Microsoft Backup and VHD oh my

This is a multi part post, it has 3 how to’s inclued.

The main problem that started this was how do you get Backup and restore to backup your file incase you over write one of them and you only have one hdd. Well by default you can’t you are SOL. But you can fool backup and restore to thinking there is a second drive in your system. In windows 7 you can create a VHD (Virtual Drive) and have it mounted as a drive letter. But after a reboot they are not mounted again so we need to automate this as well so backup and restore will not fail.

So first we will create the VHD that we will us for backup and restore. For mine I created a expanding VHD so it would grow as need be for the backup. You can also find a more detailed howto here http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5291/how-to-create-a-virtual-hard-drive-in-windows-7/

Then after created we need to attach the VHD and format the drive as you want it.

Then we need to go to Backup and Restore and configure it to use this new VHD, I skipped the creation of the image to save space as if the harddrive fails its gone as well.

Then we need to create the automation to attach the VHD at startup. You can get a howto here http://angler.wordpress.com/2010/03/11/windows-7-auto-mount-vhds-at-startup/ the comments also have away to do it with powershell.

We will create a batch file the uses diskpart with the script command

Then we will create a scheduled task to run this batch file. NOTE: if you use the howto link the bat file has “” around the path this could cause you to get a error 0×1 in scheduled tasks and no mounted VHD, you can remove the ‘”" or look here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951246

Advertisement