There have been considerable steps forward in Vista for compatibility with other OSes and to prep for the upcoming virtualiztion tools that have already been rolled out in Server 2008. One of the nice features is VHD (Virtual HardDrive) file support.

Users can make a system backup to VHD file and also boot from a VHD file. With Windows Vista you can easily mount a VHD file for offline editing in Disk Management.

Click on the Start Button and key in diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.

Once in Disk Management, click on the Action in the menu bar and select Attach VHD.

Select the file location and check Read-only to prevent writes to the VHD file.

After you hit ok the drive will show up in Disk Management with a blue icon.

You can now access the F: drive in Explorer.
When you want to un-mount the VHD file return to Disk Management and right click on the left side of the drive listed on the device chart and select Detach VHD.

Tags | Disaster Recovery, General, Microsoft, Windows Vista