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4 Replies Last post: Jul 19, 2006 5:10 AM by RDPetruska  

IDE Hard Drives posted: Jul 17, 2006 4:43 PM

Click to view ldb88's profile Novice
ldb88
4 posts since
Jul 17, 2006
I have VMWare Workstation 5.0.0 and I cannot change my virtual hard drive off of SCSI and onto IDE because there is no IDE option. There is one for the CD-ROM drive, however. How do I change it to IDE? I tried changing the .vmx file, but it said it was created using SCSI geometries and it cannot be used as an IDE. I am willing to create a new virtual machine if necessary.

Message was edited by:
ldb88

Re: IDE Hard Drives

1. Jul 17, 2006 11:32 PM in response to: ldb88
Click to view el1971's profile Expert
el1971
999 posts since
May 1, 2006
I've seen that ide->scsi is possible ( http://www.sanbarrow.com/ide2scsi.html )but scsi->ide is more tricky. You should probably create a new ide virtual disk and then clone (with ghost as example) the scsi partition onto it.
For creating a new VM with IDE disks you've to choose custom and after some steps you'll be asked for a virtual disk type. There you can select SCSI or IDE.

-- Edi

Re: IDE Hard Drives

2. Jul 18, 2006 12:20 PM in response to: el1971
Click to view continuum's profile Guru
continuum
12,689 posts since
Dec 18, 2003
Edi
SCSI to IDE is very easy when the disk is larger than 8GB
simply use

ddb.adapterType = "ide"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "16"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "16383"

for disk-geometrie.

Don't forget that you need to fix guest-drivers if this is a systemboot-disk.

Ulli

Re: IDE Hard Drives

3. Jul 19, 2006 12:08 AM in response to: ldb88
Click to view el1971's profile Expert
el1971
999 posts since
May 1, 2006
Hi Ulli,

why it has to be greater then 8Gb? Why this limitation?

Thanks a lot for the information,
Edi

Re: IDE Hard Drives

4. Jul 19, 2006 5:10 AM in response to: el1971
Click to view RDPetruska's profile Guru
RDPetruska
15,877 posts since
Jan 11, 2005
why it has to be greater then 8Gb? Why this
limitation?
It's not a limitation... it's that the geometry tables change below 8Gb; so you'd need to know the tables and/or formulae. At that point, it's much easier to just create a new disk of the type/size you want and throw away all except the descriptor-file, which will contain the values you will need.

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