Native VHD Support with Boot from VHD Part II

In my previous post i.e.  Windows 7: Native VHD Support we seen creating and attaching the VHDs. Using the Disk Management or Diskpart utility we can attach the existing VHDs. In this part we will actually cover the boot from VHD feature.

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.

In this discussion we will cover the following key points.

   
• Creating and Attaching VHDs using Diskpart utility
   
• Installing OS into VHD using ImageX
   
• Detaching the VHD using Diskpart utility
   
• Adding the VHD entry in Boot Menu for VHD Boot and then Boot from VHD
   
• Booting a Windows 7 VHD or Windows Server 2008 R2 VHD
   
• Post installation configuration in the booted VHD