Disk2vhd

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates a VHD (virtual hard disk) version of your disk for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines.

Creating a virtual hard drive in Windows

The main difference and advantage of this utility over others like it is that you can run it in the same system you want to make a virtual copy from.

Disk2vhd uses the regular shadow copying service to create snapshots of the disk you want to convert. It creates one VHD file per selected partition. The partition information is left untouched, and it copies only the selected partitions. If your disk is divided into several partitions, e.g. system and file storage, you can make an image of just your system without touching the other partition.

To use VHD in a "virtual machine", create the desired configuration and add the image as an IDE disk. It is worth noting that Virtual PC supports images up to 127 GB in size.

As for working with the utility, it is very simple, despite the complexity of the operation. From the general list, select the disks/partitions you want to convert to VHD and specify the folder for the new image. Then click "Create" and wait for the procedure to complete.

You can download Disk2vhd for Windows for free from freeSOFT.com.