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Windows 7 to add native support for Virtual Hard Disks Rate Topic: -----
  • Neowinian Senior
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Out of what little we know of the next version of Windows, this feature might just be the most interesting yet. A team at Microsoft is hiring developers to work on adding native support in Windows 7 for Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) - Microsoft’s semi-proprietary specification for single-file virtual machine hard disks. Their job posting reads,

Do you want to join the team that is bringing virtualization into the mainstream? In Windows 7, our team will be responsible for creating, mounting, performing I/O on, and dismounting VHDs (virtual hard disks) natively. Imagine being able to mount a VHD on any Windows machine, do some offline servicing and then boot from that same VHD. Or perhaps, taking an existing VHD you currently use within Virtual Server and boost performance by booting natively from it.

Do you want to have the opportunity to work on a great Core OS team at the heart of Windows? If you have big ideas and want to implement them, if you love writing code, if you love delving into operating system internals, if you want to work on high visibility projects with direct consumer and customer impact and still work in a very technical environment, then you will feel right at home in this team.

Virtualization technology has been a great success with Virtual Server and Hyper-V. With native OS support on the horizon it will become an even greater hit. Our team is making this a reality in Windows 7. Consider the simplicity of backup using a VHD, or the portability of a virtual disk backed by a single file. These are a few reasons why this technology is poised to be one of the greatest features in Windows 7–come help us achieve this goal.

Whilst “one of the great features in Windows 7″ might be a bit much, this is right up there with the new multi-line Calculator. No seriously, this has rather interesting implications for IT administrators and even home users.

For example, having an VHD dedicated to gaming with optimized system configurations is entirely feasible then. A dynamic VHD would mean it would only take up as much room as it needs, you could move the file on many system and have the same experience, but best of all, you can still enjoy the maximum native performance at the same time being able to load it as a virtual machine to maintain and configure without rebooting.

Considering how much we don’t know about Windows 7, this is extremely promising.

Update: A few people I’ve talked to have expressed their concern this may not make it to RTM and I think it’s a valid point at any time feature may be cut so I’ll just add that note for everyone else.

Sounds good?

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  • Neowinian Super Cool
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would be nice

it would also be nice to have built in support for mounting images (isos etc)

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That sounds like a pretty nice feature :D

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  • Neowinian Wise One
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Thats a feature I'd like to see.

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  • Neowinian Super Cool
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This will be a welcomed feature, especially for those IT peeps (like me) who use virtual environments a lot. Hopefully Microsoft will learn from their past mistakes and put some type of hooks in the OS so other companies can easily implement support for their own Virtual HDD (i.e. VMware).

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View PostRudy, on May 23 2008, 10:54, said:

would be nice

it would also be nice to have built in support for mounting images (isos etc)

definitely an in-house solution would be great!

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View PostRudy, on May 23 2008, 15:54, said:

would be nice

it would also be nice to have built in support for mounting images (isos etc)


indeed. it seems ridiculous these days to still have to install a 3rd party app to do this. It would be like windows not recognizing a .rar format natively. :rolleyes:

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View Postmacf13nd, on May 23 2008, 20:03, said:

indeed. it seems ridiculous these days to still have to install a 3rd party app to do this. It would be like windows not recognizing a .rar format natively. :rolleyes:

They have a tool for mounting ISOs (Of course thy have it! Microsoft releases lots of ISOs). And for making virtual desktops. It's juat that people don't know about it.

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View PostRudy, on May 23 2008, 09:54, said:

would be nice

it would also be nice to have built in support for mounting images (isos etc)


+1 (Y)

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Virtual Server has a tool to mount VHDs. It can be combined with a batch script to enable mount via right-click. I use it sometimes to get files from a "Complete-PC" backup which uses the same format.

Would be good to see as a default feature though :D

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  • Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
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Do you think the next version will be a "big brother edition", since MS and DoD are really close.

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View PostNeo003, on May 23 2008, 17:42, said:

Do you think the next version will be a "big brother edition", since MS and DoD are really close.

I have a nice hat that you might be interested in... it's made from tin foil!

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  • Neowinian Senior
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Quick, lets build the list of "official" features that are supposed to be in Win7. Later, we will be able to know what Microsoft decided to drop from the next release....

Remember the Longhorn/Vista hype?

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  • Neowinian Super Cool
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I hope this means they are really dropping the legacy layers in the system and the kernel.

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View PostTruckWEB, on May 23 2008, 17:59, said:

Quick, lets build the list of "official" features that are supposed to be in Win7. Later, we will be able to know what Microsoft decided to drop from the next release....

Remember the Longhorn/Vista hype?

This is exactly why MS aren't releasing info on Win7's features.

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