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WANGooRoo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

How to add additional hard disks to linked clones.

Previously I commented that Fusion 6.0 does not support adding additional hard disks to a linked clone.  This is a pretty bad limitation, and it does not make sense.  This is supported with VMware Workstation 10.

When you attempt to add a disk you see the following:

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 2.02.37 PM.png

There is a way to force Fusion 6.0 to allow this.

Step 1:

You must first create a VMDK file using a different VM that is not a linked clone.

Step 2:

Once you have created the additional disk, you then must show the package contents of your VM, grab the newly created VMDK file and move it to the container of the linked clone VM

Step 3:

Now you must edit the linked clone .VMX file to manually add the additional configuration lines to the file.

For my situation, I am using SATA for the bus, and I wanted to use a different SATA bus number than the one that the linked clone is booting from.

sata1.present = "TRUE"

sata1:0.present = "TRUE"

sata1:0.fileName = "Virtual Disk 2.vmdk"

sata1:1.present = "TRUE"

sata1:1.fileName = "Virtual Disk 3.vmdk"

You may need to change your Bus or Device IDs from what I am using here.

Save the file.   When you view Fusion settings for the VM you should now see the additional disks...

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 2.02.24 PM.png

Now you can boot up the VM and use Windows Storage Manager to create volumes and format them.

This feature should be supported out of the box without requiring manual edit of the VMX files!

VMware Workstation 10 provides this feature.  Fusion 6 should as well.

3 Replies
VIR2AL3X
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

WANGooRoo Any idea if this is still valid with Fusion 8?  I get a VMX file is corrupt error...

2015-10-02_15-55-08.png

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WANGooRoo
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi unfortunately I have no idea. 

I cannot afford to pay for the Fusion 8.0 Pro upgrade price.

If you are getting a corrupt VMX error  make sure your edits using OS X text editor did not change the quotes to smart quotes.

You need to use straight " "   Mac OS X Text Editor defaults to changing to smart quotes which is a pain in the a$$.

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VIR2AL3X
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It still works, I figured out my problem.  When I added the additional lines to the .vmx file, I needed to add the following:

scsi0:1.present = "TRUE"

scsi0:1.fileName = "Virtual Disk 2.vmdk"

I then scrolled down through the rest of the vmx and notice a discrepancy.  The following was present:

scsi0:1.present = "FALSE"

Once I removed this I was able to proceed without issue. Smiley Happy

I use BBEdit instead of TextEdit on Mac.

2015-10-02_16-05-45.png

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