Merge differencing and parent vhd into new vhd

Question

Using DISKPART and the "VDISK MERGE" option, is it possible to specify that you want to keep the existing child/parent disks and do a merge into a new vhd file? That is; I still want to keep my original child/parent disks. As far as I can tell from the resources I've found, the only option is to select a differencing vdisk and merge it with it's parent(s).

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 07 '10 at 08:52

2

Take a copy of the parent and child first, do the merge, and then rename the copies back.

answered Jul 07 '10 at 08:52

Richard

5,324
1
23
20

Yes, that's what I ended up doing too. Find it a bit strange that there's no option for specifying an 'output file' in the VDISK MERGE command though. – Kjetil Klaussen Jul 07 '10 at 11:44
If you want to duplicate a disk image, which is essentially what you're suggesting, you don't want to merge, you want to mirror. Mount the child VHD, create a mirror and then break it once it's complete. – Jake Oshins Jul 07 '10 at 16:24

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 07 '10 at 07:58

Cant find any other useful information on that sorry, my suggestion: boot the machine with with some WinPE or Dos from cd/floppy and use norton ghost or altiris to clone the disk that the machine sees to an other VHD drive or file share location.

I guess linux and some "dd" magic will do to.

Merge differencing and parent vhd into new vhd

2 Answers2