Adding a Second Hard Drive to VirtualPC Step by Step

Development, Tools, Virtualization, VirtualPC 5 Minutes

Microsoft Virtual PC defaults the hard disks for it’s virtual machines to 16 gig in size. For most instances that’s large enough, but you could have cases where you simply need more disk space. Or, perhaps you’d like to keep your demo or project code in a separate virtual hard disk than the main virtual disk your applications run on. Regardless of your reason, creating a second hard drive for your virtual machine is fairly easy.

A few up front points, in these instructions I’ll be doing what I believe to be the most common scenario for most folks and be using Windows XP for my guest system.

First, before you launch your Virtual PC click on it once and select the settings button. Now go to Hard Disk 2. Change the option button from “None” to “Virtual hard disk file”. Next, click on Virtual Disk Wizard.

The first screen is simply the welcome screen, just click next.

[Second VHD 1]

On the next screen it asks about disk options. Take the default of “Crate a new virtual disk” and click next.

[Second VHD 2]

You are now asked about what type of disk you’d like to create, a hard or floppy disk. Take the default of “A virtual hard disk” and click next.

[Second VHD 3]

Now you are prompted for the name and location. I stored this with my other VHD files, so enter the path and location you want and click next.

[Second VHD 4]

The next screen asks what type of drive you want to select. The default, “Dynamically expanding” is the default, and is what we’ll be using. This is a great option as it puts a small file on your drive and lets it slowly expand as you need it to grow.

“Fixed size” creates just what it sounds like, a fixed size hard disk. The one main use I could think of is to create a virtual disk the same size as a DVD. You can then store your files on it prior to burning to a DVD. Downside is that the drive always takes the same amount of disk space.

“Differencing” is a big topic, but in brief a differencing drive is based on another VHD file. Once you create a differencing drive, the original is locked and cannot be changed; all changes are written to the differencing disk. Why would you want to do this?

Well let’s say you were teaching a class and wanted to let the students work on labs. You’d create your base image with your software loaded, and then create a differencing disk. Your students would write their changes to the differencing disk. After that class was done all you have to do is create a new differencing disk instead of having to recreate your entire disk image.

Final is linked to a hard disk. It saves your info out to the real hard drive. This is considered an advanced option, and to be honest I haven’t experimented much with it so that’s all I’ll say for now.

As I said, we’ll go with the default for now, and pick “Dynamically expanding”. Click Next to continue.

[Second VHD 5]

Next we are prompted for the maximum size of the VHD. In this demo we’ll take the default of 16 gig and click next, however if you’d like to change it go ahead, enter the maximum number of megabytes you want, when you’re done click Next.

[Second VHD 6]

OK, you’re up to the final screen, this just asks you to confirm your choices. Click on Finish to complete the process.

[Second VHD 7]

You should see a small message saying you’ve created the disk. Just click Close to close this message.

[Second VHD 8]

Now that you’ve created your drive, you need to tell Virtual PC to use it. If you recall, in the settings window we’ve already selected the “Virtual hard disk file” option. Now click the Browse button and pick the vhd file we just created.

[Second VHD 9]

OK, now we’ve got Virtual PC all setup. Click on OK to close the settings, then click on Start to start the Virtual PC. Once you’ve logged in, open up a My Computer window. Here’s a snapshot of mine.

[Second VHD 10]

OK, I can hear you now. “Hey, I created another drive, where’d it go?” Well, it’s there, the problem is you haven’t formatted it yet so Windows XP doesn’t know what to do with it. Let’s fix that now.

Open up Control Panel, and go into Administrative Tools. Now double click on Computer Management. Now click on Disk Management under Storage in the tree. The minute you do, you’ll be presented with the “Initialize and Convert Disk Wizard”. After taking a look at the opening screen, click Next.

[Second VHD 11]

The next screen asks which disks you want to convert. Here, you see Disk 1 is selected, which is correct (your C drive is disk 0, then each additional drive is 1, 2, etc.) Click Next.

[Second VHD 12]

Now it asks about converting disks to Dynamic disks. Check this on, and pick next. (Note in the pic below I haven’t checked it on yet, you will need to.)

[Second VHD 13]

Finally, you are presented with the Finish window. Click Finish to complete.

[Second VHD 14]

Now the window shows Disk 1 as initialized, but it’s still not quite ready to use yet.

[Second VHD 15]

Hang on, we’re almost done. Right click in the Disk 1 area, and select New Volume. This launches the New Volume wizard. On the opening screen just click Next.

[Second VHD 16]

Now you are presented with the Select Volume Type. Simple is the only option enabled, so let’s just select Next.

[Second VHD 17]

The next screen is prompting you to see how much disk space you want to allocate to this new volume. In our case we’ll use all the space, so we’ll just click Next.

[Second VHD 18]

In the next dialog we’re asked what drive letter to assign to our new volume. You can pick any available letter, but I think I’ll just take the default of E and click Next.

[Second VHD 19]

Now the wizard will prompt about formatting. We need to format this drive, so we definitely want to do this. I did change the default volume label from “New Volume Label” to “VSDriveE” since I’m using this with a vhd I use for Visual Studio. However, you should name it something appropriate to your use. Other than that, I’m leaving the other options alone and clicking Next.

[Second VHD 20]

Finally we’re nearing the end. The next screen is the “Completing the New Volume” wizard. Here we are simply confirming our choices. Take a quick look, if all looks well, click Finish.

[Second VHD 21]

While it formats, it will show you the progress in the status window, as you see below.

[Second VHD 22]

OK, that’s it, you’re done. Close the Computer Management window, then the Administrative Tools window. When you return you new computer, you will see your new drive, ready to go!

[Second VHD 23]

Well there you go. Seems like a lot of steps, but it took a lot longer for you to read this than it will take you to actually do it. If you do create new drives, drop a comment and let us know what creative uses you use your second drive for.

Advertisement

Published by arcanecode

Published

99 thoughts on “Adding a Second Hard Drive to VirtualPC Step by Step”

  2. excellent – i have been scratching my head for 2 days – doh!

    i was using windows 2000 as my virtual pc but the method was practically the same – cheers

    Reply

  3. This was gr8, been wondering how to do this for ages. realy dou moment when i found out it was this easy.

    thanks

    Reply

  5. Thanx dude…….u saved me frm a big headache. Urs shld b first hit. Keep posting more abt virtual m/c scenarios…..:)

    Reply
  12. Pingback: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is FREE !
  15. Pingback: Differencing Disks in Virtual PC 2007 « Arcane Code

  17. The Question is how to Expand current drive. Not ADDING an addtional drive. How can we expand that Single Drive (C) without using a 3rd party like Partition Magic?

    Reply

  18. Teezoy – I don’t know of any way built into VPC to do that. That’s why when I create a virtual drive I just set it to the max size (I think 130,577 or something close) and set to dynamically expanding. That way it’ll grow as needed.

    Reply

  21. Teezoy,
    You can’t do that. The only way to enlarge your HD is to make a second larrger disk, then use a disk imaging tool to copy disk 0 to disk1, then in VM settings remove the first HD and put the second HD in its place. You can Google for more info.

    Reply

  24. Great Tutorial
    Nice easy step by step illustration
    I was stuck after I created the drive and was unable to locate the newly added drive

    Reply

  25. You totally and completely rock. I have been banging my head against a wall for 2 days prior to finding your tutorial

    Reply

  31. Thanks a lot!! Really saved lot of time by giving clear description and pictures. Awesome posting 🙂
    Thanks again,
    Ravindra.

    Reply

  35. This is the best article I have read in a long time. To the point and very helpful. I wish Virtual PC would at least hint to you that you that there are extra steps beyond the configuration steps in its console.

    Thank you very much.

    Reply

  36. Just what I needed. I have installed WHS as a VM with Windows Server 2003 as host OS. I will use the WHS for storage of all my data and to access them remotely.
    A bit disappointed that the max disk size was only 130 Gig
    Regards, Ragnar

    Reply

  37. With me it only can create the new disc to a new parion instead of volume, but in seems to run correctly after…

    When I chose the Disc Management the window you’re talking about does’nt show at my pc.

    Can it be bacuse I have installed Home Edition as a Virtial HD?

    Reply

  38. If we don’t convert to dynamic disk, what will possibly happen? (Of course, a basic disk.) But, my question is – it’s still usable, rite?

    Reply

  39. Very helpful! Helped my XP Virtual PC to recognise the additional fixed size virtual hard drive I created using Virtual PC 2007 on Vista Premium! Many thanks.

    Reply

  48. Unfortunately – the limit for the disk is 64GB. We needed more, so we have to use additional disks. What so more – we have more flexibility with two smaller disk files than with one very big disk file. Thank you very much for detailed explanation. It helped me a lot.

    Reply

  54. Thanks! I was fumbling through the process of adding the 2nd drive and then it didn’t show up in my computer. You made my day with this.

    Reply

  59. Anyone know of a link that can show me how to do the exact same thing with Windows 98se? I cant see the new disk in DOS, so i cant fdisk and format it.

    Reply

  64. I am trying to make a file server and i have installed win 2003 server on my VM. To creat a file server I need 4 virtual HDD. in the Virtual Machine Console there is HDD 1/2/3 how do i add the 4th Virtual HDD to complete my File server Lab. Please help.

    Reply

  65. Very good walk through. Couldn’t find better information anywhere else. This was the first time I needed to do this since the old FDISK days. Thanks for helping me out.

    Reply

  66. saved my bacon! thanks. first disk not enough room for databases needed to restore. now for each database (all over 100 gig) I have a new drive for. again, THANKS!!

    Reply

  77. Good job! This was a great help to me as I needed a specific drive letter to match the paths that I had defined in the configuration files for an application that I had planned on porting over to the virtual machine. I was told (and think, instinctively knew) that I could add an additional HD to my virtual server but the process was not as intuitive as I would have imagined. Needed a quick guide. Did a Google search first thing this morning; found this how-to and had my new, formatted drive up and running within 1/2 hour.

    Thanks!

    Reply

  93. Arcane Thanks for this post, again you have helped me out again. As for Teezoy, you cannot expand a virtual hard disk once you create it. It behaves just like any other hard disk.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s