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→Modifying Existing Hyper-V Virtual Hard Disks
== Modifying Existing Hyper-V Virtual Hard Disks ==
Once a Hyper-V virtual hard disk has been created, it can be modified in a variety of ways using the ''Edit Virtual Hard Disk Wizard''. The wizard is loaded by launching the ''Hyper-V Manager'' wizard and clicking on the ''Edit Hard Disks...'' link in the ''Actions'' panel. If the optional welcome screen appears, click ''Next'' to proceed to the ''Locate Virtual Hard Disk'' screen. On this screen, specify the full path to the virtual disk .vhd file using the ''Browse'' button to navigate to the correct file. With the correct location specified, proceed once again with the ''Next'' button which will display the ''Choose Action'' screen. The options provided depend on the type of the specified virtual disk. The following figure illustrates the options provided for a dynamic expandable disk:
[[Image:hyper-v_modify_virtual_hard_disk.jpg|Making changes to an existing dynamic expandable Hyper-V virtual hard disk]]
There are a total of five actions that can be performs on virtual hard disks as outlined in the following table:
<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="E3B" style="border-collapse: collapse; border-color:#cccccc; border-style: solid; border-width: 1px; margin-bottom:20px">
<tr bgcolor="#cccccc" style="color:black" valign="top">
<th>
<p>Option</p>
</th>
<th>
<p>Description</p>
</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>'''Compact'''</td>
<td>Available on dynamically expanding and differencing virtual hard disks, this option shrinks the size of the selected .vhd image file by removing unused space left behind after data is deleted from the disk. This option cannot reduce the size of non-NTFS formatted disks unless the unused space is previously filled with zeros.<td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>'''Convert'''</td>
<td>Converts virtual hard disks to and from fixed and dynamic expandable types.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>'''Expand'''</td>
<td>Increases the size of dynamic expandable and fixed virtual hard disks.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>'''Merge'''</td>
<td>Merges the contents of the a child differencing virtual hard disk into the corresponding parent virtual hard disk. Alternatively, the contents of both the parent and child virtual hard disks may be merged into a new virtual hard disk, thereby leaving the original parent unchanged.<td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>'''Reconnect'''</td>
<td>Differentiating disks must be associated with a parent virtual hard disk. This option allows differentiating virtual hard disk to be reconnected with a parent disk.</td>
</tr>
</table>
