How to Backup Your Data to a Virtual Hard Drive in Windows 7

Select a location on your machine where you want the VHD to live and its size.

Decide if you want it to be Dynamically expanding or a Fixed size.

Then You will see the virtual drive listed as Unknown unallocated space.

Right-smack the left box and Initialize Disk.

Right-hit the Unallocated area and select New Simple Volume.

When you’re done, you will see the new VHD listed under Hard Disk Drives in Computer.

Here we’ll useWindows 7 Backup and Restore.

bang out backup and restore into the Search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter.

Uncheck Include a system image of drives before continuing on, as you should’vealready created one.

you’re able to schedule the backup to run on a regular schedule if you want.

After you have everything selected, review your backup tweaks and click Save tweaks and run backup.

The backup kicks off and you’ll get a progress bar while it takes place.

The ability to use VHDs is just another tool in for your backup strategy.

The other cool thing is it’s possible for you to copy the VHD file to other locations.

For instance a internet share, external HD, thumb drive, use in a VM…etc.