Windows 10: VHD Virtual Hard Disk uses space from C: disk??

I don't understand, I thought download a file into a VHD means the file takes space from VHD, but, when I download a file it takes space both 2 hard disk with a same file size it takesExample: Download 1GB file = C: disk minus 1GB and the VHD minus 1GB.Now my question is: How is exactly VHD works and how to stop it from taking space from C: .Notice that the VHD is in the C: diskSorry if grammar error.

:)

 

Compacting virtual hard disks

We must have totally different working methods

Let's see what I told to be my workflow, and check how that works in reality. Example W10 x64 VM is one I have used for ESDtoISO and UUPtoISO testing, a clean installed build 15048 with no additional software installed, upgraded several times to builds 15055, 15058, 15060 and 15061, always restored back to clean 15048. This has of course caused the VHD size to grow to multiple times what really is needed.

After the above, checking file sizes. Macrium image was made when the original 64 GB dynamically expanding VHD was 34.5 GB:




Macrium image size just under 5 GB:

After restoring Macrium image to a new dynamically expanding VHD, file size is 9.3 GB. Over two thirds smaller than original one:




The same as seen by File Explorer, yellow highlight is the original VHD, start situation, and green highlight the new VHD where Macrium image from old VHD was restored. Old VHD can now be deleted, net storage save savings over 25 GB in this example case:




(Notice that VHD has already grown over 0.5 GB since the previous screenshot a few minutes earlier. This is because in previous screenshot VM was not started yet after restoring the image.)
This of course is all logical, happens every time.

 

Compacting virtual hard disks

Please do not take this wrong, I just have to say that your process involves awfully lot unnecessary work!

To start with, a dynamically expanding VHD can only grow. It never shrinks, that's not what Compact Disk means. Each checkpoint, even when later removed makes VHD bigger, and so on.

My workflow when I want to free unnecessary space used by my dynamical VHDs:

• Disk clean-up
• Create Macrium image of my VM
• Shut down VM
• Replace existing VHD with new dynamically expanding one in VM settings
• Restore Macrium image to new VHD

Can't understand why you mount VHD in host, can't understand why to save old VHD as .bak when Macrium Image exists.

Of course I also export all new Hyper-V virtual machines as soon as I have finished installing Windows, when the VHD file size is smallest. If then later I want to start from scratch, from freshly installed Windows, I just delete the VM and import it back.

 

can a virtual hard disk be mounted when the file does not have the .vhd extension?

i would like to remove the .vhd extension from a virtual hard disk and still be able to mount the drive with explorer.exe. forcing the use of the .vhd file extension makes finding these types of high value files way to easy. i removed the .vhd file extension,
but then the system will not mount the drive. "open with" explorer.exe fails. using" disk management" fails. etc. somehow this makes little sense to me. windows hard reliance on file extensions is really not good computer science. if you try to mount what
is internally just a text file, then it should fail being processed as a virtual hard disk and a user error message would be in order.