Is it possible to virtualize the contents of a flash drive? Virtual bootable flash drive for virtual machines. Cloud data storage - what is it?
All popular hypervisors for Windows - Hyper-V
, VirtualBox
, VMware– provide for launch virtual machines (VM) from boot ISO-images and flash drives. Launch VM with the latter, not in every case there will be a process without problems: without dancing with a tambourine from flash drives UEFI only run VM on the base BY EFI in programs VirtualBox And VMware. How can I make it easier to launch VMs from flash drives in other cases?
To do this, you can create a so-called virtual flash drive– all the contents of the real USB- transfer the media to virtual HDD and, accordingly, launch VM from him. But the contents must be transferred along with the structure of the physical flash drive - so that the virtual disk inherits all partitions, if there are several of them (for example, in the case of Mac OS or Chrome OS) , as well as boot device attributes (unless it's UEFI media) . This can be done in at least two ways, described below.
All actions in our case will be carried out with . In other virtualization programs, you must act in a similar way.
1. R-Drive Image program
The first way to create a virtual flash drive is to transfer the structure and contents of a real one. USB-media to a virtual disk using the program- backup. Open the parameters of the existing VM and click .
Add another disk.
We leave the controller type as default.
We create new disk. We indicate its size: let it be approximately the same as the size of the flash drive, but still be slightly different. This is necessary to avoid confusing devices during cloning. Save as one file.
Specify the placement path. Click.
Let's launch VM, connect a real flash drive to it. Install in the guest OS trial-program version . In its window we select "Copy Disk to Disk".
In the column "Source" choose a real flash drive. In the column "Receiver"— the newly created virtual disk.
AND - "Begin".
Once cloning is complete, exit the program.
Now in the explorer guest OS We now have two identical devices.
We can disconnect the real flash drive from VM. Likewise, we can disconnect a virtual disk from the current one VM and use it to launch others VM.
2. Rufus program
The second way to create a virtual flash drive is to use the program's capabilities Rufus 3.1. In the updated version 3.x this program, in addition to the existing functions for creating bootloaders USB-devices, learned to clone real flash drives into files VHD. A VHD compatible with Hyper-V, and with VirtualBox, And VMware. Let's launch Rufus 3.1 on the host system. Select the one you need USB-carrier, if several are connected, in the column "Device". Next, press the button in the form of a floppy disk.
Specify the file storage path VHD .
We wait for the operation to complete and close Rufus.
3. Connecting a virtual flash drive and launching from it
So, the virtual flash drive has been created, how to connect it to the VM and, accordingly, launch it?
In parameters VM click HDD.
Select an existing one.
In the Explorer window, specify the path to the file storage folder VHD. In the file display column we put . And click our virtual VHD-flash drive.
On EFI-cars we enter BIOS– either use the button on the hypervisor toolbar, or at startup VM press F2.
In the bootloader window select Hard Drive with the number under which it is listed in the general list of connected virtual disks, but in terms from zero. In our case, the virtual flash drive is the second disk VM, because in EFI-in the firmware it is listed as Hard Drive 1.0.
On regular VM, created on the basis of emulation BIOS Legacy to boot from a virtual flash drive, you need to in the parameters VM specify it as the first hard drive. You need to remove all existing disks on the machine and add them again, specifying the virtual flash drive first.
Sometimes there are situations when you have to work with utilities (accounting, social, which require external media on the computer). Or do you just need to install new version operating system. But what to do if there is neither a flash drive nor any free CDs. There is an exit! You need a special program that will work as a virtual flash drive.
OSFmount is a lifeline for those who do not have removable media at hand
OSFmount is a small program that will help you create a drive. This application can create both a ready-made image of the drive and RAM, which exists only in RAM. Floppy hard drive, artificial optical disk, and, most importantly, a virtual flash drive - the program can mount all these images. Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 virtual flash drive will be created on any Windows operating system, both in a 64-bit environment and in a 32-bit environment. In mount you can even define a specific letter for an artificial disk and set the necessary attributes. At the same time, the size of the utility does not even reach 2 megabytes, its size is only 1.95 MB. The only downside is that the program does not support the Russian language.
Instructions for using OSFmount
It is easy to use and creating a flash drive does not require much time and effort. So, how to create a virtual flash drive on your computer using OSFmount:
You may also need some options that open after clicking on “Drive Actions”. This option has the following:
- Dismount - for dismounting;
- Format - using this option you can perform formatting;
- Savetoimagefile - to save in the required format;
- Open - to open;
- Set media read-only - prohibits recording;
- Extendsize - used for expansion;
- Set media writable - allows recording.
This is how you can very easily make a virtual usb flash on your computer. You can choose any images for virtual flash. But in the case of a bootable image, the drive will have to be formatted and it will only open in this application.
Installation and creation of a virtual flash drive can be done using various programs. In this article we will look at the most convenient, in my opinion, way of storing files - cloud storage.
Yandex.Disk, Google Drive and Mail.ru Cloud - all of these are data warehouses. They are identical in functionality and use. This is a folder that is located under your password and which you can use from any computer. All of these servers provide enough free memory to store different types of files.
Let's consider creating such a cloud using Google Drive as an example.
1. The first thing you need to do is create a Google mailbox
2. After creating the mailbox, you go to “Google” and select “Google Applications”. This icon is located in the upper right corner.
3. Select the tab called “Disk” and go to it...
4. Using the previously created email, log in. And your disk (virtual flash drive) is ready for use.
The goal of the development is to make VirtualBox work without installation and run from anywhere, for example from a USB drive. It’s interesting that the utility is written entirely in AutoIt scripts (all the sources are open source, but because of this, however, it doesn’t look very elegant. But the main thing is the result. So, download the application (I have it Portable-VirtualBox_v4.1.6- Starter_v6.4.8-Win_all.exe) and run it - the program will prompt you to select the path for unpacking. After this, you can run Portable-VirtualBox.exe. All settings are set automatically, there is no need to correct anything manually (for example, paths). This is the so-called launcher. It appears once and is designed to download the latest VirtualBox distribution and extract from there. necessary files. Interestingly, at this stage the files can also be packaged in a special way so that they take up less space on a USB flash drive (although with the current sizes of flash drives this is hardly relevant). Click on the “Download installation files of VirtualBox” button, select the system bit depth (for example, “Extract the files for 32-Bit system”) and wait for the launcher to do its job. In order for the installer to adapt the paths to the system (correct the necessary parameters in the VirtualBox.xml config), the Portable-VirtualBox.exe binary must be launched again. Voila - we have a full-fledged VirtualBox at our disposal. Without any installation into the system.
A VirtualBox icon will appear in the tray, with which you can manage the virtual machine and further configure it. In guest OSes, both USB and network work by default. But in order to release the guest OS to the external network (Internet), you will have to carry out some additional manipulations. In the tray you need to select “Settings -> Network” and enable the “Start VirtualBox with network support” option. Next, you need to restart Portable-VirtualBox and agree to install the driver. The process is organized in such a way that when you finish working with the virtual machine, everything that was installed on the system is deleted. It makes sense to place the guest OS files directly on the flash drive along with VirtualBox. I have only one system, so it can be launched immediately, without additional manipulations, by specifying its name in the parameters:
Portable-VirtualBox.exe "leopard"
Considering that the virtual machine is always not in the off state, but in the “Save the state” mode, its startup occurs very quickly. Therefore, she is always ready to work without unnecessary hemorrhoids. And anywhere.
There is a small group of programs that require mandatory connection external media to the computer. This could be accounting or some other special applications. A similar need may also arise when working with virtualization systems to which you need to connect physical flash drives. But what if you don’t have a flash drive at hand, but you still need to do work in the program?
In such a situation, a small free program called. It is intended mainly for mounting ready-made disk images, but can also be used to create RAM-disks, that is, those that exist only in the computer’s RAM. In this case, the user can specify the type of virtual device, assign a letter to it, and also set the necessary attributes.
The program is very simple and convenient to use, except that it does not support the Russian language. To add media, click the button "Mount new" and in the window that opens, configure the mounting parameters.
Option "Source" allows you to select the image source. They may be screwed (Image file) or uploaded to RAM (Image file in RAM) image file and empty disk from random access memory (Empty RAM drive). If you need a virtual flash drive, indicate the path to ISO or other supported image format.
Settings "Volume options" you can leave them by default, and they don’t matter for flash drive virtualization; they may only be needed when loading an image into memory and creating a disk from memory. Settings are of much more interest. "Mount options".
Option "Drive letter" specifies the drive letter.
"Drive type"- type of image.
There are four such types:
- Auto (the program itself selects the type)
- Floppy (Floppy Disk)
- CD/DVD (optical disc)
- HDD (flash drive or removable hard drive).
There will also be two checkboxes at the bottom of the window "Read-only drive" And "Mount as removable media". If you are going to write to a virtual disk, you need to uncheck the first box. The second one, on the contrary, must be installed so that the system does not recognize the trick and identifies the mounted image as a flash drive. Having set these settings, click "OK". That's all, now you can work with the image as with a regular removable media.
Options that you may need when working with a virtual flash drive are in the menu "Drive actions".
Available commands:
- Open (open)
- Dismount (unmount)
- Save to image file (save as new image in the required format)
- Extend size (expand)
- Format (format)
TO additional options applies Set media read-only(recording prohibited) and Set media writable (recording permission).
What images can be used to virtualize flash drives? In principle, any, even bootable ones, only in this case OSFMount may ask you to insert a disk into the device, and in order to make such a virtual flash drive accessible, you will have to first format it. In this case, the original image will most likely be damaged and can only be opened in OSFMount.
You might be interested in:
How to create a CD/DVD image using Ashampoo Burning Studio Free How to use the Windows ISO Downloader utility to find and download any official distribution of Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 without unnecessary hassle ESD Decrypte Utility - Easily Convert ESD to Bootable Windows ISO Image Windows and Office Genuine ISO Verifier - a utility for verifying the authenticity of Microsoft products
Hello, dear readers of my blog.
Here I will tell you how you can get a lot of storage space on the Internet.
I found a storage place data about 280 GB.
Virtual flash drive.
How to get a? It's very simple. Eat google, yandex, mail. You need to create an account in each of them. I have accounts in all three systems.
Let's start with Yandex. Need to create.
Once you have created your account, open it. If necessary, install the disk on the computer. When you first start the disk, there will be 10 GB of space. Every year Yandex disk will provide you with approximately 1 Gigabyte or 2 Gigabyte. This whole place is free.
When registering an account in Yandex, you need to provide a mobile phone number. You can register three Yandex accounts for one phone number. All three will initially have 10 GB of space.
You can register more accounts. Only for this you will need other phone numbers. The more accounts there are, the more confusion there will be.
To date, the space allocated for storing my data is as follows. One has 18GB, another has 12GB and the third account has 11GB.
In the picture you can see the disk space of one of the accounts.
On Yandex I got 41 GB of storage space for my data. It turns out like a free virtual flash drive.
A phone number is also required here. You can register a lot of accounts. But the drop-down menu with accounts can only accommodate five accounts.
There are three of my mail accounts.
Two of them have 100 GB of space, one has 8 GB. In mail, the location for storing data has a name "cloud".
The picture shows how much space there is in the cloud
After registering an account, 8 GB of space will be provided.
As you use your mail accounts more often, you will be given even more space.
100+8+100=208, add here the place from Yandex
Now I have found a storage space of 249GB.
- ? Hi all! I installed the latest operating system on a virtual machine and want VirtualBox to see my flash drive and external hard drive USB disk, how can this be accomplished?
- Hello remontcompa.ru, help me solve the problem, the operating system is installed on a virtual VirtualBox machine Doesn’t see a flash drive with files connected to the computer, and my portable USB hard drive is also not visible. In the virtual machine settings, I selected Devices->USB Devices, then I select my flash drive and tick it, but the flash drive still does not appear in the Computer and Disk Management window.
Hello friends. Situations when you need to connect a flash drive with your files or an external USB hard drive to operating system installed on a virtual machine, quite a lot can occur. For example, you want to install a program in a virtual machine, and the installer of this program is on your flash drive, or vice versa, you need to transfer some files from the virtual machine to the main operating system, and create shared folder You're screwed, and it's not very convenient and fast, or maybe you even want to connect a printer to the virtual machine! I assure you, doing all this is very simple.
Note: There are articles about VirtualBox on our website and they may be of interest to you
In this article we will configure VirtualBox so that it can work with our external drive USB and flash drive.
First of all, connect the flash drive to the computer and launch VirtualBox, then in the main window of the virtual machine, select the machine you need with your left mouse (if you have several of them) and click on the button Tune.
Marking the points Turn on USB controller
Enable USB 2.0 Controller (EHCI)
In the window Filters USB devices , add a new USB filter, click on + and select our flash drive (in my case, Kingston DataTraveler 3.0, mark it with the left mouse.
That's all, two new USB filters in the form of our flash drive and an external hard drive added to the virtual machine, click OK
We load the operating system installed on VirtualBox, for example Windows 10, then in the main window Devices->USB devices I select my Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 flash drive and tick it, and I also tick my portable USB hard drive Western Digital My Passport.
Left click to enlarge image
Now both devices: a flash drive and a portable hard drive are available in the Computer window of the operating room Windows systems 10 and in Disk Management.
If you need the flash drive to appear in the main operating system, then in the main window Devices -> USB Devices, select your Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 flash drive and uncheck it
Sometimes a situation arises when you need a flash drive, but you don’t have it at hand. For example, some accounting and reporting programs require external storage. In such a situation, you can create a virtual storage device.
Using a special software, this can be done in several ways. Let's look at each of them step by step.
Method 1: OSFmount
This small program is very helpful when you don’t have a flash drive at hand. It works on any version of Windows.
After you have downloaded the program, do this:
Additional features may be required to use this program. To do this, you need to enter the item in the main window "Drive Actions". Then it will be possible to use the following options:
- Dismount – unmount the volume;
- Format—volume formatting;
- Set media read-only – prohibits recording;
- Extendsize – expands the size of the virtual device;
- Savetoimagefile – used to save in the required format.
Method 2: Virtual Flash Drive
A good alternative to the method described above. When creating a virtual flash drive, this program allows you to protect the information on it using a password. The advantage of this is its performance in old Windows versions. Therefore, if you have a version or lower on your computer, this utility will help you quickly prepare a virtual storage device on your computer.
Instructions for using this program look like this:
- Download and install Virtual Flash Drive.
- In the main window, click the button "Mount new".
- A window will appear "Create new volume", specify the path to create virtual media in it and click "OK".
As you can see, the program is very easy to use.
Method 3: ImDisk
This is one of the most popular programs for creating a virtual floppy disk. Using an image file or computer memory, it creates virtual disks. When using special keys when loading it, the flash drive will appear as a virtual removable disk.
Method 4: Cloud storage
The development of technology makes it possible to create virtual flash drives and store information on them on the Internet. This method is a folder with files that is accessible to a specific user from any computer connected to the Internet.
Such data storages include and Cloud Mail.ru. The principle of using these services is the same.
Let's look at how to work with Yandex Disk. This resource allows you to store information on it up to 10 GB for free.
Working with such a virtual storage medium allows you to fully manage your data: group it into folders, delete unnecessary data, and even share links to it with other users.
Project Olof Lagerkvist, great program for emulating disks, but since everyone can emulate disks, not everyone can boast of creating a flash drive or floppy disk. Disks are created in virtual memory; they can be physically uploaded to file images. After installation, the program is available from the PC control panel.
Click "OK" and the virtual image is ready.
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| Image |
There is also an alternative GUI -
Automatic connection:
echo off
rem put in autoload for automatic mounting
c:\WINDOWS\system32\imdisk.exe -a -f "%PROGRAMFILES%\flash.img" -m f: -o rem
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imdisk.exe -e -s 300M -m B: - increase disk B by 300 MB
imdisk -a -t file -o ro -m y: -f C:\Boot.img- mount the Boot.img image with drive Y, read only
imdisk -a -t file -m y: -f C:\Boot.img- mount the Boot.img image with disk Y, read/write only
imdisk -d -m y: - unmount disk Y
imdisk -a -s 150M -m #: -p "/fs:ntfs /y /q /v:imdisk- create a disk with a size of 150 MB, the first drive letter is free, formatting in NTFS, disk label imdisk
imdisk -a -s 10% -m #: -p "/fs:ntfs /y /q /v:imdisk- the same as the previous one, only the size is indicated as 10 percent of free memory.
imdisk -a -s -500M -m #: -p "/fs:ntfs /y /q /v:imdisk- the same as the previous one, only the size is indicated with a minus sign, that is, equal to the amount of free memory minus the specified size. With 1200 MB of free memory, the disk size will become 1200-500 = 700 MB
imdisk.exe -a -t proxy -o ip -f 127.0.0.1:80 -m Z:- use with a server, found it on the internet, but haven’t actually tested it.
A - connection virtual. disk.
D - turn off virtual. disk.
E - editing virtual. disk.
_________________________
B - indicate the offset, that is, the beginning of the data on the disk, indicated for disks created in different programs, in the images of which you need to skip the initial attributes in the file.
S - size virtual disk. Size is the number of bytes unless suffixed with a (auto), b (512 byte blocks), k (thousand bytes), m (million bytes), g (billion bytes), t (trillion bytes), K (kilobytes) , M (megabyte), G (gigabyte) or T (terabyte). A thousand bytes and a kilobyte differ in that there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, not 1000. For example. -s 150M or -s 10% - 10 percent of free memory. The -500M parameter - with a minus sign determines the size of the created disk as the amount of free memory minus the specified size.
O - set options, used in conjunction with the parameters indicated below
ro - read only
rw - read/write
rem - install as a removable disk (flash drive). This determines disk properties, caching, etc.
fix - install as a permanent, fixed disk (as opposed to rem)
cd - creating a virtual CD-ROM/DVD-ROM.
fd - create a floppy disk. Default for sizes 160K, 180K, 320K, 360K, 640K, 720K, 820K, 1200K, 1440K, 1680K, 1722K, 2880K, 123264K or 234752K.
hd - creating a hard partition.
ip - parameter for connecting to the proxy server.
comm - connection to the memory server via COM port.
________________
M - Specifies the drive letter. For example -m B: or -m y: or -m #: - the first free drive letter.
F - virtual file name. disk, for example -f C:\Boot.img or -f \\server\share\image.bin or -F\Device\Harddisk0\Partition1\image.bin- the latter, when the drive letter is not assigned and determined by the hard drive number, partition number (logical drive) and then the real path.
