Okay, so I was trying to plug in an external disk to my laptop. I tried Firewire, but Fusion's support for Firewire is not good (For example, where can I connect/disconnect a Firewire drive to my Fusion VM -- I can't) so I am using a USB cable.
Great. So I plug in my USB 500 GB drive and I partition it. I just installed OS X Leopard, so its Time Machine eats it up and starts to use it. Great app.
Well, I am messing with the partitioning, and while I am doing this, I take note that although my boot drive used to be /dev/disk0 (duh, that's what it should be) I saw that the USB drive was being called /dev/disk0!!
Fine with me, I guess, since OS X still booted. But here's the glitch: On the next reboot, Fusion refused to run my BootCamp partition VM. It told me that it could not find "Boot Camp Laptop.vmdk" and so I thought that this file got corrupted, lost, or whatever. So POOR ME I go looking for the file for a LONG TIME.
Here's the gotcha: the file existed! I browsed through my Fusion 1.1 DOESN'T SEE my BOOT CAMP partition old post to the forum (thanks rcardona2k for your HELP!!) and I finally located where the vmdk files were put. What a weird spot. (/Users/Myname/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Boot Camp Laptop.vmwarevm/) And there it was, just as it had always been, just like it had been created I suppose. In that file, which I opened in a text editor, I found this gem:
(Note the single change of the "0" to "1") And upon clicking my VMware Fusion link, Windows booted fine! So my questions are:
Is this behavior by design, and if so, is there an easy way to make changes to the VMDK file so that I don't lose my ability to run my Windows Bootcamp from Fusion?
Is there a way to force Mac OS X to behave and stop renaming my devices? Next time, instead of panicking to find the file, should I just plug in or unplug my USB drive and reboot?
And finally, can someone at VMware please correct the error message I got that told me that there was a missing file? The file was there, it just had the wrong number. Furthermore, could this be submitted as a bug fix proposal... Why not determine if and when a VMDK file is incorrect and guess that the "/disk0" be interpreted as "/disk1" by offering the user such an option at runtime?
e.g. "Your .VMDK configuration file points to /dev/disk0 but you may want it pointing elsewhere. This can be caused by installing a new disk or removable drive."
(Pull down menu) Use this disk: /dev/disk0 -- /dev/disk1
Great. So I plug in my USB 500 GB drive and I partition it. I just installed OS X Leopard, so its Time Machine eats it up and starts to use it. Great app.
Well, I am messing with the partitioning, and while I am doing this, I take note that although my boot drive used to be /dev/disk0 (duh, that's what it should be) I saw that the USB drive was being called /dev/disk0!!
Fine with me, I guess, since OS X still booted. But here's the glitch: On the next reboot, Fusion refused to run my BootCamp partition VM. It told me that it could not find "Boot Camp Laptop.vmdk" and so I thought that this file got corrupted, lost, or whatever. So POOR ME I go looking for the file for a LONG TIME.
Here's the gotcha: the file existed! I browsed through my Fusion 1.1 DOESN'T SEE my BOOT CAMP partition old post to the forum (thanks rcardona2k for your HELP!!) and I finally located where the vmdk files were put. What a weird spot. (/Users/Myname/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Boot Camp Laptop.vmwarevm/) And there it was, just as it had always been, just like it had been created I suppose. In that file, which I opened in a text editor, I found this gem:
/Users/Myname/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Boot Camp Laptop.vmwarevm/Boot Camp Laptop.vmdk
# Extent description
RW 1 FLAT "Boot Camp Laptop-pt.vmdk" 0
RW 409639 ZERO
RW 245366784 ZERO
RW 262144 ZERO
RW 66543200 FLAT "/dev/disk0s3" 0
RW 40 ZERO
Which I changed to read:RW 1 FLAT "Boot Camp Laptop-pt.vmdk" 0
RW 409639 ZERO
RW 245366784 ZERO
RW 262144 ZERO
RW 66543200 FLAT "/dev/disk0s3" 0
RW 40 ZERO
RW 66543200 FLAT "/dev/disk1s3" 0
(Note the single change of the "0" to "1") And upon clicking my VMware Fusion link, Windows booted fine! So my questions are:
Is this behavior by design, and if so, is there an easy way to make changes to the VMDK file so that I don't lose my ability to run my Windows Bootcamp from Fusion?
Is there a way to force Mac OS X to behave and stop renaming my devices? Next time, instead of panicking to find the file, should I just plug in or unplug my USB drive and reboot?
And finally, can someone at VMware please correct the error message I got that told me that there was a missing file? The file was there, it just had the wrong number. Furthermore, could this be submitted as a bug fix proposal... Why not determine if and when a VMDK file is incorrect and guess that the "/disk0" be interpreted as "/disk1" by offering the user such an option at runtime?
e.g. "Your .VMDK configuration file points to /dev/disk0 but you may want it pointing elsewhere. This can be caused by installing a new disk or removable drive."
(Pull down menu) Use this disk: /dev/disk0 -- /dev/disk1