How do you create a VHD in Windows Virtual PC (Win 7) that is linked to a real physical drive?

Question

I know that you can create a Virtual HD in Virtual PC that is linked to a physical drive so it's not compressed, runs faster, etc.

I'm now using Windows 7 and I don't see any way to create such a VHD. Only options are Dynamic, Fixed, Differencing.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can attach a physical disk with Hyper-V, so that it is "owned" by that particular VM and no other. I don't have Windows [7] Virtual PC, so I can't confirm whether this feature has been back-ported. (I suspect not.)

This feature is also supported by VirtualBox and VMWare, using a special .vmdk image file (which just points to the disk).

The performance benefit may not be all that great, but I suppose it's worth testing in your particular setup. The phrases "raw disk" and "disk pass-through" are used to describe this feature, if you want to search further.