Strange Error mounting an iso on an external drive in Hyper-V

I got this rather odd error message when trying to mount an iso from an external drive using Hyper-V.

The external drive is formatted as NTFS, so the second part does not apply.

The iso does mount if I copy it to an "internal" drive in Hyper-V (C drive in my case).

It also mounts from external drive using a 3rd party tool (virtual clonedrive).

Not a big deal as easy enough to get round but I am curios to now if this is a bug, or if it is the way an external drive is interfaced somehow?

I agree that the error message is strange or at least misleading, it should in my opinion be something like this:

Kari

Kari said:

I agree that the error message is strange or at least misleading, it should in my opinion be something like this:

Kari

Yeah - odd part is 3rd party apps work fine so even that is not strictly accurate, and wonder why it cannot be done - obviously hyper-v opens isos without any issue if on internal drive?

I guess we will never know as I doubt this would ever be a priority issue.

Third party apps are of course OK, it's just that on a Hyper-V VM you cannot mount a disk image or VHD if it is not locally stored on the vm.

Personally I don't see any issues in this: when I need to mount an ISO I mount it in VM settings as DVD, when I need a VHD I mount it as an additional disk.

Kari said:

Third party apps are of course OK, it's just that on a Hyper-V VM you cannot mount a disk image or VHD if it is not locally stored on the vm.

Personally I don't see any issues in this: when I need to mount an ISO I mount it in VM settings as DVD, when I need a VHD I mount it as an additional disk.

As I said it is no big deal - it was just the confusing message I was commenting on really.

It would have helped if the message said (for example)- "mount iso as dvd image in settings" which is a better solution than copying to an internal drive as it uses less space of course.

I worked this solution out later but did not actually mention it.

My point was you have work it out from a misleading message, as it was not immediately obvious what the issue was.

cereberus said:

My point was you have work it out from a misleading message, as it was not immediately obvious what the issue was.

Very true. That message is most misleading.