ImDisk vs VHD Attach

ImDisk is a free Windows virtual disk driver for creating disk volumes from image files or system memory. It can present virtual hard disk partitions, floppy drives, and CD/DVD drives, with support for raw images, VHD, VDI, VMDK, NRG, SDI, and BIN formats. The installer provides the imdisk.exe console tool, a Control Panel applet, and an Explorer command for mounting files. I/O requests can be passed to third-party image handlers or services on other computers over a network. API functions are available to C/C++, COM, and .NET applications, with wrapper libraries on NuGet. The current installer supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and lists x86, ia64, x64, arm32, and arm64 architectures. ImDisk is free to download and use; a voluntary usage fee is welcome. The maker says it receives maintenance fixes, but no new features are planned and its legacy design is not recommended for recent Windows versions.

VHD Attach is a free Windows utility for attaching and detaching virtual disks. It adds Attach and Detach choices to the right-click menu for VHD files, and options can add a Detach choice to the hard-drive context menu. The program can attach virtual disks automatically when the system starts in full-access or read-only mode, and it can display disk information without attaching the disk. It supports Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and later, including Windows 10; older systems such as Windows Vista are not supported. On Windows 8 and Windows Server 8, it can also be used with ISO images and VHDX disks. Command-line parameters include /attach, /detach and /detachdrive. The source repository is published under the MIT License. A VHD stored at a network location may require a change to the service account so it can access that location. Automatic attachment of a BitLocker-enabled drive does not show its password prompt because mounting starts before the user interface appears.