How to make a Back-Up on a virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7

 
Bron: How-to Geek
 
Having a solid backup plan is a must if you have important data on your PC that you don’t want to lose. Today we take a look at a unique way of using a virtual hard drive in Windows 7 to back up some files.
Create a Virtual Hard Drive (VHD)
The first thing we need to do is create a VHD. In this article we are concentrating on how to backup your data to a VHD, we’ll briefly cover how to create one, but make sure and check out our full tutorial on how to create a VHD in Windows 7.
In this example we’re creating a 2GB VHD, but you can make it whatever size you think you’ll need for your data.
Right-click on Computer and select Manage and when the Computer Management screen opens under Storage highlight Disk Management then click on Action \ Create VHD.

Select a location on your machine where you want the VHD to live and its size. You can created it on your local drive, or in this example we placed it on an attached external drive. Decide if you want it to be Dynamically expanding or a Fixed size. Then You will see the virtual drive listed as Unknown unallocated space. Right-click the left box and Initialize Disk.

Right-click the Unallocated area and select New Simple Volume.

The New Simple Volume Wizard opens up and you can select to format the volume and give it a label and follow through the wizard.

When you’re done, you will see the new VHD listed under Hard Disk Drives in Computer. Now you can use it as you would any drive, and we are going to backup to it.

You can simply drag files to it, or set it for backup with Windows Backup and Restore or the backup app of your preference. Here we’ll use Windows 7 Backup and Restore. Type backup and restore into the Search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter.

Click on Set up backup…

Select the VHD we just created…it might say there isn’t enough space, but we will be picking specific files to be backed up that will fit in the 2GB VHD.

Here is where you’ll want to select Let me choose…

Now you can go through and select the files and folders you want to backup. In this example we’re only backing up a few documents, well under the 2GB size of the VHD. Uncheck Include a system image of drives before continuing on, as you should’ve already created one.

You can schedule the backup to run on a regular schedule if you want.

After you have everything selected, review your backup settings and click Save settings and run backup.

The backup kicks off and you’ll get a progress bar while it takes place.

After the backup is finished you can go into your VHD and check out the files you’ve backed up.

Then you can just drag the files out of the VHD or double-click on the Windows Backup and Restore icon to restore them.

The ability to use VHDs is just another tool in for your backup strategy. The other cool thing is you can copy the VHD file to other locations. For instance a network share, external HD, thumb drive, use in a VM…etc. You definitely shouldn’t use this as your only  backup strategy by any means, there are a lot of better backup methods out there, but it’s geeky, cool, and sometimes can be handy.
Speaking of VHDs, if you want to turn a physical drive into a VM, check out our article on Disk2vhd.

How o inall a virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7?

Bron: How-to Geek

Have you ever wished you had an extra Hard Disk to store files, share, or set aside as an encrypted vault? One of the new features in Windows 7 is the ability to create Virtual Hard Disks and we’ll show you how.
Create a Virtual Drive
This process creates virtual disks in the .VHD format where the minimum size is 3MB. To begin, Right-click on My Computer and select to Manage. Alternately you can type diskmgmt.msc into the Start search box and enter.

The Computer Management screen opens click on Disk Management then Action and Create VHD.

Browse to the directory you want the disk to reside, choose the size you want it to be, and select dynamic or a fixed. If you want the disk to expand in size as you add files to it, then pick Dynamically expanding. Check Fixed size if you want a specific size and for it to stay that way.

In Disk Management you will see the virtual drive listed as unallocated space.

To begin using it you’ll need to Right-click and select Initialize Disk.

In the initialize disk box just keep MBR selected and hit OK.

Create a Volume
Now it is time to create a volume by Right-clicking the unallocated space and select New Simple Volume.

The New Simple Volume Wizard starts up and it’s just a matter of completing it.

Choose the amount of space you want to use for the volume.

Assign it a dive letter that is not currently being used.

Format the new volume as NTFS, FAT32, or FAT. Check if you want a quick format and file compression.

The wizard is complete, click on Finish.

If you have AutoPlay enabled it should pop up for you to open up your new virtual hard disk.

It will be listed with the other disks in Disk Management.

Of course you will also see it listen under My Computer.

This is a cool new feature that will let you use the disk as you would any type of real disk. You can encrypt it, share it out to other systems, store files to it…however you would use an extra disk connected to your system.

This is a cool new feature in Windows 7 that will add extra functionality and options to your current system. There are several ways you can use your VHD including making it bootable. If you have used your geek imagination and have come up with unique ways to use a VHD, leave a comment to tell us about it.