When Microsoft released Windows Vista with a backup tool that images your entire system down into one file, I was very interested. My interest in this new feature, called CompletePC Backup, waned slightly when it took what I felt was an excessive amount of time to do its work. But when the imaging process was completed and I took a look at the file created with a .vhd extension, I thought to myself "something lo When Microsoft released Windows Vista with a backup tool that images your entire system down into one file, I was very interested. My interest in this new feature, called CompletePC Backup, waned slightly when it took what I felt was an excessive amount of time to do its work. But when the imaging process was completed and I took a look at the file created with a .vhd extension, I thought to myself “something looks familiar here.” I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was — I just knew I was experiencing a little technological deja vu.After a modicum of research on the subject, I came across Ben Armstrong’s site. He is the Virtual PC Guy.Ben explained that the Complete PC backup .vhd file should look familiar, because it is the same file type that Microsoft’s free virtual tool Virtual PC uses when you create virtual systems. Now, I was excited to believe that I could back up a system to a .vhd file and then boot the system through Virtual PC — until Ben explained that this wasn’t the case at all. What one could do, however, is use Virtual PC to mount the .vhd file as if it were an additional hard disk on a system you already have installed. Why might one do that? Well, if an administrator backed up the system and something happened to it that caused data loss, you could proceed with the restore. If you needed a file immediately from the system that is backed up in the vhd file, however, you simply have to mount it from a Virtual PC OS and you can locate the file and pull it over.But then Ben took things a bit further. He explained that a little tool in the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 files is a command line utility called VHDMOUNT. And you can use this tool to mount a .vhd file to a drive letter without actually booting up an OS from Virtual PC. So, I gave it a try. I had an Exchange Server that I needed to access that was in a .vhd file format. I downloaded and installed the free Virtual Server 2005 tools but I only installed the VHDMOUNT application (that wasn’t a requirement; more of a preference to install only what I needed). I opened an Administrative command prompt (being that I was working on a Vista system) and navigated to the folder where the VHDMOUNT application was located. And I typed in the following, as explained by Ben himself on his site: vhdmount /m “c:usersjpbdocumentsexchange.vhd” x It opened the system directly to the folder structure and mapped it off as my x drive. Now I had full access to all of those files. So, I was glad to learn that CompletePC Backup can image your system into one file without taking forever. If you follow Ben’s instructions, that file then can be mounted through a Virtual PC OS (although not booted, as I mistakenly thought originally) and/or through a great free tool called VHDMOUNT, which can be found in the Virtual Server 2005 set of tools. Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business