Methods, Devices and Computer Program Products for Emulating a Physical Hard Drive as Multiple Virtual Hard Drives

摘要

A virtual machine includes a virtual operating system operating in multiple modes. A hypervisor emulates a physical hard drive to the virtual operating system as multiple virtual hard drives. The hypervisor controls access to the multiple virtual hard drives by the virtual operating system. Each of the multiple virtual hard drives is dedicated to a different one of the multiple modes of operation. Each virtual hard drive is allocated a portion of storage space by the hypervisor that is a subset of a total amount of storage space available in the physical hard drive. Changes to a subset of the storage space allocated to a virtual hard drive dedicated to one mode of operation do not affect changes to a subset of the storage space allocated to another virtual hard drive dedicated to another mode of operation.