In Windows 7, Microsoft had introduced a new way of backing up your computer via the Backup and Restore tool. Basically, as already explained, you can create a system image in Windows as a recovery and repair disk, by backing up all the data to another disk that can be internal or external.
The same mode has also been maintained in the Windows 10 backup system, where a new tool called File History has been introduced, also useful for recovering any lost and deleted file.
For both tools, the requirement to operate is the presence of another disk.
This is because in this way the computer can be restored even if the main hard disk breaks.
In the case of creating a system image, Windows incorporates all the backup data into a large VHD file which is placed in the WindowsImageBackup folder.
The VHD file can be opened and used on any computer to which it is transferred.
After this premise, we see in this article how:
1) Mount a VHD file (e.g. the backup file) as a virtual disk in order to have the backup files available and to be able to restore them manually whenever necessary.
2) Create a new virtual VHD type disk in order to make Windows backups on the same single disk where you can always keep a double copy of the important files available.
Of course, in this way, you lose the backup in case of hard disk breakage, but you still get a disk that can be used to recover each file at any time.
1) Mount the VHD file
To do this, open the Windows Control Panel and then go to Administrative Tools to open Computer Management .
Click on Disk Management in the menu on the left, then always click on Disk Management with the right button to bring up the " Connect VHD file " option.
Then click on Browse, select the folder where the VHD file you want to mount is located and press OK.
If you enable the Read-only option, you will not be able to add, edit and delete files to the virtual disk.
Once the connection is complete, Windows will show it in Windows Explorer as if it were a disk attached to the computer, with its drive letter, colored blue.
From Windows Explorer, you will be able to see all the files inside the VHD drive which will be treated as if it were a USB stick or an external drive, to copy and move files to the main disk.
To detach the VHD virtual hard disk, go to Disk Management and, in the lower part of the window, right-click on the gray area of the unit (it should be Disk 2) to bring up the option that detaches the VHD.
2) Create a VHD virtual disk from scratch
From Computer Management, right click on Disk Management and this time use the option " Create VHD file ".
A window will open where you can specify the size of the VHD file, the format and where to save it.
As a format, choose the VHDX which is more secure, stable and which can have a larger and more dynamic size (i.e. it increases by itself as files are added).
Now, in Disk Management, you will see another disk (Disk 2 in my case) with above written Uninitialized and unallocated . In the gray section of the new virtual disk, right click and select Initialize disk and choose whether to use MBR and GPT (MBR is compatible with all versions of Windows so it is fine).
Right click in the white area that says unallocated, select New simple volume, choose the size of the new volume.
As you would do with any real disk, even with the virtual disk you can create multiple partitions if you want, choose a drive letter to be assigned to the partition and format the disk in NTFS or FAT32 (better NTFS if you use the virtual hard disk for backup files from your computer).
Now open Windows Explorer to find the new virtual disk treated and seen as if it were a USB stick.
As this guide explains, Microsoft can also boot your computer from the VHD virtual disk.
In addition to these two procedures, in the past I had also explained how it was possible to clone the Windows disk to a VHD virtual disk .
It is even possible to install another version of Windows on a virtual hard disk on a single PC .
