Auto-Mount VHD or VHDX File at Startup in Windows 10  

tfwul said:

Please allow me to get back on this. There are various ways to mound VHD(X) drives, but they usually either require users to go thru a few steps steps (launch Explorer, locate VHD, r-click), or expect users to have some level of skill (ref. powershell).

It stikes me but AFAIK Microsoft does not offer some sort of 'VHD manager tool' running in the background and is available in the taskbar allowing users to r-click and mount drives. I might be overlooking it though...


Below is just a rough idea of what I mean, being a more user-friendly way to access VHD drives.

Attachment 354999

Once mounted, status is 'Open', otherwise it says 'Mount'.

(Control Panel - to add / remove drives to/from the list)

Any tool like this still needs a means of gui to navigate to VHD to select it.
You basically already have a tool to mount, create, dismount vhds etc. What you are basically asking is part of Disk Management.

You can select vhd to mount it, create new one, dismount etc. You can see if it is mounted as it shows up as drive, you can assign letters etc. The only thing missing perhaps is jumplists of ones you have mounted but that is hardly a big deal.

It is very easy to mount vhds using diskpart command as well.

Also, control panel is dying. No way will MS introduce a management tool like you are asking anyway.

tfwul said:

Frankly, I have stolen this from another encryption tool that I am running, which is showing up as a button in the taskbar.

When r-clicking that button, a pop-up similar to the above shows up and I can select any of the drives listed there. A floating panel will then show up prompting for the password. Obviously I made some changes to the screenshot.
I think this is the most user-friendly way, reason for me to post it.

As said, I know there are numerous ways to mount VHD drives.

Then again, less skilled non-TenForums end-users may not be familiar with jumplists and diskpart...

Any user savvy enough to want to use virtual hard drives will know how to use disk management and very likely have experience in using diskpart, or at least have enough knowledge to google how to create and use vhds - loads of articles out there.


As I said, disk management does all you need really. I just do not see point of jumplists - it is not like word or excel where you are opening and closing lots of documents all the time.

jimbo45 said:

Thanks

@Brink

incredibly useful !!!!!!!

@cereberus -- the point was to have this to run automatically at windows startup - it's a pain to run diskpart etc manually to get the vhdx mounted each time.

just what I was looking for to have this run at Windows start up automatically. I have several Windows systems on vhdx files but I want any of them to be able to access one particular data vhdx file. Works perfectly on any of the windows systems I have on that disk -- themselves are all on vhdx files. Note in this case the task has to be created on all the different windows systems one time and the file has to be in a "known" path at start up.

It's a pain to run diskpart and do it all manually every time .

Note it also works on W11 but Administrative tools have been renamed to Windows tools !!



The Real disk map : (c is running itself from vhdx file)



vhdx data files




boot menu




Happy Hols everyone

cheers
jimbo

Just write a simple batch file to mount deives at startup using task scheduler?

PS Happy Xmas. I refuse to use term Happy Hols. It is only left wing loonies who perpetuate this utter PC nonsense.

tfwul said:

Assume this will also apply for unmounting then?

powershell DisMount-DiskImage -ImagePath [path to vhd or vhdx]

So:
Mount: Powershell.exe Mount-DiskImage "X:\SomeDrive.vhdx"
Unmount: Powershell.exe Dismount-DiskImage "X:\SomeDrive.vhdx"

In case Hyper-V is disabled.

It will.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/po...ount-diskimage

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/po...ount-diskimage

tfwul said:

Thanks a lot. I wasn't aware of these specific pages. Often these 'learn' pages are for more advanced users. BTW something I am not sure of: would unmounting be the same as ejecting a password protected (Bitlocker encrypted) VHDX? There is an automatic mount at pc-start (taskschedular), see your tutorial. It seems there is no automatic unmounting at pc shutdown/restart...?

Virtual machines are automatically dismounted at shutdown or restart.

It's the main reason for this tutorial if someone wanted to auto-mount a VM at startup since it was dismounted at shutdown/restart.