How to create a virtual disk on Windows 10. Review of the free version of Virtual CD

A virtual disk in the Windows operating system, just like a regular hard disk, can be used to store data. This data may include user files such as images, music, documents, etc., as well as files used 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 Windows installations and marking the necessary sections. 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 operating system Windows 10

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 this, select the “Create simple volume” item in the context menu, assign a letter, label, file system and finally click the “Done” 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 .

With the development of technology and the increasing availability of high-speed Internet, the need for physical storage media is steadily decreasing. Of course, it is not possible to completely abandon CDs and DVDs, flash drives and external hard drives, since they are needed for backup data storage. However, virtual devices can quite reduce their use to a minimum.

What are virtual devices in Windows 10 and what are they for?

Virtual devices are software codes that imitate physical devices, fully or almost fully implementing their functionality. Examples of this kind of devices that are most often used in everyday life are:

• virtual (on-screen) keyboard;
• virtual drive;
• virtual hard disk (VHD).

Virtual keyboards are needed if it is impossible to use physical ones; they are not capable of more. For example, if the real keyboard is broken or a person with disabilities is using the computer, you can display the input device on the screen and use the cursor to enter a key combination or type text.

Using the virtual keyboard, you can fully enter data

Virtual drives are designed to connect CD and DVD images to a computer and then interact with them. Disk images are often used when installing software products: applications, games and system shells.

Virtual drives are designed to mount disk images and then interact with them

Virtual hard disks are the most widely used. First of all, because the virtual hard drive partition is very easy to encrypt or protect with a password. This significantly increases the security of documents and other important data. In addition, VZD is a convenient environment for testing software, scripts and other software development products. Virtual disk technology makes it easy to back up data, clone physical media, and much more.

How to create a virtual hard disk in Windows 10

Creating a VZD is a fairly simple procedure that takes little time. It is done as follows:

1. In the Windows search, enter the string “Computer Management” and select the best match. In the Windows search, enter the string “Computer Management” and select the best match
2. On the left side of the window that opens, go to the “Storage Devices” section and select “Disk Management”.
   On the left side of the computer management console window, go to the “Storage Devices” section and select “Disk Management”
3. On the toolbar, open the “Action” tab and click on the line “Create a virtual hard disk”.
   On the toolbar, open the “Action” tab and click on the line “Create a virtual hard disk”
4. Select the location on the hard drive where the file containing the virtual hard disk will be located and enter its name. Set the size in MB, GB or TB in the appropriate field and click OK.
   Set the size of the VZD file, enter its name and indicate the location on the physical disk
5. At the bottom of the window, in the section with volumes, will appear new section“Disk 2” (the number may differ depending on the number of hard drives installed on the computer). This section will be marked to the left of the name with a red arrow pointing down. Right-click on it and select the “Initialize disk” action, and then click OK in the confirmation window.
   Right-click on the new partition and select “Initialize disk”

The virtual disk is connected and working. All that remains is to create a section. For this:

1. Right-click on the “Unallocated” area and select the “Create simple volume” option.
   Right-click on the “Unallocated” area and select the “Create simple volume” option
2. In the partition creation utility window that opens, click the “Next” button, select the virtual volume size and click “Next” again.
   Set the volume size in megabytes and click “Next”
3. Assign a drive letter from among the available ones and click the “Next” button.
   Select a Latin letter from the available ones and click the “Next” button
4. Leave the formatting settings untouched and click the “Next” button.
   Leave the file type NTFS systems and click the “Next” button
5. Confirm the changes with the “Done” button.
   We check the specified parameters and click the “Finish” button
6. Upon completion of the operation, a new partition will appear on the hard disk containing a ready-to-use virtual volume.
   In the Disk Management console, the VZD is practically no different from standard hard drive partitions

For myself, I only created virtual hard disks a couple of times. The first time the reason was that important documents were stored on a work computer, to which many people had access. Therefore in work time I initialized the VZD, and after work I turned it off. All data on the disk was saved, but no one had access to it. The second time I created a VZD to store very personal media files. Unfortunately, the hard drive then burned down along with the virtual disk.

Video: how to create a virtual hard disk

How to create a virtual drive

Standard using Windows 10, you cannot create and permanently save a virtual drive in the system. The service responsible for virtual DVD devices starts working only after the image is mounted. That is, the virtual drive immediately disappears as soon as the ISO file is extracted from it. This is how standard Windows capabilities differ from special emulator programs. This implementation option was chosen to save RAM.

To connect a virtual drive, perform the following steps:

How to remove a virtual device in Windows 10

If the virtual drive is not used, then I recommend removing it. Supporting a virtual DVD takes up computer resources, albeit small ones, but they may be needed if you play a more or less decent game. I always immediately check out the image as soon as I'm done with it.

How to remove a virtual drive

As mentioned above, a standard virtual drive in Windows is removed by extracting a file - a disk image. If you used third-party emulator programs, then in each of them the drive is removed in its own way.

Removing a standard virtual drive

To remove a standard virtual drive, open the Disk Management console, and then do the following:

Disabling a virtual drive in emulator programs

In most emulators, virtual drives are created automatically the first time the program is launched, sometimes even without the user's knowledge. But they are easy to remove. This is done like this (each program has its own way):

1. In the UltraIso program on top panel Open the “Options” tab and select the “Settings” mode. Then go to the “Virtual drive” tab, set the “Number of devices” filter to “No” and save the changes with the OK button.
   Find the virtual drive parameters and set the “Number of devices” filter to “No”
2. In the Alcohol 120% program, open the “Service” tab, select “Settings”, then go to the “Virtual disk” item, set the number of drives to 0 and save the changes with the OK button.
   Find the parameters of the virtual drive and set the “Number of virtual disks” filter to 0
3. In the Daemon Tools application, right-click on the bottom panel with drives, select “Delete all” and confirm the action.

How to remove a virtual hard disk

If a virtual hard disk is no longer needed, it is very easy to remove. You can do this in two ways:

• through the disk management console;
• using the command line.

Uninstall via Disk Management console

We perform the following steps:

1. Open the Disk Management console. Right-click on the virtual hard drive and select the “Delete volume” action. Then we agree that all data from this section will be deleted and wait for the result.
   Right-click on the virtual hard disk and select “Delete Volume”
2. Next, right-click on the virtual hard disk again, select “Detach virtual hard disk” and agree to the terms by clicking OK.
   Right-click on the virtual hard disk, select “Detach virtual hard disk” and agree to the terms by clicking OK
3. After this, we delete the virtual partition file itself.
   After disconnecting the virtual hard disk, delete the partition file

Uninstall using the command line

The command line also allows you to delete a virtual volume, and you can do this literally with one command.

For this:

Creating a virtual device on your computer is very simple. At the same time, you get a disk or drive that is almost identical in its properties to a physical one, and can be used for a variety of purposes. And when it is no longer needed, it is just as easy to remove.

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.

– continuation of the popular program for emulating optical drives. The program creates up to 23 images (disk drives), any number of CDs and DVDs. Writes a virtual disk to physical media. Recognizes almost all formats, can bypass security systems, and in turn can protect virtual machines with a password. There is a disk compression function to save space on the hard drive. A disk editing function has appeared. Import/export to ISO format has been established. It is possible to organize access to virtual drives via the network. For novice users there is a simplified system for copying discs.

Advantages and disadvantages of Virtual CD

Understanding of many disk formats;
+ bypass many copy protection systems;
+ compression of CD/DVD discs;
+ setting a password for the virtual disk;
+ simplified disk copying mode for inexperienced users;
+ simple user interface;
+ presence of localization;
– after rearrangement, you need to re-create the image catalog.

Key Features

• creating images of CD and DVD discs in various formats;
• recording ready-made disk images;
• creation and use virtual drives;
• work with a large number of optical disc formats;
• organizing recorded images;
• ISO/Joliet file system support;
• direct disk copying;
• presence of a virtual disk editor;
• full integration into the OS;
• test the virtual disk before burning the optical media.

*Attention! When downloading the standard installer, you will need a pre-installed archiver, you can

How to download and install Virtual CD

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 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 write down ISO images on 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 a file structure 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.

For computers based on the operating system Windows systems XP, which is still quite popular, does 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 point we can attach the VHD disk that we will create with using Windows 10. Therefore, we will try to attach our 30 GB VHD container, which we made in the top 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