Overview

Virtual Hard Disk is best known as VHD which is a disk image file format. It is capable of storing the entire data of a Virtual Machine. It holds file system like FAT, NTFS, and UDFS. The format is capable of creating system image backup.

How to Create a VHD File

Windows Vista has introduced the feature of creating an image for a hard drive and that image can store in VHD to provide complete backup.

Microsoft has launched Virtual PC as a virtualization app to run Win XP  (Virtual Machine) on Win 7. The data of Win XP is saved in VHD.

VHD is used by Microsoft Virtual Server and hyper-V. It allows you to run more than one OS in a single host.

Category

It belongs to the Disk Image file group.

Supportive Apps

Multiple apps are supported by the format

Windows Virtual PC

MS Virtual Server

Microsoft Hyper-V

VMWare Workstation

Oracle Virtualbox

Developer

Along with Windows Vista and Virtual Server, the tech giant Microsoft has introduced the file format.

MIME Type

It has only one MIME type.

application/octet-stream

File Signature

63 6F 6E 65 63 74 69 78

Location

The location of VHD files is depended on which type of virtualization app is installed in your system.

Microsoft Hyper-V

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks

Windows Virtual PC

C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vhd

Users can open the file format using –

• File Viewer Plus
• Microsoft Virtual Server
• Microsoft Windows Virtual PC