Copy VHD / VHDX to Disk or Network With Optional Compression Deduplication

In this article we describe how to quickly and easily copy a VHD or VHDX Hyper-V VM to another host, disk, USB disk, NAS drive, network share, or FTP.

The steps are all the same and require only a minute to set up. Copying a VHD / VHDX can be done with compression and deduplication either ON or OFF.

Note that no downtime is necessary. The VMs will not be interrupted and will continue to run without any kind of interference

Step 1: Download the Tool You Need

First you need to download BackupChain Backup Software; it’s a quick install and takes only a minute.

Step 2: Set up a VHD Copy or Backup Task

BackupChain automatically opens the New Task Wizard below. Select “Hyper-V Backup” and give it a meaningful name.

Note that this task may be run once or repeatedly on a schedule. The schedule settings can be done from the main screen at a later point in time.

Click Next Step and select the Hyper-V VM you would like to copy. The VHD and VHDX files are copied automatically when the task is run:

Now you may accept the default settings if you want a backup of the VMs, which means the VHD files will be compressed and deduplicated.

If you want a copy of the VHDs, you need to select No File Processing.

Now select the target, that’s where the copy is supposed to be sent to.

In case you want the VHDs copied to a NAS or network share, select ‘Network UNC Folder’. As the name suggests, selecting Local Folder causes the VHD to be copied to a local disk drive.

FTP and FTPS are also possible targets and usually utilized as backup targets (with compression); however, you may use that, too, for a simple VHDX copy job over the wire.

In our example below, we use a local target, drive H: and folder H:\move-vm-backup-folder

Hit Next and the task is complete:

Click Run Backup Now to start the copy task.

How the Results Look Like

If you selected ‘No File Processing‘, BackupChain turns off data compression and deduplication. What you will find in the backup folder is a reproduction of the original folder structure, along with the VHD / VHDX files in their respective folders.

If you selected ‘Recommended Settings’, BackupChain creates a compressed, full backup first, and then increments.

As you see in the example below, at the bottom is the oldest backup, a Windows Server 2013 VHD compressed down to 2.5 GB.

The backups that follow are compressed, deduplicated and range from 99MB to roughly 195MB.

These a storage space savings of about 92% to 96%! See screenshot below:

Summary

Copying a VHD or VHDX file, which is normally the virtual disk of a Hyper-V, Virtual Server, or Virtual PC VM, to another disk, FTP, NAS device, or network share is quite simple and requires no downtime.

First you need to download BackupChain, create a new Hyper-V Backup task and select the VMs.

Enter the target (the disk, FTP site, or network share to receive the VHDX file) and click Start.

The task may be repeated as needed as BackupChain stores all the task settings and also offers a professional task scheduler to meet all scheduling needs.

By the way, BackupChain may also be configured to hold on to several versions of each VHD you copy.

This is done in the File Types tab; In the File Types table, set “Number of Backups” to the number of versions you want to hold on to.

A setting of 2, for example, will keep 2 copies of each VHD / VHDX file in your target folder and clean up older copies automatically to free up space.

Additional BackupChain Functionality

As a fully automatic backup software for Windows Server and PCs, BackupChain offers a multitude of cloud backup, and automatic server backup features.

Live VM backup and online backup and just some of the many features BackupChain has to offer. When it comes to backup virtual machine guests, BackupChain offers Hyper V backup, backup for VMware server or you also use BackupChain as a VirtualBox backup software to protect your VM infrastructure.
BackupChain’s file version backup makes large file server backup efficient, as only changes are backed up and is as critical to a backup solution as deduplication for incremental backups.
Apart from large data backup, BackupChain is often used as a backup software for EDB, as a solution to backup FTP data, as SQL backup for Microsoft SQL Server, and as a NAS backup program to work with all popular network servers on the market.