Ok, this will be a very short post. VHD virtual disk files can be mounted from within Windows 7 and used as a disk drive. While I won't dwell on the many potential uses of this, here's a short overview of a recent desktop PC conversion experience. Setting: old pentium PC with 40GB internal disk drive, and an external 40Gb USB drive that is slam full of pics and videos, with only a few hundred megabytes free.
First, you can get Disk2VHD from the Microsoft SysInternals website. Instructions for use are on the download page as well.
There's a simple GUI interface you can use or there's the command line option
example: disk2vhd * g:\vhd\myoldpc.vhd - this will copy all volumes (*) to the path on g:, in my case an external USB disk.
Once I converted the internal disk to a VHD file on an external USB drive, I then moved the USB drive to the new PC and copied the VHD file over. Then, thru the magic of disk manager (Start > right click on Computer >Manage>Storage>Disk Management) there appears on the right hand side of the screen - Disk Management>More Actions - the next menu shows an option to Attach VHD and then the following screen appears:
From there, you can then browse to the VHD file, select, mount and assign a drive letter. Voila', you can now use the VHD as a native disk (or read only copy should you check the Read-Only box) in Windows 7.
