If you were a VMware user, you wouldn't need to be searching for this article! VMware have made files sharing so easy that you can just drag and drop files from the physical machine to virtual machine's desktop but Microsoft...!

The setup for what I'm using is I have a Windows 8.1 with Hyper-V feature enabled and run Windows Server 2012 R2 in Hyper-V environment.

Let's get into it, for Hyper-V users, there isn't an easy way like what VMware is offering, however the following 5 ways should solve your problems.

Network File Sharing - Share files on a network like you usually do... 

1. On the virtual machine, create a folder on Desktop or any directory you preferred and give it a name.
2. Right click folder and select "Properties"
3. Select "Sharing" tab and click "Advanced Sharing..."
4. Tick "Share this folder" and select "Permissions".
5. Give "Everyone" permissions like it shown on below picture.


6. Select OK to finish the sharing process.
7. Now what you need to do is, go back to your physical machine and access the shared folder by typing the "\\computername\shared folder".
8. Once you are on it and simply copy files over to the shared drive and it will start appearing on the virtual machine's shared folder.

Remote Desktop map drive

1. Enable the Remote Desktop service on the virtual machine Server 2012 or other Windows OS, just make sure the Remote Desktop Service it is enabled so it can accept the service from client machine.
2. On Windows Server 2012 R2 to enabled Remote Desktop Service, go to "Server Manager" -> select "Local Server" from the left hand side menu.


3. Enable Remote Desktop by click on it, select "Allow remote connections to this computer" and un-tick the Recommended setting.


4. Now restart the virtual machine Server 2012.
5. Once the virtual machine Server 2012 is back and running, connect to the VM Server 2012 using Remote Desktop Connection.

6. On Remote Desktop Connection windows click "Local Resources", under "Local devices and resources" tab click on "More", expand "Drives" list and tick the drive you wanted to map.


7. Click OK and connect! Now see what you have on "My computer"!


8. Drag any files to the local drive on your PC and those files will appear on the Cloud VM server mapped drive.

Hyper-V USB offline

1. Make sure you have plugged the USB drive you are going to use to the computer.
2. Go to Start-> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management
3. Select "Disk Management" from the left hand side menu
4. Right click the USB Drive and select "Offline"



5. Go to Hyper-V Manager and shutdown the running virtual machine
6. Right click the virtual machine and select "Settings".
7. Select "SCSI Controller" and click "Add" a hard drive



8. Now select "Physical hard disk:" the USB drive you have just took offline on Disk Management.




9. Click "Apply" and OK to finish.
10. Start up the virtual machine and you should have the USB drive appeared on "My Computer".


Copy and Paste - http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1216041-drag-and-drop-hyper-v-in-windows-81/

Note that this feature works with the following VM images:

• Windows 8.1 Enterprise
• Windows Server 2012

More information about supported features by OS edition is available in this blog post.

1. Fire up Hyper-V Manager
2. Right click the Hyper-V host and select "Hyper-V Settings"


3. Ensure the tick box is ticked under Enhanced Session Mode and click OK.


4. Right click the virtual machine-> Settings -> Integration Services at bottom left hand side of the menu.
5. Check "Guest Services" and click OK.


6. Start up the virtual machine, copy files from physical machine and paste in to virtual the machine!

Mount Virtual Hard Disk 

1. Navigate to the directory where you have created the virtual hard disk when you creating the virtual machine. e.g. "C:\Users\Public\Documents\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks"
2. Mount the virtual hard drive by double clicking it.
3. The virtual hard drive window will pop up and seeing the drive as your local drive.
4. Just copy and paste the files over to the mounted drive.
5. Once it's finished, go to "My Computer", right click the virtual hard drive and "Eject".
6. Otherwise when you try to start up the virtual machine and an error like below screenshot will occurred!