Install Windows 7 onto a VHD!

[VirtualLarry]

link 1

link 2

Now that this is possible, does anyone know how to put the VHD onto a USB flash drive, and install the Win7 boot files into the flash drive? That would be awesome!

 

[ViRGE]

I wouldn't get too attached to this, IMHO. It's an Enterprise/Ultimate-only feature.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

From the geekEleet link in op:

Many folks who want to try the new Windows 7 Beta find frustration in one of two camps. They either aren?t interested in testing on a low performance virtual instance (i.e. VMWare, Virtual PC, Virtual Box), or they don?t want to wipe out their current operating system that they know is stable.

Holy shit. Are geeks really that ignorant about partitioning? 😕

 

[lopri]

So this means the OS booted from VHD will be fully hardware accelerated? That's great if true.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: lopri
So this means the OS booted from VHD will be fully hardware accelerated? That's great if true.

Yes. It's not a virtual OS in any way, the only thing "virtual" is the hard drive, which is really a mounted file. It's not going to be a performance-oriented solution though, VHD reading/writing won't be nearly as fast as just writing to a hard drive.

 

[lxskllr]

It's sounds like the wubi install you can do with Ubuntu.

 

[bsobel]

It's not going to be a performance-oriented solution though, VHD reading/writing won't be nearly as fast as just writing to a hard drive.

Because? The system has to go thru one extra level of redirection to decide where to write, but remember it still has full physical access to the hardware so IO compeltion times really are very similar. Fragmentation matters more, but really not that much.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I wouldn't get too attached to this, IMHO. It's an Enterprise/Ultimate-only feature.

Are you sure your not thinking of XPM?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I wouldn't get too attached to this, IMHO. It's an Enterprise/Ultimate-only feature.

Are you sure your not thinking of XPM?

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not thinking of XPM. As far as I know, VHD is Enterprise/Ultimate only.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: bsobel

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I wouldn't get too attached to this, IMHO. It's an Enterprise/Ultimate-only feature.

Are you sure your not thinking of XPM?

Yeah, I'm sure I'm not thinking of XPM. As far as I know, VHD is Enterprise/Ultimate only.

I can't find any links that say this (nor can I find any links that DONT say this either 😉). Some docs point out the obvious, Server 2008 R2 supports this as well (and the estimated overhead is 3% to disk IO to that partition and hybernation and bitlocker aren't supported).

I'll post a link if I run into one, otherwise I guess we'll know for sure closer to release?

Bill