Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
another programme?

Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:

> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
> another programme?

When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
like any hard drive. If it's not attached, you can still read the
files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
etc.

Pent wrote:
> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
> another programme?

Attach in Disk Management Actions, read-only.

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/566-virtual-hard-disk-create-attach-vhd.html

"Disk Management" is the executable diskmgmt.msc
so you can Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc if you want.

One thing you have to worry about, a tiny amount, is what
disk identifiers are involved. If you created the VHD file
with disk2vhd.exe , then the disk drive imaged inside the VHD
file would have identical disk identifiers to the ones used
on the physical disk the image was made from. The Disk Management
interface, after attempting to Attach the VHD in that case,
will select a status of "Offline" for the new virtual disk
drive.

The Windows 7 Backup software from Microsoft, puts one partition
per VHD file. It doesn't make backups the exact same way that
disk2vhd does.

If you have any trouble with a VHD ending up "Offline" in
the Disk Management window, instead of Attaching, you can
use Marble2 posting suggestion of 7-ZIP.

https://www.7-zip.org/

When 7-ZIP burrows into a VHD file (using the context menu entry),
it can end up using the pagefile to expand the contents. This
could take a while. That could be what it is doing, if it seems
to be taking too long. It's using the pagefile or something else
on one of your disks as a scratchpad area. I don't know if it is
clever enough to just use virtual memory (such that if the machine
has enough memory, the VHD will open instantly). But anyway, that's
one of the few cases where 7ZIP gets bogged down, is burrowing into
VHD files sometimes results in sluggish performance.

If you were on WinXP, you could try this ("OSFMount") for a VHD.

https://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html

Also, Microsoft (Ben Armstrong) made a "vhdmount.exe" for
Windows XP users.

None of those will particularly do anything clever with
disk identifiers, so mounting the same drive as exists
physically on the computer, might still result in an "Offline"
complaint.

Picture of controls... These options not available in at least Windows XP

https://i.postimg.cc/rw8sJS61/diskmgmt-with-VHD.gif

Paul

On 11/09/2021 22:49, Marble2 wrote:
> Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:
>
>> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
>> another programme?
>
> When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
> like any hard drive. If it's not attached, you can still read the
> files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
> etc.
>

Tried to attach it with no luck, 7-Zip could see the files so created a
new one and copied the files over.

Thanks.

Dex wrote:
> On 11/09/2021 22:49, Marble2 wrote:
>> Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:
>>
>>> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
>>> another programme?
>>
>> When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
>> like any hard drive. If it's not attached, you can still read the
>> files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
>> etc.
>>
>
>
> Tried to attach it with no luck, 7-Zip could see the files so created a
> new one and copied the files over.
>
> Thanks.

What was your VHD made with ?

Paul

On 12/09/2021 03:44, Paul wrote:
> Dex wrote:
>> On 11/09/2021 22:49, Marble2 wrote:
>>> Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:
>>>
>>>> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
>>>> another programme?
>>>
>>> When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
>>> like any hard drive.  If it's not attached, you can still read the
>>> files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
>>> etc.
>>>
>>
>>
>> Tried to attach it with no luck, 7-Zip could see the files so created
>> a new one and copied the files over.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> What was your VHD made with ?
>
>    Paul

VHD Attach

https://www.medo64.com/vhdattach/

Dex wrote:
> On 12/09/2021 03:44, Paul wrote:
>> Dex wrote:
>>> On 11/09/2021 22:49, Marble2 wrote:
>>>> Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:
>>>>
>>>>> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
>>>>> another programme?
>>>>
>>>> When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
>>>> like any hard drive. If it's not attached, you can still read the
>>>> files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
>>>> etc.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Tried to attach it with no luck, 7-Zip could see the files so created
>>> a new one and copied the files over.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
>> What was your VHD made with ?
>>
>> Paul
>
> VHD Attach
>
> https://www.medo64.com/vhdattach/

But before you attach a file, some program generates the file.
That's what I was wondering about, if there was something unique
about the source method of the file.

Windows Backup uses .vhd files as its backup format. The reason
a person would be doing this Attach sort of stuff, was for recovering
single files from a previously-made backup.

Windows Virtual PC can make .vhd files, when you set up a virtual machine.
For example, "WinXP Mode" in Win7 Pro, might be an example
of a .vhd file, but you can install other OSes in Windows Virtual PC as
well. The only big limitation of the Windows Virtual PC, is it uses only
one CPU core and not multiple cores like VirtualBox. You can't run Windows 10
in a Windows Virtual PC environment, as it won't be happen in there,
and the under-powered one core limit would not be helping.

VirtualBox can create and store installed OSes in .vhd files, as
well as a couple other container formats it supports.

I was just curious, if the image had come from something else.

An example of a purpose built tool, is "disk2vhd" from sysinternals.com .
It converts a disk drive into a .vhd file. There is a limit to the
size of a disk that can be converted (2.2TB of content inside the
..vhd or so).

I would hope any tool preparing "out-sized" .vhd files, knows
enough to stop before creating a "defective" one :-) It would
take quite a few hours to make one larger than the limit.

When you "compact" a .vhd file, Windows Virtual PC is your man.
It compacts VHDs without ruining the GUID on them, which happens
with some other attempts to compact them. Microsoft diskpart
can do that as well, do a compact for you. Compact removes
any portion of a .vhd which is "all zeros", such as removed
files where the white space created has been overwritten with
zeros. This tool and its -z option, is an example of a way
of preparing a .vhd for compaction.

https://live.sysinternals.com/

Wednesday, November 25, 2020 11:00 AM 358784 sdelete.exe
Wednesday, November 25, 2020 11:00 AM 459136 sdelete64.exe

sdelete -z E:

The VHD holding that E: partition, can now be compacted and the
VHD file will be a bit smaller.

Compaction is only necessary as a maintenance or space savings
operation. It would not be expected to run CHKDSK before or after,
and it's a physical-layer kind of operation which is file system
agnostic. It's up to you to run CHKDSK before and after, if you
have any concerns about FAT32/NTFS/ExFAT inside a .vhd. If your
VHD is EXT4, then "fsck" in Linux does the checking for those.

As an example of a shitty way to make a VHD, at one time there
was a program, it would take a "dd.exe" image of a disk drive,
and just slap a small header on the front of the file, and
voila, a VHD file is made. I don't remember the name of that
program, but that's an example of just how simple a conversion
can be. If a person were to do that, some "sdelete" run on
the VHD partitions while they are Attached read/write, followed
by a Compact operation, would make the .vhd smaller. If you
imaged a 1TB disk and it had 20GB of files on it, after sdelete
and Compact the .vhd file would be only 20GB in size and no longer
a 1TB file. Running sdelete on a large partition, takes forever and
a day. Normally, I wouldn't try that on anything over 50GB or so,
due to the time it takes. The modern version of sdelete or sdelete64
above, are a lot better than the early versions, but it is still
a ponderously slow thing. Using disk2vhd would do that fat-squeezing
stuff, without all of that delay.

Just the same as running Windows 7 Backup (look in Control Panels),
might make the .vhd you wanted. But anything dealing with
terabyte physical devices, takes a lot of time, so you have
to be patient in such cases.

Paul

On 12/09/2021 13:26, Paul wrote:
> Dex wrote:
>> On 12/09/2021 03:44, Paul wrote:
>>> Dex wrote:
>>>> On 11/09/2021 22:49, Marble2 wrote:
>>>>> Pent <in@out.me.com> wrote in news:shj53v$rl0$1@dont-email.me:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Can the files put into a .vhd container be viewed outside it from
>>>>>> another programme?
>>>>>
>>>>> When attached (mounted), a Virtual Hard Drive's files can be accessed
>>>>> like any hard drive.  If it's not attached, you can still read the
>>>>> files inside a .VHD container with a file archiver like WinZip, 7-Zip
>>>>> etc.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tried to attach it with no luck, 7-Zip could see the files so
>>>> created a new one and copied the files over.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> What was your VHD made with ?
>>>
>>>     Paul
>>
>> VHD Attach
>>
>> https://www.medo64.com/vhdattach/
>
> But before you attach a file, some program generates the file.

VHD Attach. It can create as well as mount and unmount VHDs. It wasn't a
VHD with a OS in it, although I have 2 that are. But for some reason it
wouldn't mount anymore, using VHD Attach or Disk Management.

Didn't realise it was a simple as using 7-Zip to see inside one.