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Writer's pictureKennie Nybo Pontoppidan

How to easily mount a VHD file from Windows (10)


Learned something new today from my new friends running the Defrag Tools series on Channel9.

In Windows 10 you can mount a VHD file just by double clicking on it. This is great if you need to get a file from a virtual disk in your local Hyper-V environment (see link below for a guide to setup this).

Here is an example on how to do that.

I have three virtual machines in my lab, of which only one of them is started


What if I need a file from, say the machine called “20 SQL2016RC3 Win2012R2”? Well, here’s the nice little trick:

First, take a look at my disks in Windows Explorer (Win+E):


If I visit the directory holding the virtual hard disks for my virtual machines


and double-click on the file “20 SQL2016RC3 Win2012R2.vhdx”, then the disk is mounted, and can be accessed from Windows Explorer as a new drive:


I can now browse this disk (notice the new interesting telemetry Windows users on my SQL Server 2016 installation)


When I’m done and hopefully happy, I can just unmount the vhd from Windows Explorer:


Nice!

Read more about how to setup your local Hyper-V environment here:

Watch the Defrag Tools episode on VHDs here:

PS. Apparently, this trick also works with Windows 10 Image Backup files according to Jacob Isaksen from Avian Digital Forensics

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