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Missing VHD after Windows 11 upgrade
I am perplexed. 2 days ago, I made a VHD on an HDD on my desktop PC. Now, this HDD is a 2T drive that has 3 partitions on it (drives E: F: G). I took the F: drive, which had 224 GB free space and allocated 100 GB for the VHD. After initializing and formatting it, it was given a drive letter of J:\. I pasted a copy of Windows 11 ISO onto this drive. My intention was to install Windows 11 onto the VHD so that I could test it out. My next step was to install Windows 11, so I double clicked on the ISO. Windows Install began. It had been a long time since I had installed a new OS, so I just let it do it's thing. About half way through, I realized that I may have installed the OS onto my C:\ drive instead of the VHD.
After the install was completed, I went to check where it was installed. It was then that I found that the VHD had disappeared, including the Windows 11 ISO that I had copied into the VHD.
I cannot explain why this happened. I am okay with Windows 11 being my only OS, but still baffled by what had occurred.
1 Reply
When you double-clicked the ISO, Windows started the installation process—likely the Windows Setup environment. During setup, you choose the target drive or partition for Windows installation. If you selected the wrong drive (your main C: drive) instead of the VHD (J:), the OS would install onto your primary drive, not the VHD.
