Adding Hard Disk in Virtual PC 2004
Posted in Development
The other day I installed Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and quickly whipped out a WinXP installation on it. My mistake was to allocate a “hard drive” with only 4G of space. Surprisingly, a bare-bones WinXP installation after all service packs took a little over 3G!
Ready…
Luckily, VPC allows adding two more hard disks. To add another virtual disk, you have to select an available slot and launch the Virtual Disk Wizard. Follow on-screen instructions and create a new virtual hard disk (dynamically expanding, fixed, differencing—doesn’t matter), then go back to the settings screen, select Virtual hard disk file and browse to the one you have created a minute ago.
This is only half the story. You now have a “physical” hard disk, but Windows won’t see it because the disk doesn’t have any logical partitions and is not formatted.
At first, I couldn’t figure out how to make Windows see my new disk, and searching online turned up absolutely nothing. I hope this post helps those of you struggling with the same problem.
Set…
I did find a mention of a tool called DiskPart. I’ve become a bit rusty on the disk partition and volume theory, but it didn’t take long to figure it out.
Boot up Windows in VPC, and launch DiskPart.exe from command line. In DiskPart
- Run the list disk command. You will see your hard disk listed there.
- Select it by running select disk 1 if you’re adding Hard Disk 2, or select disk 2 for Hard Disk 3 respectively (their numbering starts at 0).
- Run create partition extended followed by create partition logical. This way the logical partition will take up all the space on the new disk.
- Run assign. If you wish to assign a specific available (!) letter, plug it after the assign command.
Go!
At this point Windows should see your drive. You’re all set.
Don’t do any of it on a development or production drive. These instructions are for virtual disks within Virtual PC only! Help you God if you destroy a live disk.
By the way, in terms of performance, I enjoy VPC soooo much better than VMWare!
23 comments
Milan Negovan
on May 1, 2005
Duh! I forgot about that MMC snap-in. :) I went back and did the same routine with Disk Management, and it worked like charm.
Devdatta
on June 8, 2006
Thanks a lot :)
Saved me a lot of trouble. I was in the same predicament..had installed windows on a small VHD
Dave
on June 29, 2006
thanks man!!! this is exactly what I was looking for!
Fabio
on October 13, 2006
Thaths God
Robert
on December 22, 2006
Many thanks to you. A useful thing
giulioski
on February 17, 2007
Hi, I've the same problem but with Win 98 and diskpart is not available for Win 98. I can see only the second hd but not the 3rd. HELP !
Scott
on May 1, 2007
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you far taking the time to share the hard-won info.
Robert
on August 18, 2007
for win98... type command the run box.. get a dos windows. then use fdisk (type it). Change to disk 2 then create a primary dos drive. Reboot, and then you will find the drive in my computer.. format it and your done.
demefemf
on September 19, 2007
good man!!!
i searched for hours in the vpc itself....
ty for placing this topicXD
chris
on November 11, 2007
Thanks, that helped a lot =D
Had to install virtual PC and install xp just so i can install my game (which doesnt run on vista. full stop.)
thuyduong
on July 17, 2008
Thank you so much
Jose
on July 23, 2008
Thank you!! I have been in problems with the recogntion of the physical unit for a long time ... until now :D.
Dave W
on August 13, 2008
Thank you - just what I needed
Bhima Raju
on November 19, 2008
Thank you very much for sharing this info.
It was really helpful. :)
~Bhima
Ahipathy
on December 6, 2008
I have windows vista home premium (not compatible with virtual pc 2004) and after the final step - create partition logical. I donot see the physical drive recognised in my computer in the virtual pc. It is seen in the device manager and it says working properly!!!Pls help!!
JohnDoe
on February 20, 2009
Lucky me - I found your page quick...my intuition says I just saved some hours :)
Thanks man!
Tony
on October 8, 2009
I have set up a drive with drive wizard but the hard disk 2 and 3 options are greyed out (disabled) so i can't select the drive i just created. Any ideas?
thanks
Tony
Nestor
on October 13, 2009
Hi!
Thank a lot, you saved my day!
I was facing this problem too on virtual pc 2007, and quest what..it's working :D
Cheers mate
Nestor
:D
on December 18, 2009
here is a nice article
http://arcanecode.com/2006/12/18/adding-a-second-hard-drive-to-virtualpc-step-by-step/
Tony
on December 23, 2009
Excelent advice. Worked a treat. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this
Janis
on June 9, 2010
it works! thanks a lot
Brett
on May 1, 2005
Could you not just use the Disk Manager (you get get to it from computer management)? You could have the loaded the additional drive as an NT folder even.