Virtual Hard Disk format released under Open Specification Promise

A while ago we announced that we were making the VHD format available, royalty free, to people who were interested in using it in their products.  Today we have announced that we are releasing this format under the Open Specification Promise (OSP).  If you are not familiar with the OSP - checkout: https://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx.  In layman’s terms it means - go for it.  Use it for free - it is fine by us.

For more details about the VHD specification - checkout: https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/techinfo/vhdspec.mspx

Cheers,
Ben

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2006
  Will the vhdspec page be updated to include a download link or do we still need to send an e-mail to get a copy of the specification?

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2006
  The link to download without registering seems to be broken...

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2006
  Both links are broken, so you cannot download regardless of whether you want to register or not.

• Anonymous
  October 17, 2006
  The page has changed and the download links work for me.

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2006
  The link is either still broken or it has broke again.  Getting a 404 error.  Any other ways of getting this spec?

• Anonymous
  October 19, 2006
  It seems to be working for me now. Cheers, Ben

• Anonymous
  November 02, 2006
  I just grabbed the specs and started on a collection of tools called vhdTools. Currently I have two programs, vhdInfo and vhdCreate working for fixed images. I'm currently working on adding dynamic and differencing images support before I release an initial version to the public. I'm also planning on writing a vhdConvert program to convert between fixed, dynamic and differencing images and also between a raw image and a vhd image. If anyone finds something like this useful, let me know at vhdTools at kelley -dot- ca

• John