![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/image.png\" "\\"image\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nDisk2VHD<\/a> is a great little tool from Mark Russinovich<\/a> and Bryce Cogswell, two of the guys behind Sysinternals<\/a> (now part of Microsoft).\u00a0 What it does is is pretty simple, copy a physical hard disk into a virtual hard disk (VHD).\u00a0 There are loads of tools to do this, but what makes Disk2VHD different is that it can run on a live, online disk.\u00a0 To do this is makes use of the Volume Snapshot capability that\u2019s be in Windows since WinXP to create a point-in-time snapshots.<\/p>\n Being able to create a VHD from an online disk opens up a couple of news possibilities, for example it would make a pretty good tool for creating bootable backups of machines.\u00a0 In fact when I get a chance I\u2019ll be seeing if I can knock up an automated way of creating a VHD backup of an XP computer before it\u2019s trashed and upgraded to Windows 7.\u00a0 If it works, combined with Windows 7\u2019s native boot to VHD functionality it\u2019ll be a pretty good way of providing an instant recovery back to a users old XP computer.\u00a0 Hopefully they\u2019d never need it, but it may be worth the effort to add an extra level confidence.<\/p>\n