Is there a trick to moving virtual hard disks?

November 26, 2015 9:25 AM

I can't seem to attach a virtual hard disk I created if I move it from its original directory unless it's attached as "read-only". Is this typical?

I recently started toying with the idea of using virtual hard disks as a way to store any projects that I didn't want to be accessible to anyone using my computer. However, I noticed that if I move the VHD I created to a new local directory, then the next time I try to attach it using Windows Disk Management, I get an "access is denied" error. I can then access it by making it read-only in the "attach virtual hard disk" prompt, but this obviously precludes making changes to the drive. If I move the file back to the original directory, I can access the VHD as expected.

I thought that one of the advantages to using VHDs is that they were "portable"; I could just copy or move the file and the virtual hard disk would be easily accessible. I am using Windows 7 Ultimate edition.

I have tried to find answers online, but I'm in over my head. Any help would be appreciated!

posted by millions to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Best answer: i don't use windows, so this is only a guess, but is it possible the disk (or a copy) is still mounted somewhere?
posted by andrewcooke at 12:47 PM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Might be something useful here.
posted by quinndexter at 5:44 PM on November 26, 2015

Which virtual computer software are you using? It seems to be more complicated in VirtualBox than in VMWare, for instance, so the actual procedures differ from one VM program to another.
posted by lhauser at 10:11 PM on November 26, 2015

lhauser - pretty sure they're using native windows support for "virtual hard drives" (although it's the same format as used by vb, vm etc).
posted by andrewcooke at 7:07 AM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yeah, this was using just Windows; no additional software.

It turns out that andrewcooke got me thinking and put me on the right path. There was something about the folder I had moved the VHD to, some property that was affecting the way that disk management interacted with it. I may have changed some properties in the folder to keep my work from turning up in searches, and whatever it was I changed, I wasn't ever able to get things working normally again. Come to think of it, whatever I did was causing a lot of other curious behavior, too. Things wouldn't display correctly in explorer, and I couldn't sort the files normally.

So there was really nothing wrong with the VHD; I just had to put it in a normal folder and now everything works fine. Thanks for the help everyone!
posted by millions at 4:17 PM on November 27, 2015 [1 favorite]