Native Boot differencing VHD with parent from different volume

Question

Is there a way how to boot Windows 7 from a differencing VHD which is located on different drive than its parent VHD?

Here is appropriate part of output of bcdedit command:

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {default}
device                  vhd=[D:]\OS\Win7_differencing.vhd
path                    \windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {bee8d180-9034-11e3-998e-08002793cbd4}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                vhd=[D:]\OS\Win7_differencing.vhd
systemroot              \windows
resumeobject            {bee8d17e-9034-11e3-998e-08002793cbd4}
nx                      OptIn

This works perfectly when I have [D:]\OS\Win7_differencing.vhd on the same volume as its parent, but I would like to have the parent VHD on SSD drive and the differencing VHD on HDD drive.

One of the reasons I want this setup is the impossibility of securely wiping files from SSD. I wan't my system to be fast and located on SSH but I want the changes which I could eventually want to wipe to be located on HDD.

If I try to move or create the differencing VHD on different drive (using diskpart) windows fail to boot.

Answer 1

I recently ran into the same problem myself. Very annoying, and I couldn't find any way to workaround it.

There doesn't seem to be much official documentation confirming the restriction. The best I could find was this paragraph in a TechNet FAQ:

You must keep both files (the parent VHD and the differencing VHD) in the same directory on a local volume for native-boot scenarios. For native-boot VHDs, the parent VHD and the differencing disk cannot reside on different volumes, even if they reside on the same local disk. However, when you attach a differencing VHD that is not used for native boot (for example, if you plan to use it for image management), the parent VHD can be in different directories, and on a different volume or even on a remote share.