Mount vdi as drive in Windows

Question

I am wanting to mount a VDI file that no longer boots to a drive in Windows to, hopefully, recover some files.

I am aware that Winmount advertises this function, but I am a bit confused about which edition is the best, 32 or 64, as the VDI is a 32 bit image that I would like to mount on a 64 bit OS (Win7).

I am also happy to consider other software, or possibly even using ubuntu to mount to instead, though my Linux skills are not particularly useful.

EDIT

I have marked surfasb as the answer, as he (she?) directly answered the question I put out there.

For anyone who is having the same problem as I was, try what was suggested by Joe Internet.

Boot VirtualBox into Ubuntu, with the non booting windows VDI attached as a second hard drive (Primary Slave in my case). Despite my totally failing to succeed with this method with another bootable Windows image, booting to Ubuntu happily mounted my dodgy vdi image, and allowed me to recover my files.

Solution 1

You'll want the 64 bit since your (host) OS is 64. The main thing is that Winmount will install drivers and you'll need the drivers to match your OS (64).

Solution 2

I was able to recover files from Ubuntu 18.04 guest on Windows 10 host (Virtualbox 6.0) as simply as opening the VDI file in 7-Zip by right-clicking the VDI file -> 7-Zip -> Open archive and drive contents was shown like any other archive.

Solution 3

Try ImDisk it's saved my bacon a few times and it's free!

Comments

[Joe Internet]

You might be able to attach the vdi to a VirtualBox VM, and boot the VM from an Ubuntu live-cd .iso in the virtual cd drive. Ubuntu would most likely auto-mount the vdi, and you would be able to browse it via the file manager. If that works, you could conigure the VM to usea USB stickfor saving your files.

[lagerdalek]

@Joe Internet - I spent a greater part of Friday trying to do this with a Windows 7 boot image, but it would also freeze when I tried to attach the non booting vdi. I just tried attaching it to an old Ubuntu vdi I had from a while ago. Five minutes later, I had all my files back! Thanks for the tip!

[Pawel Cioch]

It can also create RAM drives, awesome tool

[ZEE]

I recommend this too... used a lot of times before .vhdx...

[ZEE]

7Zip is 'badass'... saved me lots of times also!

[Ryan Griggs]

This answer needs 100000000 upvotes. 7-zip is an amazing piece of software.

[CJ Ratliff]

As of 2022, 7-zip was the only listed solution that actually still worked for modern Virtual Box .VDI images.