Last week we asked you to share your favorite disk image tools, then we rounded up the five most popular responses for a vote. Now we"re back to highlight your favorite. DAEMON Tools led the pack by a comfortable margin with 40% of the vote.
Softpedia.com DAEMON Tools Lite is a software solution that will impress you, especially thanks to its advanced features that can deal with virtually all image formats on the market. Reliable application that creates virtual drives on your computer, providing you with the possiblity to emulate CDs and DVDs for instant access.
PCWorld.com If you spend a lot of time swapping and hence waiting on CDs or DVDs to mount, Daemon Tools Lite is worth its weight in gold. Even if you don"t, it"s a program you should download to keep in your bag of tricks--you"ll find a use for it eventually.
Download.com The advantage is that you can burn the images you"re using with DAEMON Tools Lite right away or just test an image before burning it to see if it was created correctly. DAEMON Tools Lite works with most image formats.
Filecluster.com Pros
- Small and highly stable program.
- Low resource requirements.
- Simple and functional interface...
Software.Informer.com DAEMON Tools Lite manages to be more comprehensive and feature-rich than many of its competitors. And that's quite remarkable, especially considering that DAEMON Tools Lite is free while many of its competitors are not.
downloads.tomsguide.com As a disc imaging tool, Daemon Tools Lite"s free nature automatically makes it a lot better than many competing applications simply because it offers most of what they offer at the vastly reduced price of free.
www.techadvisor.co.uk When you have a disc that you know you"ll need to access regularly, then, DAEMON Tools Lite allows you to create an image in just a couple of clicks. This then shows up in its Image Catalog for speedy reloading later, and you can put the real disc away.
techgyd.com Daemon Tools Lite is one of the best software for emulating and organizing your disc images. The software is very easy to use and fulfills all your disc related requirements. The virtual drives support is amazing.
maddownload.com If you are looking for the best software to work with ISO, MDX, MDS, and MDX files? Well, you have come to the right place. DAEMON Tools Lite is an easy and ready to use downloadable software compatible with Windows. It is well known reputable software that gives you the power of having a DVD-ROM emulator right into the comfort of your own home.
GIGA.de Mit dem Daemon Tools Lite Download könnt ihr virtuelle Images erstellen, speichern und einbinden sowie virtuelle Laufwerke emulieren.
If you have Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise installed on your computer, you may not be aware that the operating system has built-in support for Hyper-V virtual machines. Those. everything you need to install Windows (and more) in a virtual machine is already on your computer. If you have a home edition of Windows, you can .
The average user may not know what a virtual machine is and why it can be useful, I will try to explain it. A “virtual machine” is a kind of software-based separate computer, or even more simply, Windows, Linux or another OS running in a window, with its own virtual hard disk, system files and so on.
How to do it:
- In Hyper-V Manager, select the second item (your computer name) from the list on the left.
- Right-click on it (or the “Action” menu item) - Virtual Switch Manager.
- In the Virtual Switch Manager, select “Create a virtual network switch, “External” (if you need Internet) and click the “Create” button.
- In the next window, in most cases, you don’t need to change anything (if you are not a specialist), except that you can set your own network name and, if you have both a Wi-Fi adapter and a network card, select that one in the “External network” item and network adapters, which is used to access the Internet.
- Click OK and wait until the virtual network adapter is created and configured. During this time, the Internet connection may be lost.
Done, you can move on to creating a virtual machine and installing Windows into it (you can also install Linux, but according to my observations, its performance in Hyper-V leaves much to be desired, I recommend Virtual Box for these purposes).
Creating a Hyper-V virtual machine
Just as in the previous step, right-click on the name of your computer in the list on the left or click the “Action” menu item, select “Create” - “Virtual Machine”.
At the first stage, you will need to specify the name of the future virtual machine (at your discretion); you can also specify your own location of the virtual machine files on your computer instead of the default one.
The next step allows you to select the generation of the virtual machine (appeared in Windows 10, this step was not present in 8.1). Please read the descriptions of the two options carefully. Generation 2 is essentially a UEFI virtual machine. If you plan to experiment a lot with booting a virtual machine from different images and installing different operating systems, I recommend leaving the 1st generation (2nd generation virtual machines do not boot from all boot images, only UEFI).
The third step is to allocate RAM for the virtual machine. Use the size required for the OS you plan to install, or better yet, even more, taking into account that this memory will not be available in your main OS while the virtual machine is running. I usually uncheck the “Use dynamic memory” checkbox (I like predictability).
The virtual hard disk is mounted or created in the next step. Specify the desired location on the disk, the name of the virtual hard disk file, and also set the size that will be sufficient for your purposes.
After clicking “Next” you can set the installation options. For example, by selecting the “Install operating system from a bootable CD or DVD” option, you can specify the physical disk in the drive or the ISO image file with the distribution. In this case, when you turn it on for the first time, the virtual machine will boot from this drive and you can immediately install the system. You can also do this later.
That's all: you will be shown a summary of the virtual machine, and when you click the “Finish” button, it will be created and appear in the list of virtual machines in the Hyper-V manager.
Starting a virtual machine
In order to start the created virtual machine, you can simply double-click on it in the Hyper-V manager list, and in the virtual machine connection window, click the “Enable” button.
If, when you created it, you specified an ISO image or disk from which to boot, this will happen the first time you launch it, and you will be able to install an OS, for example, Windows 7, in the same way as installing on a regular computer. If you did not specify an image, you can do this in the “Media” menu item for connecting to the virtual machine.
Typically, after installation, the virtual machine will automatically boot from the virtual hard disk. But, if this does not happen, you can adjust the boot order by right-clicking on the virtual machine in the Hyper-V manager list, selecting “Options” and then “BIOS” settings.
Also in the settings you can change the size of RAM, the number of virtual processors, add a new virtual hard disk and change other parameters of the virtual machine.
Finally
Of course, this instruction is only a superficial description of creating Hyper-V virtual machines in Windows 10; all the nuances cannot be covered here. Additionally, you should pay attention to the possibilities of creating checkpoints, connecting physical drives to the OS installed in a virtual machine, advanced settings, etc.
But I think it’s quite suitable as a first introduction for a novice user. You can figure out many things in Hyper-V yourself if you wish. Fortunately, everything is in Russian, explained quite well, and if necessary, can be searched on the Internet. And if you suddenly have questions during the experiments, ask them, I will be happy to answer.
A lot of users of personal computers on the Windows platform often ask questions - what are virtual disks and how to create virtual disk. To increase the awareness of our readers on these issues, in this article we will try to fully cover the topic using specific examples.
Also in our article we will look at what is virtual hard disks and where they are used. After familiarizing yourself with the material, our readers will be able to easily create virtual hard drives and image disks in ISO format, as well as mount them onto a virtual device and burn them to DVD without any problems.
Virtual optical drive and its applications
The main purpose of a virtual disk drive is mounting images optical disks. To understand in detail why it is needed, we will look at an example where an image of a disk in ISO format will be mounted on a virtual DVD-ROM. For this example, we will use the Windows 10 operating system.
A nice thing for owners of computers with the Windows 10 operating system is that it already has a virtual DVD-ROM installed. Therefore, Windows 10 owners will not have to use third-party programs to mount images.
To mount an optical disk image into a virtual DVD-ROM, we need the image itself. For example, we will use image with the Linux operating system Ubuntu. You can download the image of this operating system on its official website http://www.ubuntu.com. In our example we will use the image 64-bit Ubuntu version 15.10, which has a size of 1.1 GB.
Having downloaded the image, you can begin to mount it directly. To do this, right-click on the image file to open the context menu.
The mounted “virtual disk” can be opened and all its contents copied.
As you can see from the example, we mounted an image from the Ubuntu OS on a virtual DVD drive. Essentially, we were able to do almost what we do with a regular and optical disc when we insert it into a DVD drive and open it, only in our version all the components are virtual.
Creating a laserdisc image
In the previous example, we looked at how to open an image disk in a virtual DVD drive. Now let's deal with the situation when you need to create an image of an optical disk. To create an image, we will need the DAEMON Tools Lite program, which must be downloaded and installed. It is also worth noting that in addition to creating different image formats, DAEMON Tools Lite can also mount a huge number of formats into its own virtual DVD drive. After installing the program DAEMON Tools Lite In Explorer you will notice a new drive named ""
This “” is precisely the drive of the program in question DAEMON Tools Lite. In this example, we will create an image of the original installation DVD with the Windows 10 operating system. To make an image from the installation DVD with ten, insert it into the DVD drive. Now let’s run the utility and go to the “ New look».
In the utility window we find the button “ Create an image from disk" and press it. These actions will take us to the image creation window.
In this window, you can select the DVD drive from which the ISO image will be created, and also select the location to save it.
We will also select the image ISO format and confirm the creation by clicking the Start button, which will start creating a DVD image with Windows 10.
After creation, we will receive an ISO image file named “J_CCSA_X86FRE_RU-RU_DV5.iso”, which can be mounted or written to a regular disc and installed a new Windows using it.
The example shows how easy it is to burn an image for a virtual DVD-ROM using DAEMON Tools Lite. In the same way, you can burn images for all licensed Windows discs, be it XP or Vista. In addition, you can record images of games or software that will not run without a disc. In addition to the program DAEMON Tools Lite I would like to recommend other popular utilities that can create and allow you to open images of optical disks:
- Alcohol 120%;
- Gizmo Drive;
- WinCDEmu.
It is especially important to use these utilities on an OS that does not have built-in virtual DVD drives, for example, in OS Windows XP. In addition to XP support, each of these programs, including DAEMON Tools Lite, will be able to burn ISO images to DVD disk. In addition to supporting the ISO format, these utilities can mount other formats, including their own, which can be written to regular discs.
Virtual hard disk
A virtual hard disk is quite often used by IT specialists, as it allows them to solve many problems with backup, virtual machines and testing of various operating systems. Virtual hard disk is a container file that simulates the file structure of a hard drive.
Since such a disk is a file, it is therefore usually stored on a physical HDD or SSD. Starting with Windows 7, users now have the ability to create and mount a hard disk directly in the operating system.
Let's look at an example of creating a virtual hard disk using Windows 10. First, let's go to the " Execute"using the key combination Win + R and type the following command in it: diskmgmt.msc
This command will take us to the Disk Control Panel.
To create a new virtual HDD, you need to go to the " Action / Create virtual hard disk", which will open a window to create such a disk.
Starting with Windows 10, it became possible to create a disk with the format " VHDX" Unlike the "VHD" format, the " VHDX» can create containers up to 64 terabytes. Let's make our 100 GB virtual hard disk in the new format " VHDX", and also set the switch to dynamic creation mode, in which our disk will grow as it fills.
After setting the parameters of our hard drive, press the OK button, which will allow you to write it to the specified folder on the screw. Once created, the output will be a virtual hard disk named “virtual disk.vhdx”. From the image below you can see that our disk was automatically mounted, but it is still not visible in the system.
For the system to see our VHDX disk, it must be initialized. This can be done by right-clicking on the VHDX disk and selecting “ Initialize disk».
In the window that appears, do not change anything and click OK.
Now the simplest thing left is to select a file system and letter for our disk. To do this, go to it and select the item “ Create a simple volume».
After this, a wizard will launch in which you need to assign a drive letter and select a file system. After completing the wizard, the virtual hard disk will appear in Explorer.
From the example it is clear that creating a virtual HDD using OS tools is very simple, so we hope that you will no longer have the question of how to create a virtual hard disk. I would also like to note that with the created VHDX disk you can do the following operations:
- Encrypt it using BitLocker;
- Install an additional OS on it;
- Move and open it on another computer;
- Connect it to a virtual machine.
Computers based on the Windows XP operating system, which is still quite popular, do not support VHD drives. But don’t be upset, because in the utility we reviewed earlier DAEMON Tools Lite there is support for VHD disks and it Fully compatible with Windows XP.
Using a VHD disk in a virtual machine
Let's create a virtual machine based on the Windows XP operating system using the VirtualBox program. At the stage of creating a virtual machine for XP, you will be asked to create or attach a virtual hard disk, which will be used to install Windows XP on it.
At this stage we can attach a VHD disk, which we will create using Windows 10. Therefore, we will try to attach our 30 GB VHD container, which we made in ten. After creating the virtual machine, you can view the attached VHD disk in its settings.
If there is little space in the virtual machine on XP, you can always attach new VHD virtual hard disk. Besides, you can connect containers with various file data to the virtual machine for XP. In the same way, you can use virtual machine from other software products. For example, VHD containers can be installed on VMware Workstation products.
Bottom line
From the material reviewed, it is clear that the use of virtual drives and hard drives helps solve many problems much better, especially since even a novice PC user can figure out how to create them. We hope that our material will help our readers better understand the question of how to create a virtual disk and how to use it for work.
Video on the topic
A virtual disk in the Windows operating system, just like a regular hard disk, can be used to store data. This data can be user files such as images, music, documents, etc., as well as files used by installed programs and the operating system itself.
Many users like to have a separate partition for storing important files, which is created in addition to the system one. In this case, if the operating system crashes, you will need to reinstall it by formatting only the system partition. Important data stored on the additional logical partition will remain intact.
In the absence of a separate physical disk, it is always advisable to have a primary disk with several additional partitions before installing the OS. But, be that as it may, these partitions will remain parts of the same HDD. If it fails, your important data will not be protected from destruction.
What to do if you want to create a separate place to store any data after installing Windows and marking the necessary partitions. You can simply create a virtual disk using the free space of the HDD. It will be possible to format it, assign its own separate letter and work in the same way as with a separate physical one.
This may also be useful for you to conduct various experiments with and other virtualization testing. Let's see how you can create such a disk using the Windows 10 operating system.
VIRTUAL DISK
Press the Win + R key combination on your keyboard and write in the input field:
Diskmgmt.msc
then wait until the system management utility starts.
Identify a disk partition that allows you to allocate enough free space to create a virtual one. Click on the main menu item “Action” and select “Create a virtual hard disk”.
Specify your preferred file location, size and type, then click on the “OK” button.
After completing the creation process, right-click on the created disk and click on “Initialize”.
After that, select the “Create simple volume” item in the context menu, assign a letter, label, file system and finally click the “Finish” button.
Go to Explorer, where you will see the created virtual HDD. Now you can use it to store files or attach to a virtual machine. When you want to delete it, go to management, detach the volume and delete the folder with the file. That's all!
P.S. Browse a list of all our computer tips for .
What is a virtual HDD? This is an isolated disk device, which in its external structure is no different from a standard drive, on which you can install additional operating systems, software, DBMS and other files. This is a standard VHD file, which, thanks to the mounting procedure (that is, installation or attachment to the file structure of disk drives - this operation is carried out without the help of any additional software) in the Explorer looks like a standard auxiliary disk partition.
Essentially, the algorithm for mounting a virtual device can be similar to the method for connecting an ISO image to the system. But the main difference here is the ability to record and use other methods of exploitation. Keeping in mind that a virtual hard disk is just a regular external file stored on a disk drive, you can easily move it to another PC and use it there.
Methodology for creating a virtual hard disk
The principle of creating a virtual disk drive has not changed at all since Windows 7 and 8. The only difference is that in the “eight” you have the ability to install a VHD file on the system by simply double-clicking on it: after clicking it will instantly be connected as an HDD and it will be associated with a specific letter. To launch the disk drive manager in the system, as always, we will use the key combination Win+R and the team diskmgmt.msc.
An alternative option is to right-click on the Start button (or the Win + X sequence) and select the “Disk Management” option in the context menu.
The disk drive management snap-in starts. This is where all the steps involved in creating and managing virtual devices, as well as mounting and installing them, are performed.
To create a virtual partition, select the logical device on the basis of which the virtual disk drive will be created. Next, go to the top menu by selecting the option “Action” -> “Create virtual HDD”(note that right here, very close, is the “Connect virtual disk drive” option; it will come in handy if you want to move a VHD from one PC to another).
As a result of such simple manipulations, the main form of the wizard for creating virtual disk drives will appear on the screen. Here you need to specify the location of the VHD file, its size (as for this parameter, its value must be at least 3 MB) and one of the formats provided to choose from: fixed size or dynamically expandable. To make it clearer, here are a few words about the differences between the formats: with a fixed size, the storage capacity is always static, that is, unchanged; even if the partition itself is empty, it will strictly occupy a clearly specified volume on the hard drive. A dynamic device, in turn, is more flexible and will occupy the volume on the drive that corresponds to the size of the files written to it.
When all the preliminary settings have been specified and you click OK to confirm your selection, a new device will appear in the disk space structure. If necessary, the Microsoft Virtual Disk Drive HBA driver will also be installed.
As a next step, we need to initialize the HDD we created by right-clicking on the new virtual disk and selecting “Initialize disk”.
During initialization of the disk device, we actually have to specify the partition style used to mark up the disk space: MBR or GPT. In Windows family operating systems, it would be more appropriate to specify the MBR style, since it is this style that is used in all environments above the designated generation.
The last step towards creating a virtual disk in Windows 10 is to generate a simple disk volume that will be attached to the virtual device. To create a volume, use a special step-by-step wizard, which will complete the entire procedure for creating a virtual disk. First, we will be asked to specify the volume size, which is based on the value we specified earlier at the stage of allocating disk space to the virtual device. It is logical to specify the same size as the first time, since otherwise not all of the disk space you allocated will be used for its immediate tasks.
One of the most important actions in the wizard is the association of the virtual drive with a logical device, that is, in fact, a letter that will act as the name of the disk.
The next iteration is formatting the disk partition. If you don't want to format it right now, you can do it later, in Explorer. However, it makes sense to prepare the entire disk for use, so select a file system and volume label.
This brings the whole procedure to an end. The wizard’s work is also completed, and now we can work with the virtual disk as with a regular disk drive: write files to it, store information, install operating systems, create a RAID array and anything else that comes into your head.
How to delete a virtual disk in Windows 10?
If you are done testing the new utility, you may want to remove the device from the environment. How to do it? First of all, let's delete the volume corresponding to the new virtual device. Before performing this operation, make sure that all the necessary information is copied to a safe place, so that if you delete the volume you will not lose any valuable data.
Right-click on the virtual volume and select the “Delete Volume” option.
Now we see that the disk partition is missing, and we can detach the disk device. Right-click on the designation of the disk itself and select “Disconnect virtual HDD” from the menu.
We confirm the operation on the next dialog mini-form and disconnect the virtual drive from the hard drive structure.
The virtual device is now detached, but it is still stored at the address you specified when creating the disk. We go to the folder we need in the file explorer, find our virtual disk there, and delete the corresponding VHD file completely manually - everything is as usual.
How to install Windows 10 on a virtual disk?
After the virtual hard drive has been created, you have the right to do whatever you want with it: install any programs, test services, set auditing and local policies, and, of course, install a new operating system (even Windows 10).
How to do this, you ask?
Yes, just like installing an OS on a regular hard drive. When installing a distribution kit from a disk or flash drive, before the procedure for copying system files, you will be asked to select the logical partition to which this copying will be carried out. Among all the other devices on the hard drive, our newly created disk will be available, and you can install the OS directly on it without changing anything else in the parameters and settings of the virtual HDD. If desired, its volume can also be expanded by resorting to the services of the same equipment "Disk Management".
If you prefer to use third-party software for such operations, we recommend using emulators such as VMWare Workstation, Oracle VM VirtualBox or Virtual PC from Microsoft.
All of these software products have an expanded arsenal for working with virtual disks, and working with them here is as easy as in the standard Windows shell.
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