Notes:
- Spanned disks are not supported
- When performing an Instant Mount from a deduplicated volume, for example, Windows Server 2025, the target machine where the disk is mounted must also run Windows Server 2025 or later
From 8.2.1 and onwards the Restore Virtual Disk functionality introduces a new restore mode 'Instantly mount select Virtual Disks directly from the Backup Data'.
This will allow you to instantly mount VHDX, VMDK or RAW from your backup set, directly to the VM Backup management machine.
This option will especially be useful for:
- ReFS formatted partitions
- Users who want to maintain Permission/Date attributes on files/folders
- Users who need a Search functionality
- VMs that have Windows Data Deduplication role enabled. The same role must also be enabled on the machine where VM Backup is installed
- Virtual disks that contain storage spaces volumes are not supported for instant mount
You can access this option by navigating to the [Restore] > [Restore Virtual Disk]. In the 3rd Step, you'll get an option to choose this new restore mode.
Once the virtual machines' disks have been mounted you'll see something like so:
Next simply click on the drive letters in order to open up a Windows Explorer window with the contents of that disk.
Ensure that when you're ready you [Unmount Virtual Disk] as otherwise backups will not be able to run.