Adding a second virtual drive to a VM
Jeesh. I feel like a dunce. A dunce who just wasted too much time to figure out something I already knew.
The problem: adding a secondary virtual drive to a Win XP virtual machine. No problems adding it via the Virtual PC 2007 console; no problem once booting up the VM having the drive found ("Virtual Drive found and installed"); but big problem in that the new drive is nowhere to be found in Windows Explorer.
Solution:
- Right-click My Computer
- Manage
- Disk Management
- Activate the new virtual drive
- Give a drive letter and partition
- And if you're like me, change the drive letter on your CD-Rom to E: and then switch your secondary hard drive to D:.
To switch the CD-Rom drive letter:
- Make sure you maximize the Computer Management window to see all drives listed (as the CD-Rom won’t be listed in the drive volume listing above)
- Right-click your CD-Rom and select Change Drive Letter and Paths
- Then in the drive volume listing above, select your secondary virtual hard drive and right-click and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
I guess virtual drives are a little too virtual to instantly become available in explorer ready and waiting for formatting.
What's most painful about this is that all along while googling everywhere trying to come up with the magic search term combination (i.e. "Virtual PC 2007 secondary hard disk" doesn't quite work - I KNOW IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO INSTALL YOUR VM ON A SECONDARY DRIVE!!!), in the back of my mind I'm thinking I should look in Computer and Disk Management...
Btw, If google doesn't work right away and it's Windows related, check out Microsoft's Community Forums.