, MCSE, MCT, CCNA, is a Microsoft MVP for Windows-Virtual Machine."
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