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Adding Hard Disk in Virtual PC 2004

Published: 4/30/2005 | Updated: 4/30/2005 | Discuss

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.

A screen with settings of a virtual machine (Windows XP in this case)

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!

Comments

1 Brett | Sunday, May 01, 2005 at 9:27 AM

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.

2 Milan Negovan | Sunday, May 01, 2005 at 1:59 PM

Duh! I forgot about that MMC snap-in. :) I went back and did the same routine with Disk Management, and it worked like charm.

3 Devdatta | Thursday, June 08, 2006 at 5:42 AM

Thanks a lot :)
Saved me a lot of trouble. I was in the same predicament..had installed windows on a small VHD

4 Dave | Thursday, June 29, 2006 at 2:08 PM

thanks man!!! this is exactly what I was looking for!

5 Fabio | Friday, October 13, 2006 at 6:08 PM

Thaths God

6 Robert | Friday, December 22, 2006 at 11:54 AM

Many thanks to you. A useful thing

7 Alex | Saturday, December 23, 2006 at 11:14 PM

Thanks, very good

8 giulioski | Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 10:16 AM

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 !

9 Scott | Tuesday, May 01, 2007 at 9:01 AM

Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you far taking the time to share the hard-won info.

10 Robert | Saturday, August 18, 2007 at 2:48 PM

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.

11 demefemf | Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 10:45 AM

good man!!!
i searched for hours in the vpc itself....
ty for placing this topicXD

12 chris | Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 4:07 PM

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.)

13 thuyduong | Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 1:53 AM

Thank you so much

14 Jose | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 12:34 AM

Thank you!! I have been in problems with the recogntion of the physical unit for a long time ... until now :D.

15 Dave W | Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 12:37 PM

Thank you - just what I needed

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