Safely / Easily Sharing Between system and Hyper-V Win 7 Session?

Looking to do this in a safe way. It's been a long time since I worked with Windows file / user security.

I'll need to be able to access files from both my Win 11 primary system and a Hyper-V session running Win 7. This is relatively tame file access - no gaming speed needed.

I shared a folder on the Win 11 primary. I gave "Everyone" permissions to it. I then went into the Hyper-V Virtual session running Win 7. I was able to connect to the drive with \\server\drive-name. Win 11 required that I log in as a user to connect. All worked.After that, I remembered the trick of having matching usernames/passwords and it connected without the need for password entry.

Questions:

- I couldn't find the network drive by browsing from the Virtual session. I had to type the \\server\drive-name manually. Should I have been able to see it? Perhaps I have to make it more visible from the Win 11 system? Or is that an insecure thing to do?

- I had to log into an account that's on the Win 11 system. There's no domain, AD, etc running here. Just me on one machine. Can I create a new user account on the Win 11 system that has limited permissions and use that for the log in from the virtual side? Or would that user need to be active on the Win 11 side for the login to work?

- Is this safe? Is the Windows Firewall isolating all this from users beyond this piece of hardware? I'm not really worried about other users on the home network... but if someone were to hack through the ISP's router, I'd prefer these shared folders not be exposed. Does the local password login keep it secure?

Easiest safe way is to copy file or folder to onedrive or similar, then upload/download as you see fit.

If the VM is on the same host with the disk you want to share, you can just use enhanced session mode and share the disk. Share devices with Windows virtual machines

Levitate11 said:

I'll need to be able to access files from both my Win 11 primary system and a Hyper-V session running Win 7.

Click to expand...

neemobeer said:

If the VM is on the same host with the disk you want to share, you can just use enhanced session mode...

Click to expand...

Enhanced session mode is not available for a Windows 7 guest OS, only for guests that are Pro editions of Win8 or higher.

So, based on the above (Enhanced Session for Win 10/11 only), and not wanting to put many of these files on a cloud server, I guess I need to stock with the local network sharing.

If the account name on the Win 11 machine and Hyper-V Win 7 session match, I do get to take advantage of easy connect. Would you folks feel comfortable security wise that the drive connection is safe on a local network behind an ISP router and only the Windows Firewall on the local machine?

You'll be fine. Most ISPs, in the US anyway, maybe everywhere, block Windows file sharing ports, so even if you wanted to expose your shares to the world, you couldn't.