Virtual disk and virtual drive are software components that

emulate Emulate, Inc. (Emulate) is a biotechnology company that commercialized Organs-on-Chips technology—a human cell-based technology that recreates organ-level function to model organs in healthy and diseased states. The technology has applications ...

an actual

disk storage Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

device. Virtual disks and virtual drives are common components of

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

s in

hardware virtualization Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physica ...

, but they are also widely used for various purposes unrelated to virtualization, such as for the creation of

logical disk A logical disk, logical volume or virtual disk (VD or vdisk for short) is a virtual device that provides an area of usable storage capacity on one or more physical disk drive(s) in a computer system. The disk is described as ''logical'' or ''virt ...

Operation

A virtual drive is a software component that emulates an actual disk drive, such as an

optical disc drive In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only r ...

, a

floppy disk drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...

, or a

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

. To other programs, a virtual drive looks and behaves like an actual physical device. A virtual disk may be in any of the following forms: *

Disk image A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...

, a computer file that contains the exact data structure of an actual storage device *

Logical disk A logical disk, logical volume or virtual disk (VD or vdisk for short) is a virtual device that provides an area of usable storage capacity on one or more physical disk drive(s) in a computer system. The disk is described as ''logical'' or ''virt ...

(also known as vdisk), an array of two or more actual drives that cooperatively act like a single device *

RAM disk Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * Ra ...

, which stores its data in

random-access memory Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working Data (computing), data and machine code. A Random access, random-access memory device allows data items to b ...

(RAM) instead of on a storage device * A mapped network drive that connects to a

File Server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by the workstations that are ab ...

Uses

In hardware virtualization, virtual machines implement virtual drives as part of their efforts to emulate the behavior of an actual machine. As with an ordinary computer, a virtual machine needs one virtual drive and one disk image to start up, except when it is performing a

network boot Network booting, shortened netboot, is the process of booting a computer from a network rather than a local drive. This method of booting can be used by routers, diskless workstations and centrally managed computers (thin clients) such as pub ...

. More virtual drives are added as needed. Virtual optical drives are used on physical computers to transfer the contents of the optical disks onto hard disk drives. Doing so helps in resolving the problem of the short life span of

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

and

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

s and takes advantage of the faster data transfer rate of hard disk drives. However, virtual optical drives are also used for

software piracy Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, su ...

: early

computer game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

s used disc existence verification to ensure licensed use, which can be circumvented using virtual optical drives. As a countermeasure, the

StarForce The Starforce is a supervillain team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Its first appearance was in the comic '' Avengers'' #346 released in 1992, as part of the " Operation: Galactic Storm" storyline. The team are a ...

copy protection scheme attempts to thwart disc virtualization. Modern video games have migrated to online

product activation Product activation is a license validation procedure required by some proprietary software programs. Product activation prevents unlimited free use of copied or replicated software. Unactivated software refuses to fully function until it ''determin ...

as part of their distribution process.

Operation

Uses

See also