Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

shabaz — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 14:46:53 GMT

Update: I have been using this technique for six months now. I have 17 virtual hard disks (VHDs) by now, and I use the VHDX Manager app to switch them on and off.

Today it stopped working due to a recent Windows update (I think it's something broken they need to fix) anyway, there is a workaround which is now in GitHub and all is working fine again.

Overall, based on the past 6 months experience, I now feel this is a very good solution at least for MS Windows users, to the problem of increased PC costs, for those willing to offload unused VHDs to external disks (spinning or SSD), or even just to manage apps.

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

shabaz — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:11:35 GMT

I wanted a simple graphical way to manage all the VHDs.. this app took 27 minutes to create and debug using AI! It seems to function. I will tweak it a bit further and then place it on GitHub.

Clicking on the bullets will toggle between mounted and unmounted states (saves me having to launch Disk Management, or to remember the PowerShell commands..).

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

obones — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:29:49 GMT

Nice idea there, I did that with virtual machines but never thought of doing it at the OS level

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

DAB — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:20:11 GMT

Interesting idea.

RE: Too Many Development Tools: How to Organize Them with Virtual Disks!

dougw — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:01:51 GMT

Definitely a problem. I was hoping to go the larger SSD route, but as you point out, memory prices have gone haywire. For now I am splitting tasks between 2 computers while waiting for memory prices to subside.