Great tut Shawn!
I had to figure it out myself awhile back when I upgraded my 2nd internal to a 1TB SSD using 485GB for my VM's(need room to grow, besides having more machines, plus on an SSD they boot even faster than the host, lacking, normally, most of the peripherals ).
Thankfully Hyper-V is relatively intuitive(relatively).
But I was talking to Kari, and he taught me, it is also important to have the backups, for the fall you nuke your VM & all checkpoints, so you can retain not only the VM, but the activation too.

@Brink & @Kari,
I just saw this new post: Windos just Trashed 1TB data External HDD - Windows 10 Forums and I am sooooo glad that after the tutorial and the video, plus Kari explain to me, how important a back up to an external disk is, and not just using Export to move the folders to another or new disk is.
Thanks again you Over Geeks

   Information

***(this was also posted with the link, to show others, why this is so important)***
Don't delay VM geeks, do it today, if you don't have a backup, or else, you could end up like this poor member

GalaxyGe said:

Thanks guys,
I managed to export my vm using option [3]. For some reason option [1] does not work for me. When I try to export using Hyper-V Manager, I can browse to the target folder on my local drive and click export. Then the mmc.exe including the Export thread goes to (Not Responding) and I can only kill the the whole mmc process.
I have recorded a dump file if anybody would be willing to have a look.

You really might want to think about exporting, to either a 2nd internal, or much better; an external USB for backing up.

GalaxyGe said:

No worries Cliff, I did export to local but then copied it to my NAS backup for safety. But as you say it's so critical I will do another copy to my out-of-house second USB treasury chest...
I will have to read the article above.. is there absolutely no way to get ones Windows activation back if that UUID is lost? What if I just take a note of the UUID on a piece of paper... could one not call MS and get the key unlocked?

@Kari, @Superfly, or @Brink can answer those questions netter than me.
But that taking note of your UUID/GUID, doesn't work like that,
It's a 128 bit number generated by Windows to identify your "hardware" be it bare metal or virtual. You can't just enter it somewhere, and call it a day.

As for calling Microsoft, about the key if you lose your VM, the above three members, I mentioned above, can clarify that.
But it would just be easier to have a backup, and if you wish to get rid of the VM and start over, deactivate the key using

Code:

slmgr /upk 

then deleting the machine, and re-creating one(this also works if you buy a new PC and prefer to use the retail key on the new one, and let the old PC revert to the OEM version).

Cliff S said:

@Kari, @Superfly, or @Brink can answer those questions netter than me.
But that taking note of your UUID/GUID, doesn't work like that,
It's a 128 bit number generated by Windows to identify your "hardware" be it bare metal or virtual. You can't just enter it somewhere, and call it a day.

As for calling Microsoft, about the key if you lose your VM, the above three members, I mentioned above, can clarify that.
But it would just be easier to have a backup, and if you wish to get rid of the VM and start over, deactivate the key using

Code:

slmgr /upk 

then deleting the machine, and re-creating one(this also works if you buy a new PC and prefer to use the retail key on the new one, and let the old PC revert to the OEM version).

That does not work for digital licences.

GalaxyGe said:

Thanks guys,
I managed to export my vm using option [3]. For some reason option [1] does not work for me. When I try to export using Hyper-V Manager, I can browse to the target folder on my local drive and click export. Then the mmc.exe including the Export thread goes to (Not Responding) and I can only kill the the whole mmc process.
I have recorded a dump file if anybody would be willing to have a look.

Actually, the export tool does not do anything more sophisticated than copying the vhds and the vm file (.vmcx files). You can manually back the up using file explorer.