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vhd

Windows 8 to directly support ISO and VHD files

Windows 8 will let you open and view ISO and VHD files all on its own, according to the latest "Building Windows 8" blog from Microsoft.

Posted yesterday by Microsoft engineer Rajeev Nagar, the new blog post, titled "Accessing data in ISO and VHD files," revealed that native support for ISO and VHD files was one feature often requested by users, prompting the company to add it to its upcoming OS.

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) files are image files that hold the contents of a CD or DVD. Large programs available for download through the … Read more

Virtual hard disks made easy

Microsoft's free Sysinternals Disk2vhd utility creates a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) image of a physical disk drive for Microsoft Virtual PC and Hyper-V virtual machines. It's built on the Volume Snapshot capability introduced in Windows XP. Disk2vhd uses this capability to create accurate "snapshots" of disk volumes selected for conversion. Disk2vhd can also create VHDs on local volumes, even those that are being converted. It preserves your disk partitions and only copies the data on selected disk volumes, which lets you convert only system volumes while excluding data volumes. The biggest difference between Disk2vhd and other … Read more