Windows 7 Boot from VHD 

Hello,

As you all know Microsoft released the Windows 7 BETA build 7000 for testing. Many of you must be excited about the much more enhanced version of the operating system.

Windows 7 is much more faster than the Windows Vista and utilizes the resources more efficiently improving end user performance. We have seen many new features related to UI and Performance in the PDC sessions.

One of the best features that is being discussed around is the native support for VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) Yes the same VHD files that are used in virtualization platform i.e.. Hyper-V, Virtual Server and Virtual PC.

We will cover the different ways by which we can actually boot from VHD file. In order to boot from VHD, the bootloader needs to support boot from VHD file. So, what are the basic benefits of having VHD Booting.

You can use Boot for VHD feature in your test environment or development where you want to try out different applications or devices, which is not possible in Virtual Environment.

Booting from VHDs means booting the machine as if running from primary hard disk so your operating system will leverage all the hardware available in your system like Graphics, Wireless, USB etc. which is not possible in most of the virtual environment.

This is good for multi-boot environment where you want to run multiple operating systems on same machine without losing the performance. This is possible by VHD booting. As every VHD is like a Hard disk with primary partition; so you can create multiple VHDs with operating systems installed onto it.

I have prepared 3 parts series on Boot from VHD

Part 1 Create/Mount VHD files in Windows 7
Part 2 Boot from VHD in Windows 7
Part 3 Boot from VHD in Windows Vista

 

Tags: Aviraj Ajgekar , India , Windows 7 , Windows Server 2008 R2 , VHD , Virtual Hard Disk , Articles , English , TechNet Edge , Articles